News from Peru Machu Picchu tour
The diversity and beauty of the birds and other wildlife on our recent tour to Peru’s Machu Picchu and the Manu-Kosñipata Road was in full display. Starting in the drier high Andean valleys near Cusco we descended to Machu Picchu to visit this enchanting World Heritage site.
After also seeing Inca Wren and Silvery Tanager here, among others, we visited a private garden where an Undulated Antpitta came to a feeder, and among the many hummingbirds was a mind-blowing Sword-billed Hummingbird.
We then crossed over a high pass, where several species of canasteros and ground tyrants seemed unaffected by the lack of oxygen, and we soon descended to Wayqecha, our first lodge in the cloud forests. Gray-breasted Mountain-Toucan was one of many highlights here, and continued sunny weather allowed some of the spectacular high elevation butterflies to be active, including this Enyo Falcon, an unusually colorful satyr.
Our bird list began expanding as we worked our way to even lower elevations, and this year we were happy to cash in on a roadside Andean Potoo roost that had been occupied and seen by many birders during the past few months.
One highlight of the middle elevations was the Andean Cock-of-the-rock lek that we visited, this time in the afternoon for the better light for photography. There were about eight males of this stunning cotinga in attendance (photo above).
New hummingbird and tanager feeding stations keep appearing, and we took advantage of one to see Rufous-booted Racket-tails, Versicolored Barbet, several tanagers, and the otherwise very difficult Golden-collared Honeycreeper.
In the garden of our own hotel was the tour favorite, the incomparable Paradise Tanager. We saw them high in the trees on several days, but on our first afternoon a flock came to a fruiting Miconia at eye level just outside our dining room.
We ended the tour at the incredibly birdy Manu Biolodge at the lowest elevation of the tour. Several bamboo specialties, a tinamou feeding blind, and a habituated Amazonian Antpitta were some of the highlights, and finding a family of Black-banded Owls on their day roost was a treat.
