Colombia 2023

After a wonderful first trip to Colombia in February 2022, we decided that we'd like to go back and explore a different area of the country.  Our first trip had been to the Western and Central Andes, and our blog describing that trip begins HERE.  Or guide from our previous trip, Daniel Uribe Restrepo of Birding Tours Colombia suggested that we visit the Eastern Andes, in the general vicinity of Bogota. 

Our travel day went smoothly and we landed in Bogota, Colombia at around 7:30 p.m.  The lines for immigration were long, and we were surprised when an official waved us into the "Colombian Citizens" line.  I told him "No somos Colombianos" (we're not Colombian) but he replied "No importa" (it doesn't matter).  The entire time we were in line with hundreds of Colombians I was worried that we'd get turned away and sent back to the other line. But when we arrived at the counter the official was friendly, stamped our passports, and sent us on our way.

Daniel picked us up and we all went to the Garden Inn, Bogota Airport for our first night. 

8/22/2023 Tuesday – We were on the road at 5:00.  Daniel said that we needed to cross Bogota this morning to get to our birding spot, and that traffic in Bogota was horrible. The population of the Bogota metropolitan area is over eleven million people, which is close to that of Los Angeles. We had no idea it was that large. 

And he wasn’t kidding about the traffic!  An incredible mixture of trucks, motorcycles, cars, more motorcycles, bicycles, and you guessed it, more motorcycles. The motorcycles drive on the lanes between all of the cars and trucks. How there aren’t hundreds of accidents every day escapes me, but they make it work.

Once we got out of the center of Bogota things opened up a bit, and we arrived at the Laguna Pedro Palo area at around 6:30.  Birding was along a gravel road on the way to the lagoon, rather than at the lagoon itself. 

There were good mixed flocks of birds along the road, and we spent most of the time walking along various stretches. The weather was cool, foggy and sometimes a bit misty. Very much like cloud-forest birding in Ecuador. Daniel said that the weather was not usually like this here.

We saw a nice variety of tanagers, including Bay-headed, Fawn-breasted, Black-capped, Golden, Blue-necked, Scrub, and Beryl-spangled. Mark won our “first bird” contest for the first time in several trips. He had guessed Scrub Tanager which was seen just seconds before Teri’s guess of Band-tailed Pigeon. Blizzard time!

Black-capped Tanager - male

Slate-throated Redstart

Streak-headed Woodcreeper

The best birds of the morning were a male and female Turquoise Dacnis, an endemic to Colombia. Endemic means that it is found in a restricted geographical area, in this case only in the northern Andes of Colombia. 

Turquoise Dacnis - male

We had a tasty lunch at a nearby restaurant, El Rancho de Jairo.  By now it had turned rainy and cloudy, so we were glad to be inside eating rather than outside birding!

Grilled chicken breast with cheese. 

After lunch we headed to a private preserve called Chicaque Ecopark.  We arrived about 2:00.  Our target was an endemic hummingbird called the Golden-bellied Starfrontlet. Daniel said they had been regulars here at feeders in past years, but he’d not seen them the last couple of trips. He thought it might be that other, more aggressive hummingbirds were dominating the feeders.

Golden-bellied Starfrontlet - male

Golden-bellied Starfrontlet - female

But our luck was good and we had a nice male show up to a feeder within about 5 minutes of our arrival.  It looked like the Ecopark had put up five brand-new feeders and spread them out some, which is a good way to handle aggressive hummers. It was continuing to be gray and misty, so we sort of hid inside of some glass doors, waiting for the Starfrontlet to show up, at which point I’d step outside for pictures. It worked well.

There was a good variety of other hummingbirds as well. 

Collared Inca

Lesser Violetear

Sparkling Violetear

Tourmaline Sunangel

We birded our way back down the road to the highway, and headed back to Bogota at about 4:00.  Traffic returning was much worse, and it took us almost 2 hours to reach the hotel. But we got back fine, met for a light dinner at 6:30, and called it a day. 

Mark had a tradictional Colombian soup called Ajiaco. It is made with different kinds of potatoes, spices, chicken, corn, guascas (a Colombian herb) and served with capers and cream. It is considered a Colombian "comfort food" and was very nice. 

Ajiaco

Next: Chingaza National Park and a new hotel. 

Wisconsin 2023 - Day 6

June 9, 2023 (Friday)

This was our last full day in Wisconsin, and we decided to spend it exploring Horicon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. We'd visited briefly on our trip north from Milwaukee, and again for a couple of hours last night, but this would be our day to really check it out. 

We started at first light on the auto tour loop.  It had been quite busy the evening before, but we had it to ourselves this morning. 

The first part of the tour loop passes through large fields and marshes, with scattered trees. Most of the birds were seen at a distance. We got good looks at a Willow Flycatcher that was actually sitting in some willows. 

Willow Flycatcher

We also had a flyover of one of the many White Pelicans using the marsh for the summer. It always seems odd to see pelicans far from any ocean or coastline, but White Pelicans spread out across the United States Midwest and up into Canada to breed on freshwater lakes and marshes. 

American White Pelican

We parked and spent a couple of hours on the Egret Trail and its floating boardwalk section. In addition to the many Black Terns that we'd seen the previous evening, we picked up a number of other species. 

Barn Swallow

Eastern Kingbird

Red-winged Blackbird

Back at the parking area this Yellow Warbler male was perched in the sun. 

Yellow Warbler

As we continued on the tour road, we came across this Common Snapping Turtle laying her eggs alongside the road. We come across this many times. The turtles like to come up from lakes, marshes, streams etc. to slightly higher ground to lay their eggs. That often seems to put them on roadway shoulders. 

Common Snapping Turtle laying eggs

After completing the auto tour loop, we drove over to the NWR Headquarters building.  We went inside briefly but it was a pretty simple set-up and the volunteer working the counter was involved in deep conversation with one of the staff, so we didn't hang around for long. 

We repeated the Discovery Trail that we'd walked several evenings ago, and saw pretty much the same birds. 

We continued driving around the large marshy area, only some of which is within the boundaries of the National Wildlife Refuge. Darned if we didn't come across an even larger Visitor Center, this one called The Horicon Marsh Education and Visitors Center, and run by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. 

We went inside the large visitor center, but they were having school field trips and it was kind of a madhouse. The staff was busy with kids so we looked around a bit on our own. There were some nice displays, including this display of owls and raptors found on the marsh.

The marsh has a long history of human habitation, with nomadic hunters arriving around 12,000 years ago. Fossil remains of Wooly Mammoths have been found in the area, and this huge metal sculpture of a Woolly Mammoth and nearby hunter was next to the parking lot. The mammoth is made up of thousands of short sections so steel rebar. 

It was sunny and getting warm, so we called it an afternoon and returned to our cottage to read and relax.

The next morning we had a relaxed drive back to Milwaukee, where we turned in the rental car and made our 10:30 flight to Chicago, and then our flight to San Antonio which arrived at about 5:00 p.m.  We returned to the airport hotel, recovered our car and drove on home. It was nice not to be getting back in at midnight and having to stay the extra night. 

Teri has picked up a couple of magnets along the way. Wisconsin definitely plays up their license plate logo "America's Dairyland".  

Overall we didn't find Wisconsin to be as interesting as Michigan in terms of natural areas or bird life, but the interesting factory tours made up for it. Overall, a nice place to spend a week. 

Wisconsin 2023 - Day 5

June 8, 2023 (Thursday)

We switched things around a little today, doing our factory tour first thing. We were heading off to visit Union Star Cheese, where a fresh batch of cheese is made each morning. Teri had called and they recommended arriving around 7:00 to see the completion of the process. 

We arrived at 7:00, walked inside, and found ourselves in a hot, steamy room!  They start the cheesemaking process at 4:00 a.m. each day, so had already completed much of it. When we arrived the 10,500 pounds of milk had already been pasteurized, rennet and bacteria added, and the solution heated to 106 degrees for almost an hour. Most of the whey had been drained off and the curds had been solidified into dozens of slabs of soft cheese. 

When we arrived they had just started feeding the slabs into a machine that was chopping them into about 1" cubes. 

This process continued down the length of a long stainless steel trough.  The cubes were stirred continuously while cutting continued. 

Did I mention that the room was hot and humid?  These guys were really putting in the work!

Once all of the slabs had been chopped up, copious amounts of salt were broadcast onto the cubes as the entire batch was continuously mixed. This is not a low-sodium product!

Mixing continued as the salt causes the last of the whey to release and drain off. 

The end result was a little over 1000 pounds of (very) fresh cheese curds. Their motto is "So fresh they squeak", which is the truth!

We were given samples of the still warm cheese curds to try.  They do actually give a little "squeak" when you bite into them.  They seemed really salty and I wonder if that dissipates some with time. They not only sell curds in the store, but they deliver them to grocery and convenience stores and restaurants every morning. One morning each week they make string cheese. 

While some of the curds are sold fresh, much is processed into different types of cheese by adding in other ingredients, molding it into blocks, and in some cases aging it for up to two years. 

The refrigerated aging room.  

Some of this cheese has been here for almost 2 years.

Plenty of varieties for purchase.

It had been another really interesting tour, this time with a little snack at the end!

From Union Star we headed less than 30 minutes north to the Mosquito Hill Nature Preserve. This is a 441 acre preserve operated by the county. It borders the Wolf River and contains a stand of bottomland hardwood forest. 

In the Visitor Center parking lot there was a beautiful pollinator garden with a metal sculpture depicting their namesake. 

It was warm and sunny and luckily we didn't run across many of these guys, and none this large!

We enjoyed a nice walk through the forest and out in some clearings. We saw a few of their breeding birds in the forest, and dragonflies and butterflies in the open fields. 

Baltimore Oriole

Clubtail type Dragonfly

Interesting fly

House Wren singing

Little Wood-Satyr

Red-spotted Admiral

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

I had been unseasonably warm the past couple of days (the story of our life...) and things were getting pretty quiet, so we headed back toward our cottage, got lunch, and relaxed outside for the rest of the afternoon. 

That evening we headed over to the Horicon Marsh NWR for a quick trip around the auto loop road. We planned to come back the next morning but wanted to get a preview. 

There is a floating boardwalk section and we headed out onto it. We saw quite a few Black Terns which are birds we don't get to see very often. Most terns are saltwater birds, but not these. They were zooming around, occasionally dropping to the water's surface to (hopefully) pick off a small fish. 

Black Tern with fish

There were also Tree Swallows catching insects over the water. It was a good place to end the day. 

Tree Swallow

Next: Horicon Marsh and the steel Mammoth