Just after dawn, in a cloud forest surrounded by islands of bamboo trees and coffee plants, the songs began. Then a flash of scarlet flew past the cameras and binoculars: an Andean cock-of-the-rock. The lone bird was soon joined by other males, singing and spreading their wings in a competitive performance to attract a mate.
According to the criteria of
In the thick jungles of Colombia, green is the dominant color, but sudden bursts of bright red, iridescent blues and multiple shades of yellow also flutter through the canopy.
The country’s wild spaces are home to about a fifth of all the world’s bird species, making it a birdwatching paradise. However, decades of brutal internal conflict saw large swathes of countryside become the territory of anti-government guerrillas, keeping scientists and birdwatchers away for more than 50 years.
In 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — the country’s main rebel group — signed a peace deal with the government, officially ending 53 years of insurgency.
A side effect of this relatively peaceful period has been a surge in ecotourism, although certain areas remain off-limits as the government has yet to reassert control everywhere.
Colombia is home to approximately 1,970 bird species, the largest number of any country in the world—with at least six new species discovered in the past decade, reports the Colombian Ornithological Records Committee. The country is home to some 80 bird species found nowhere else.
May 11 was Global Big Day, an annual citizen science event organized and promoted by Cornell University in New York State, during which birdwatchers from around the world try to find and catalog as many species as they can. This year, a group of Colombian birdwatchers walked silently through a forest, led by Paulo Pulgarín, a biologist and ornithologist.
Approximately 1.3 million birdwatchers from some 203 countries participated in this year’s event. They observed more than 7,700 bird species worldwide, and Colombia, as in many previous years, led with 1,526 species, followed by Peru with 1,428 and Brazil with 1,201.
A bird-watching tour in Colombia can cost between $150 and $200 a day, including food and transportation. Other Latin American countries, such as Costa Rica and Brazil, have long attracted significant numbers of ecotourists. With the peace agreement, government officials are hopeful that Colombia can attract a larger share of those travelers.
“Ten years ago, it would have been crazy to bring foreign tourists to some areas of Colombia,” Pulgarín said. “Now it is not only possible, but a great door has been opened for science and for the country’s economy.”
#Colombia #birdwatchers #paradise #opened #world #peace #agreement