Nature Notes #1

The birding is finally under way. Nothing startling, but definitely species I have not encountered elsewhere.

The first exotic identified in the tiny garden of my host family in Cusco was the rufous-collared sparrow. OK - it´s a sparrow, but it is a tiny bit more colourful than the house sparrow found in so many cities. Close on its heels was a chingacho thrush (That´s not spelled correctly but I don´t have the book with me). If there´s a plainer thrush anywhere, I don´t know it.

Yesterday, however, I got outside the city for the first time. Amazingly, the farmland was almost devoid of birdlife, so it didn´t matter that we were bowling along at high speed. The Tipon ruins were almost as disappointing, even though the surrounding scrub looked just the thing to provide good small bird habitat. In the event the first birds I saw were falcons out in the open of the ruins. Reference to my field guide identified them as american kestrels. The last american kestrel I saw was in the Yukon two years ago. In a most un-kestrel manner, they were perching on the walls and taking off to pounce on what I presume were insects in the grass.

Patience in scanning the scrub was rewarded by a few butterflies and three glimpses of humming birds. They were green, which reduces the number of possibilities to only about 15 species. I´ll need a much better sighting to identify these speedsters.

Laguna Huacqupay finally provided some clearly seen birds. The duck was too far away and too black in the evening light to be identified, but I did record definite sightings of andean gulls (a very long way from any sea), andean coots and moorhens.

All very common species, but at least the list is started.