Birdernaturalist

I was lucky to get out of having to do jury duty this week. I would have dutifully done it had I been chosen, as I believe it’s an important role one should perform as a citizen, even if so many of the court cases are sorry examples of stupid people behaving stupidly. But a good number of them are real and serious. I received my summons this past early June, for a July date when I would be leading a tour in Costa Rica. I went through the motions to apply for a postponement and was summarily given the reporting date of this past Tuesday, the day after I returned from Oregon.

Backing up a bit, I had two very short layovers here at home in Tucson between tours these past two months. The first was just two nights home after Costa Rica and before Marvelous Mato Grosso (Brazil). Costa Rica was very wet, but also full of birds, such as this Red-capped Manakin.

But a big storm in Miami diverted our flight to Fort Myers for refueling, and the delay caused me to miss my flight to Arizona, and I had to overnight in Miami. That left me with only 18 hours in Tucson, during which I just needed to swap out field guides, charge batteries, ship my Canon PowerShot SX50 for repairs (the screen refused to reorient, staying upside-down when facing out), get the WINGS camera as a replacement, do my laundry, and stop at a store for toiletries and other small items. No problem, but oops – to do my laundry and shop I had to bike to the laundromat and store only ½ mile away, and I arrived home to find that my trusty Bridgestone CB-1 of 23 years had been stolen. I usually store it in the garage when I leave town, but I use it so often I normally park it just behind my house out of sight and well away from the street. I had accidentally left it there when I went to Costa Rica; now it’s clear we have prowlers in the neighborhood. In any event I managed to walk to the laudromat, and my friend Hal took me to the store.

But I was planning ahead: I would be needing a bike to get to the superior court building if my group number isn’t dismissed on September 9, as it’s 5 miles from my home, not a short walk in the desert heat and monsoon, and bus service in Tucson is still infrequent and very sparsely networked. I’d be home just four days between my Mato Grosso tour and when I leave for Oregon, but the two latter days of that are taken up entirely by the first WINGS leaders meeting in six years, leaving me again with just two days at home. One to get a bike.

The Mato Grosso tour went really well (with the one logistical headache of the Alta Floresta airport closure), and I had a fine group of eight participants who were quite pleased to have seen this Jaguar, as well as two others that same morning.

So when I got home from that tour, instead of getting the shuttle directly home from the airport, I sent an SOS to my darling friend Andrew Broan, a bicycle maven and also someone you can always rely upon in an emergency. Here’s Andrew and our friend Celina during a recent outing of pool and drinks. He does not allow a straight face when having his picture taken.

He met me at the airport, and we drove directly to Performance Bicycle, where after about 45 minutes of looking at their selection and taking a couple of test rides, Andrew helped me decide on this Fuji Crosstown – a two-year-old discontinued series in an unusually large size on a sale day resulted in a “screaming deal.” It’s a perfect bike. I barely got to use it before heading to Oregon.

I’ve already blogged about the Oregon tour, but I didn’t mention the few days I spent visiting with my friends Deb, Ray, Katherine, and Mike. I worked a bit on post-tour stuff, catching up on labeling photos from previous tours, etc. Staying at Deb’s is like a luxury spa for me – she has a glorious guest bedroom and the most perfect kitchen. Not too big but fully equipped with exactly the right utensils and bowls, an amazing fridge and oven, and a never-ending supply of wine. We also share the exact same cooking style; one night I made salad and a corn-squash dish (which she had been planning to make, and I had only coincidentally pulled out the same magazine issue, chose the same recipe, then bought all the ingredients which she had already had); another night we did Pad Thai, and from the final night here are some sauces and dressings from our fun taco night (chicken, beef, and shrimp).

Then on the day I returned home from Oregon, I had an eerily similar flight experience to the one just over a month earlier, with a storm over the airport causing us to go into a holding pattern, followed by the pilot deciding to land in Phoenix to refuel and then returning to Tucson, arriving nearly 2 hours late. At least I didn’t have a connecting flight to worry about. This time I did take the shuttle (Arizona Stagecoach), sharing the ride with two seasonals who work in Denali National Park and know friends of mine who did the same thing decades ago – a fun small world experience. I then checked the Pima County superior court website and found that I had to report at 11:00 a.m. the next day – very glad I have that bike now.

Jury selection is a slow and costly process. While the county does reimburse a few pennies to people for parking and travel, not factored into it is how much human productivity is lost in order to select just eight people. For that one jury 42 people have to take an entire day off of work and do nothing (though I seemed to be the only one of hundreds with a laptop and working on it when I could). And several juries had to be selected that day. Out of those 42 people for just this one trial, the judge and lawyers first have to find a panel of 21 who can fairly serve as jurors. So they select 21 at random and then ask them questions, mostly yes-or-no, to determine if any are obviously unfit or for whom serving would be an unusual hardship. One woman couldn’t understand English very well, one guy was leaving Thursday for a work-related trip (the trial was thought to possibly last until Friday), one guy was a full-time student and had a job, and another guy was so shy he had an extremely hard time talking aloud in front of a group of people. They were excused and their seats were filled one by one from the remaining pool of 21 people until they had a panel of 21. I wasn’t one of the original 21, but my name did come up to fill a seat from someone who had been excused. We were also asked if we knew anyone involved in the case (which was a criminal case against a guy accused of stealing a car from an elderly man, with whom he was apparently acquainted, over the course of several days nearly a year ago), whether we knew anyone who was a lawyer, judge or involved in law enforcement, or if we’d been the victim of a crime. Of course, I had to mention that my bike had been stolen (and my house broken into 6 years ago). I also had to mention that I know Brad Holland well (he served as a prosecutor for the county a couple years ago), as well as other lawyers and a birding friend who is a retired policewoman. In each case we had to respond whether that experience would make us incapable of being fair in deciding in such a case. Each of us also had to stand, announce our name, state our occupation and how long we’d been at it; state whether we were married or single, mention our spouses’ occupation, children and ages; whether we had sat as juror in the past (when, type of case, and verdict); and – I thought this most odd – list the magazines or websites we subscribe to. I was shocked that most people subscribe to no magazines at all, and the three or four that did only read Consumer Reports or pablum even less intellectual – not even National Geographic. I probably baffled them all by listing my subscriptions to North American Birds, Birding, Western Birds, Oregon Birds, American Butterflies, Neotropical Birding, Cotinga, etc.

This whole process took about two hours, and by the end about 15 people had been excused, their seats re-filled, and there were just six who hadn’t been called up at all. They served their duty by just being there. The rest of us on the semifinal 21-person panel were then given a 20 minute recess while the county prosecutor, the public defender, and the judge used some sort of calculus in secret to pick eight to serve on the jury. When we all entered the court, those eight names were called up, and I wasn’t among them. Whew. But I’m still curious about how they chose those eight. Was I not chosen because I know Sr. Brad? (Even though I could detect no reaction, I figure Judge Liwski must know him well.) If so, I’ll be sure to mention him again next time. Or is it because I read Western Birds?

Speaking of Western Field Ornithologists (the publisher of the superb Western Birds), I’ll be helping out at their annual meeting next month in San Diego, October 8-12. I’m helping lead field trips to the Tijuana River Valley on Thursday, Sweewater Reservoir and preserve on Friday, and then maybe help out on one of the panels and fill in last minute on the weekend field trips.

In the meantime, I’m finishing post-tour stuff, preparing for the upcoming Butterflies & Birds tour of the Kosñipata Valley of SE Peru (the “Manu Road”), cooking and eating dinners with friends, and struggling to keep my hummingbird feeders full. There are indeed many Anna’s, Black-chinned, and Broad-billed Hummingbird in the yard now, but they’re not the ones emptying the feeders. For the past week, we’ve been beset by several migrant Lesser Long-nosed Bats(Leptonycteris yerbabuenae). They lick the feeders dry overnight, also leaving mess with their slobber and swinging the feeders making them drip a sticky mess below. I estimate that they are slurping about two quarts sugar water each night. This photo is from mid-October two years ago, when I first noticed them in the yard; then it seemed there were only two or three, considering that most feeders were left untouched.

But this time there must be a half dozen or more, and it’s getting expensive and tiring to keep the feeders full for the demanding hummers each morning. So I have made baffles which work well, except during breezy nights when they get blown off. The material is rather stiff and there is a visible gap below, but that seems to throw them off enough that they can’t get at the holes, which they apparently approach from above.

Now back to post tour stuff, preparing for Peru, and making Thai green curry paste.

I’ve just completed a wonderful WINGS tour of butterfly and bird watching in the Kosñipata Valley of SE Peru, which I co-led with Jim Brock. Here’s Jim with a Comnena Jewel, Perisama comnena, on his hat.

This is just a short teaser of some highlights, as there is lots to share about the trip. We started with a short stop at a very high pass on the dry side of the Andes, a couple hours’ drive north of Cusco.

It’s often cloudy and cold here, but with a little bit of sun in this windswept hill, Jim spotted a butterfly he had been hoping to see for years, an obscure but delightful satyr called Argyrophorus lamna, which we dubbed the Silver Puna. The upper side of the forewing shimmers silver in flight.

Over the next days we then progressed down the wet, forested slope of the relatively low ridge starting at Acjanaco Pass where one skirts the upper edge of Manu National Park, and ending at Villa Carmen at Pilcopata – at the terminus of Kosñipata River where it joins the Tono, Piñipiñi, and Pilcopata rivers to form the Upper Madre de Dios.

We spotted about 480 species of butterflies, among which were several that we couldn’t identify. Many of the unidentifiable ones were clearwings, but this one we were able to name as Oleria athalina.

And this little-known False Purplewing, Sea sophronia, remained unidentified until we had internet access at the end of the tour. This photo represents the first record from the valley, with the list now well over 2100 species.

At Villa Carmen we experienced the mother of all puddle parties, a 100 meters of gravel bar on the Piñipiñi that had over 100 species of butterflies in just about 2 hours of searching. An almost unheard of experience, we had excellent looks at all four species of Baeotus here, including this Orange-banded Beauty, Baeotus deucalion (the orange band is above; the other three species have blue bands).

We saw and heard about 340 species of birds, a great number considering that after about 9:00 each day our focus was largely towards the ground. This memorable Andean Motmot was particularly cooperative at the Cock of the rock Lodge.

These Plumbeous Kites were perched over the gorgeous, brand-new cabins at Villa Carmen.

Not unexpected with a group that is into butterflies and birds, interests gravitated towards almost anything winged, especially if it was pretty. We were delighted by the sparkling ultraviolet wings of this Cora damselfly at a mid-elevation stream.

And this lavender-booted arctiine moth Palaeomolis purpurascens was one of hundreds of species at our lodging at Wayqecha Biological Station one night.

Just before I left for Peru late last month I added a new mammal to our north-central Tucson yard list. We’re quite urban here, though the U of A agricultural center does add some diversity to the neighborhood. But we're far enough away from natural desert that we don’t have scorpions, rattlesnakes, or Black-throated Sparrows, for example. But we have had rare sightings of Collared Peccary (twice) and Bobcat (twice) over the past 16 years. I even had a Raccoon once. This guy moved fast and afternoon light was not abundant. Look carefully in the lower left.

But this White-throated Woodrat (Neotoma albigula) was rather a surprise. I was talking to Paul in the yard between our houses when I saw it run into an agave thicket by his and Irene’s back door. It was carrying a dead, dried cactus pad from one of the ornamental, spineless prickly pears planted here. It ran back and forth a few times between the cactus and the agave.

I stood quietly for 10 minutes before I finally got some decent shots. It’s an adorable rodent, but people who live in the outskirts of Tucson where it is common, they hate it. They tend to make nests in vehicles, under hoods and under back seats, and they love to chew through electrical cables.

Years ago a young Spotted Owl spent a few winter months in an Oro Valley front yard, far from the mountain forests where they normally live. I picked up one of its pellets and teased out the skull of a White-throated Woodrat.

I was home for just a day and a half from Peru when I was pleased to have a visit from my old friends Thom and Kipp from Corvallis.

Thom was once a more avid birder, and Kipp never one. But they both like the outdoors and I knew some places and birds that would make for a nice day’s outing. We first went to Florida Canyon where there are lots of common birds as well as a chance to see some very localized rarities. We did glimpse one of the Black-capped Gnatcatchers that live here, but we had fabulous views of this Painted Redstart. Kipp was a birder for a moment.

We hiked up the canyon, but the abundant summer rains had created a dense thicket that made it tough to see the trail in places.

There were flowers and bugs all over the place. I smelled this Thurber’s Desertpeony, Acourtia thurberi, a very fancy composite from several yards away. The smell continues on the dry plant well into the winter months.

Birds were actually not so active, but my friends were happy to look at any colorful little creature. This tiny butterfly is an Elada Checkerspot.

An unusually shaped but common butterfly is this American Snout.

I showed them that even tiny little flies that one would normally ignore have field marks, much like birds. And with a digital camera you can get large enough images to actually see those field marks. This little bee fly (family Bombyliidae) turns out to be Exoprosopa dorcadion. It doesn’t appear that anyone has undertaken the task to coin English names for bee flies yet.

There were abundant grasshoppers wherever we went. This one was striking when it flew – appropriately named Red-winged Grasshopper (Arphia pseudonietana); the wings suddenly flash scarlet when it flies.

This one is called the Yellow-bellied Boopie, Boopedon flaviventris, and is not a great flier at all.

Afraid that this might be natural history overload for Kipp, I suggested Tumacacori National Historic Park, where I had also taken my non-birding friends from Germany last year. Oh, but while there is some interesting history to learn here…

…even inside the chapel it doesn’t stop. This Say's Phoebe was probably breeding in the nooks in the eroded adobe.

And the regional specialty Rufous-winged Sparrow was easy to see inside the compound.

Western Pygmy-Blues flitted along the trails among many other larger butterflies, and we saw a few more birds, such as Verdin. This beautiful Montezuma Grasshopper, Syrbula montezuma, was on the walkway.

For four days this past week I attended the Western Field Ornithologists’ annual meeting in San Diego, where I helped lead field trips. I also attended the science paper sessions, the sound and visual ID panels, and also the big last evening banquet and talk by Ed Pandolfino on the 44 years of WFO history. Meeting so many new people and seeing old friends was thoroughly enjoyable.

The main area I birded on the field trips was the Tijuana River Valley on the Mexican border south of the city and bay, co-led by local birder Christine Harvey. We visited the Dairy Mart Road sod farms five times in search of one of the top rarities of the region, Red-throated Pipit. Unfortunately I saw two of them only on the scouting day before the conference, which I did with Christine, Guy McCaskie, an Elizabeth Copper. They were quite far out on the sod, but even a really distant, blurry photo shows the distinctive back stripes.

On all the scouting trip as well as one of the field trips we caught up with a Lapland Longspur.

Long-billed Curlews were present on every visit, usually walking around, not reclining so casually as this one.

Distracting were the many streaky Savannah Sparrows, migrants and winter birds of the subspecies from the north and northeast of here.

A birding location at the west end of our area was the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge. Here we did some seawatching from the dike above the beach, seeing a few Brown Boobies (which was ABA-bird #748 for me). Some lucky birders also saw Blue-footed Booby.

This is also where we saw the former Clapper Rail but newly dubbed Ridgway’s Rail in the recent shakedown of all the Clapper and King rail subspecies. The four subspecies of Clapper Rail in California, Arizona, and NW Mexico are all now Ridgway’s.

This marsh is also famous for hosting a tiny population of California’s only Yellow-crowned Night-Herons. Formerly only a very rare vagrant to the state, some pairs now breed in the ornamental pine trees at a nearby park and apartment complex. On our scouting trip we had to look hard to find this one juvenile. Only one angle let me see the top of the wing as an added ID confirmation. Compared to Black-crowned, immature Yellow-crowned has a bigger, more orange eye, a darker bill, and a darker gray wing with smaller spots at the tips of the feathers.

We then walked down to the marsh only to find an adult perched out in the open. Look in the lower right.

On the first field trip, we checked the same tree and the marsh with no luck, then found this adult in a tree by the apartment complex.

Then on my second field trip we were about to strike out when a subadult (2 or 3 years old, with a fully dark crown still) flew into the marsh and landed on a channel to hunt in the late morning. It landed in a nearly invisible spot, so we were lucky to see it arrive.

While we were at the bridge over the channel this Eared Grebe swam right below the group.

Rare migrants were on our minds everywhere we birded. Elsewhere in the county birders were reporting Dickcissel, Magnolia and Chestnut-sided Warblers, Painted Redstart, Green-tailed Towhee, Yellow-green Vireo, and others. On the day of scouting I spotted two Tennessee Warblers just about the same time at the butterflies & birds garden of the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park.

Northern Waterthrushes were almost at any little bit of water; we had four one day just at the Dairy Mart Road pond, and on Sunday this was one of two there.

Even though it’s a common breeding bird in the west, migrant Bullock's Oriole as this time year is not a daily occurrence. This one alerted us to its presence at the Tijuana Slough visitor center with it loud chattering.

By far the rarest and most exciting bird in our area was this Blackburnian Warbler that I spotted while we were having lunch at Nestor Park on the last day of field trips.

It was news to me that Black-throated Magpie-Jays have been breeding in the valley for 20 years, but the population remains small and very localized in just a few miles of riparian woodland and therefore is not countable as an established bird. We caught up with them on both of my field trips.

Birding was a bit slow at times, giving me a chance to get close to this Differential Grasshopper (Melanoplus differentialis) at the butterflies & birds garden.

On Friday, the second day of field trips, I led a group to Sweetwater Reservoir, about 10 miles east of San Diego. As the reservoir provides drinking water, access is strictly controlled, and our field trip was given special permission, with the biologist and watershed manager Peter Famolaro opening the locked gates and guiding us through the large area. We birded some dry chaparral where California Gnatcatcher and California Thrasher were found.

We also birded the lake itself, full of water birds such as Western and Clark’s Grebe and many ducks, as well as a nearby riparian strip where activity was limited to a few Yellow-rumped Warblers.

I had Saturday morning free to bird with my friend Lauren Harter as she scouted the area she was leading to the north of San Diego. Our first stop was San Elijo Lagoon.

Marbled Godwit was among several species of shorebirds on the exposed mud during low tide.

The chaparral was extremely dry, but this California Thrasher was singing full force.

Lauren is into bugs enough to stop for this stunning Neon Skimmer.

And several of these tiny skippers had me puzzled. I didn’t think there were many species over here, at least compared to SE Arizona. And indeed, there are only three species of small brown and orange skippers, but one is this local endemic to the southern California coastal marshes, the Wandering Skipper.

Finally, after the conference, I had a full day to visit my friends Michael and Claire in Escondido north of San Diego. They live next to a great birding hotspot, Kit Carson Park. Though its Sand Lake has been dredged and cleaned of vegetation, it now has some shorebird habitat until it fills again.

This Greater Yellowlegs was the first one Michael had ever seen here.

We had a very birdy morning as we walked around the big grove of willow, cottonwood, and eucalyptus, seeing 47 species, including this Costa's Hummingbird, not a common bird here. It was one of two, among many more Allen’s and Anna’s Hummingbirds, feeding on tiny gnats over a hedge of mulefat bushes.

Another skipper I didn’t recognize surprised me; this turns out to be Umber Skipper, which I hadn’t seen since Big Bend exactly 10 years ago.

I got back home yesterday evening from a two-week private tour to Peru, and I do hope to blog about that in the upcoming days. But I had to share today’s exciting encounter: This lovely Bobcat in our Tucson yard.

I rent a guesthouse from Paul and Irene, and we share a largish backyard. Early this morning (still waking up at dawn according to Peru time) I noticed that the chicken coop door had been left open all night, and that there was one chicken still inside. Normally, when the door is accidentally left open (which over the past couple of years hasn’t been all that rare of an event), all four chickens come out to forage in the yard quite early. I soon found out that this reduction in numbers didn’t just happen sometime in the past couple of weeks while I was in Peru. This was news. Last night we had a visitor.

Later this morning, Einstein, their soft-coated wheaten terrier, found the cat behind the fence about to start dining on the barred rock. I don’t know whether that one was Gina, Lola, Brigida, or the fourth chicken whose name I can’t remember. The other two bodies have yet to be found, and the Rhode Island Red is the only remaining bird.

Paul came to tell me about the cat, and I ran out in time to glimpse its shadow as it walked on roof of the garage, which is covered in overhanging mesquite branches. Standing on the stack of cinder blocks I was able to peer over the edge and get this photo as it sat in an otherwise perfect hiding spot. It seemed quite calm even though I was only about 8 feet away.

This is the first of a series of posts I have saved up from a two-week private tour I led down the Kosñipata Road and down the Madre de Dios River in southeastern Peru in late October and early November.

This was an unusual private tour with an unusual client. First it was with a single client, and 14 days in the field. Only once before have I led a tour of this length with one client, 15 days in Costa Rica over a decade ago. Second, my client didn’t exactly fit the usual birding tour demographic: she’s female, younger than me, and German. But as a lawyer with a long career in a big firm, Susanne is smart enough to know what she wants and can afford it. Like me, she’s very lucky to have a burning curiosity about nature and a thirst for knowledge and discovery.

So the purpose of this tour was to spend more time in a region she got to know a little bit on my WINGS tour here last year (and being offered next year too, by the way), but this time at her pace, which means very slowly, no pre-dawn or late night outings, and many stops for mushrooms. It turns out she’s become quite an expert in Neotropical mushrooms over the past couple of years.

Our first day, October 25, was largely a travel day, starting with a morning flight from Lima to Cusco, where we met up with our driver César and his van for the next few days. From there we drove to Wayqecha Biological Station, with only a couple stops along the way.

This is our travel route. From Cusco, we go southeast down a narrow valley in the high, dry Andes to where the Cusco River joins the Vilcanota (lower down Urubamba) River. From there, we go up and over a pass at about 13,000 feet, then down into a deep canyon to cross the Paucartambo River, then back up and over Acjanaco Pass. From there one descends to the Kosñipata Valley and the Amazonian lowlands through wet cloud forests. Our first two nights' lodging were at Wayqecha, located in the upper elevations of those forests, just a few miles below the pass.

Just a few miles before you get to Acjanaco, the habitat is clearly wetter than before, with frequent mist and drizzle creating habitat for a greatly increased diversity of species, especially hummingbirds, but also several passerines such as the endemic Creamy-crested Spinetail, which we saw well.

One of the common birds in this area is the Black-throated Flowerpiercer. They actually do pierce the base of flowers with that unusual bill, stealing the nectar without pollinating the flower.

There are quite a few flowers this time of year. This shrub is a Vallea stipularis, in the family Elaeocarpaceae. I don’t know if hummingbirds use it or not, but I’ve never seen anything at it.

This is one of several Bomarea species in the region; it’s in the same family as the familiar florist’s Peruvian Lily (Alstroemeriaceae), and I have seen hummingbirds visit it.

Susanne is getting a photo of the passion vine Passiflora mixta growing abundantly on the roadside here.

With its long tube, this flower has nectar that is not within easy reach of too many birds.

So I was only moderately surprised to see this Sword-billed Hummingbird fly in when I began imitating Yungas Pygmy-Owl. It parried the approach of a Shining Sunbeam several times to take a perch right over our heads. I’ve rarely seen this species so well away from the two or so feeding stations it’s known to frequent in northern Peru and Ecuador.

We reached the pass at Acjanaco, where the road borders the upper reaches of Manu National Park, in the late afternoon.

The view from here of the rocky peak named Apocañihuay was stunning (photo at top). It seems quite impressive as it juts so dramatically above the surrounding dry puna and cloud forest, but at 13,180 feet (4017 m) it’s barely higher than the pass we traversed earlier in the day on a broad, well-cultivated ridge.

This is the second blog in a series from my recent private tour to SE Peru, starting with this post.

As our first full day in the field, including a long morning and an additional short afternoon on the trails, this will be a very photo-heavy blog. We were at Wayqecha Biological Station, a wonderful place to stay at about 9800 feet (3000 m) elevation.

This morning Susanne and I decided to walk one of the longer and more difficult trails, something I don’t get to do when leader larger birding groups here. So after breakfast we set off down the Picaflor Trail, which heads quite steeply down the slopes below the lodge, and intended on catching the Oso Trail which ends at the Esperanza station where the researchers stay. We were soon surprised by a flock of about 20 twittering Andean Parakeets that flushed from some fruiting bushes and perched in the treetops. I’ve rarely had a chance to see them so well.

This Masked Flowerpiercer is a very common bird in the rather stunted woodland that grows on the poor soils of this particular slope.

The Scarlet-breasted Mountain-Tanager is also one of the most common species here, usually in flocks and sometimes just in pairs, but they are found in almost any type of high-elevation forest.

Much more limited to the scrubbier habitat is the Rufous-capped Thornbill, but it’s still a common hummingbird in this area; I’m not sure there are many other places where it so easily seen, though it is still outnumbered by the abundant Tyrian Metaltail and Shining Sunbeam.

This terrestrial orchid, Epidendrum secundum, is commonly seen on these sunnier slopes.

After many steep switchbacks and numerous stops for birds and plants, it became clear that we weren’t going to have time to hike the entire Oso Trail, so we turned back and followed the much easier Zorro Trail, eventually entering a taller, moister forest and still ending up at Esperanza. Here we found many mushrooms, which Susanne was so hoping to see. I didn’t take many pictures of them (just wait…), but I did find this tiny Favolaschia-like species quite adorable. The honeycomb-like structure to the underside, where many mushrooms have gills (the hymenium), was not something I’ve noticed before – but then I’ve only rarely turned over mushrooms.

More intriguing were these apparent fungal balls growing on Chusquea bamboo stalks. Even Susanne had no idea what it was.

The plant life in this much moister environment was fabulous. This single stalk of what I think was a true moss was nearly a foot tall (those are centimeters on the ruler).

The varieties of lichens seemed endless, many of them quite lush and beautiful.

I’ve read that over 200 species of orchids are known from here, but we saw “only“ perhaps about 10-15. This one is Neodryas rhodoneura.

Another very showy one is this Odontoglossum lasserum.

Some have really tiny and relatively uninteresting flowers but fascinating plant forms, such as this Pachyphyllum species.

Some have tiny yet still exquisite flowers. This may also be a Pachyphyllum.

This tiny green orchid is possibly in the genus Stelis.

We saw several birds that prefer this taller forest, including this Masked Trogon that was nesting in a cavity only waist-high, right next to the trail. I had walked right past it, noticing only the trail cam opposite it. Then it suddenly burst out of the tree cavity right between Susanne and me, eliciting a yelp of surprise from her.

In trying to attract a mixed flock of tanagers, warblers, and tyrannulets, I whistled like a Yungas Pygmy-Owl, and soon I had attracted the genuine article.

We frequently heard the distinctive sound of what I call the Acjanaco Andes-Frog (Psychrophrynella usurpator), but I’ve still never seen one.

So when I saw this frog hopping on the trail, I thought I might have one. But thanks to photo sheets published by the Field Museum I was able to identify this tiny thing as Pristimantis pharangobates. Perhaps it’s the other frog sound we heard, the occasional single click.

This is a weevil, probably a broad-nosed weevil in the subfamily Entiminae.

This is a leaf beetle, family Chrysomelidae.

This lovely, golden scarab looks surprisingly similar to a North American beetle in the genus Cotalpa but is probably something quite different, perhaps Platycoelia.

Cicadas are more typical of the warmer low elevations, but there are some up here too, though I’ve rarely seen them and hear them only when its sunny. This one was caught by a strand of spider web not far up a tree, so I was able to grab it for inspection. Its much furrier body and stouter, more compact shape than lowland species (less surface area for its size) are clearly both adaptations to the cool, moist environment.

It was sunny almost all day, rare at this location, especially since we should be well into the start of the rainy season, when afternoon cloud buildup and rain should be a daily thing. The most unusual lepidopteran we saw was this skipper, whose true identity is still unknown; there are very few skippers at this elevation, where the convergence of sunny skies and the presence of lepidopterists is an exceptionally rare event.

This satyr is a Pale Lyman, Lymanopoda eubagioides. This one breaks the thermoregulation rule of most high-elevation butterflies, which are dark brown to even black in order to absorb solar radiation more effectively.

This is a more typically colored satyr. It was discovered here only relatively recently and is still known only as Eretris sp. nov.

This Blue Jewel, Perisama philinus, is one of many in the genus that have an underside that bears no resemblance to the top. When it’s sunny, it opens its wings to get warm.

Flitting in the shady edges above the sunny roadside after we had reached end of the trail, this moth in the genus Erateina looks deceptively like a butterfly.

This gorgeous caterpillar was sitting still on a leaf in the forest understory; it’s certainly a moth, but I’d have no idea what family to start with.

Of course, I can barely help myself when it comes to the amazing blooming plants here. This Tibouchina species was irresistible, though it pales in comparison to the ones I’ll see on my SE Brazil tour nextNovember.

This shrub Bejaria aestuans was a new ID for me (thanks again to Field Museum photo sheets), though I had seen it before; it’s a rather atypical member of the family Ericaceae, most of which have fused petals in bell-shaped flowers.

In the late afternoon we hiked the trail to the hanging bridges in the gorgeous cloud forest. Here I am looking down on one of the many species of tree fern in the region.

Looking up from the same vantage point, one sees a distant hillside of puna grassland glowing in the afternoon sun.

Then after dark there’s always the moth show at the lights – better when there is some overcast or fog and a new moon. It was mostly clear with a waxing moon, but I still saw a few nice things.

Two noctuids:

Two epiplemids:

And a handsome tiger moth I hadn’t seen before (family Erebidae but in the distinctive subfamily Arctiinae):

There were also some large beetles attracted to the lights. This rhinoceros beetle is not such a straightforward ID as it would first seem; tribe Oryctini is about as close as I can get for now.

This amazing thing is a female stag beetle (family Lucanidae), Sphaenognathus giganteus. Thanks to my friend Margarethe Brummermann who knew the species.

Yes, Wayqecha is a wonderful location. My blog doesn’t even come close to showing you what it’s like to be there, but this video from the non-profit that owns it gives you a better feel for it.

http://vimeo.com/106402341

Today Susanne and moved from our lodging at about 9600 feet elevation down to the mid-elevation community of San Pedro at about 4500 feet. The total distance is only 22 miles, but we took most of the day, walking many stretches of road for up to a mile at a time, looking for flocks of birds and seeing many other cool things. It’s quite amazing to see how the habitat changes, and that there are only a tiny handful of species one could possibly see in both locations.

This Violet-throated Starfrontlet perched briefly just below the tunnels only a couple kilometers below Wayqecha Biological Station, but with taller trees we were already in a different habitat.

This is an Amethyst-throated Sunangel, and he perched for quite some time, allowing me to actually get the gorget iridescence.

One stretch of the road had several of these Gunnera species. This is a distinctive genus, somewhat resembling rhubarb with its huge, round leaves, and I see an even larger species on my Costa Rica tours. There are over 60 species worldwide, but all are only variations on a theme, and while they are related to other advanced flowering plants, oddly the only close relatives are a couple of species of plants found in drier habitats in Madagascar and southern Africa.

As we dropped in elevation below the settlement of Pillahuata, we saw our first of four Golden-headed Quetzals. Where were they when I was here with the butterflies & birds tour?

Likewise with this butterfly: White-banded Lyman, Lymanopoda albocincta; we had five species of this genus last month, but not this one.

We did have one of these, a Star-dusted Lyman, Lymanopoda obsoleta.

This is Staudinger’s Ringlet Manerebia staudingeri and Rustic Lyman, Lymanopoda rustica – another one our group missed last month.

Oh my gosh, yet another lep we didn’t see on the tour with nearly 500 species: Mimardaris lomax, the Lomax Firetip.

This is another Peruvian lily relative, Bomarea edulis. I haven’t yet learned what’s edible about it.

We were still pretty high in elevation when I saw a bird flit out from under the vegetation overhanging the bank to the right of center.

Then I heard it, and then with playback we got eventually got great views of this Inca Flycatcher, a Peruvian endemic that occurs at a limited elevation from close to the Ecuadorian border in the north to near the Bolivian border in the south.

Curious about where I had seen this bird fly from, I took a closer look (photo by Susanne).

Sure enough, there was the nest of the Inca Flycatcher, though there were no eggs yet. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Neotropical Birds website http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/portal/species/lifehistory?p_p_spp=430761, the nest and eggs of this species are still undescribed. It’s a fun discovery, but I don’t really welcome the work that entails describing a new nest. Where’s Harold Greeney when you need him?

A little further down, we saw this Greenish Puffleg, in the same area where a month ago my tour group had seen two. It’s a rarely observed species in this region, so I was very glad to have gotten at least a blurry photo that seems to clearly rule out any other species. The leg puffs are frequently hard to see on this bird, and only with my recent close observations in northern Peru have I become confident in identifying this little-known species (which is otherwise unidentifiable if you’re only relying upon the limited illustrations in the Birds of Peru field guide).

This Andean Solitaire seemed to be more concerned with another bird singing nearby and postured on this branch for several minutes, vocalizing off and on, until a truck drove by.

Hummingbirds are clearly one of the dominant groups of birds in this habitat. This Long-tailed Sylph sat just barely long enough for me to get a shot.

This Booted Racket-tail wasn’t quite so cooperative, but at least you can see what it is. Note the rufous booties and the way the long tail feathers cross – if you’ve seen the birds in NW Ecuador that are also called this species (with their white booties and tail feathers crossing in the opposite direction), you’ll understand why splitting them is not a radical addition to the world list but merely correcting a stupid error by whomever created the initial master list for the region.

This is a flower in the genus Marcgravia, family Marcgraviaceae. Birders are more familiar with the genus Souroubea, with the bright red bracts below the long flower spikes bearing the nectaries that attract so many birds. This genus is much less known, despite being the type for the family. Georg Marcgrave was a 17^th century naturalist who was one of the first to describe the natural history of South America.

My 50x Canon camera barely captured this metalmark Ithomiola tanos. It turns out that there are a couple specimen records from here, but it’s otherwise virtually unknown in life.

Our last stop of the day was the Mirador, looking down the Kosñipata Valley. Our lodge for the next night is on a tall bank above the left side of the river, right at the sharp line between shade and sun in the upper center of the photo. It doesn’t look that far from here, but it is actually a slow 3.7 miles and 20 minutes’ drive from here, past many unbelievably juicy mixed flocks and rare cloud forest birds.

Just before we pulled into the driveway of our lodge, this Andean Motmot flew in front of our vehicle and perched on the power line just outside my window.

This is the 4^th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. I apologize for the delay in posting, as I had to divert my attentions to a party I threw this weekend that became rather a production.

Where I left off last, Susanne and I arrived at the mid-elevation Manu Paradise Lodge for just a single night. Today we are to continue our drive down in elevation from 4500 feet to Villa Carmen Biological Station at a much more tropical 1700 feet. The first eight or so miles of this road are the most interesting though, and we spent the first half of the day making many stops, walking stretches of the road, and working mixed flocks. We also found a nice side trail with mushrooms.

I was up early at the lodge, watching flocks of tanagers and a Mottle-backed Elaenia. I spotted these mushrooms on the dead bamboo railing by the parking area, which Susanne hadn’t shown me the afternoon before.

She later became convinced that they must have sprouted up overnight after a good rain, as she hadn’t seen them, and they were hard to miss. She identified them in the genus Favolaschia, with this very distinctive hymenium.

We drove down the road, and I took the passenger seat to listen out the window for mixed flocks. Within about 10 minutes of slow driving, I told Cesar to stop – I might hear a bird or two. I thought we might get out for a minute and see what was about, but we finally left this location after an hour and 50 minutes, having logged 31 species of birds in a great mixed flock. One of the first birds I heard was this Cinnamon-faced Tyrannulet, super cooperative when I played its voice. Another bird we saw here was Foothill Antwren, which I only later learned was a lifebird for me.

Farther down the road, I was looking at my GPS for a waypoint I had created a four years ago. There we found this female Green-fronted Lancebill, in exactly the same location.

That’s because hummingbirds frequently rebuild and reuse on the same nest each year. Here it was, on the very same ledge of rock on a road cut.

This is the same stretch of road that had an amazing diversity of butterflies on my tour a month ago. But this Silky Purplewing, Eunica carias tenebrosa, is one that I had missed. Each time it opened its wings we could see the deepest purple flash, but every photo turned out black until I overexposed it, and even then it’s hard to see.

This is a Clearwing-mimic Queen, Lycorea ilione, in the same tribe as the Monarch – there are a number of clearwings that look extremely similar.

Speaking of which, this is an Andromica Clearwing, Greta andromica andania.

A very widespread but always handsome brushfoot, the Rusty-tipped Page, Siproeta epaphus. I learned some German butterfly group names to help spur Susanne to get interested in them. This is in the family called Edelfalter.

I’ve known for some time that skippers in German are Dickkopffalter; the thick-headed butterflies, a very apt description. This one appears to be Pachyneuria lineatopunctata, which doesn’t seem to have a common name. How about Line-spotted Thickvein?

There weren’t many fungi right along the road, so we took a little side trail up a stream known to butterfly people as Quebrada Quitacalzones (which could be translated as “Take-your-panties-off Creek”). This lush drainage alone has a butterfly list of something like 800 species, and the plant life is correspondingly diverse. This lobelia relative looks closest to Centropogon congestus.

I assume this tall wing-stemmed plant is in the family Piperaceae, but it bears little resemblance to Piper or Peperomia, the only common genera here. Anyone?

This looks to be a Drymonia species, a very large and amazingly diverse group of Gesneriads (members of the same family as African Violet).

And here Susanne finally got her fungus fix for the day, with lots of moist, dead wood hosting a number of species. This Ellipticus sp., pleasing fungus beetle (family Erotylidae; more to come in future blogs) was munching away on one of them.

We drove on to look for a wide spot to have lunch, and stopped when I saw a raptor fly out of a tree next to the road. It was a Double-toothed Kite, and it landed next to another one. While we watched them, one flew back to the tree next to the road and started rearranging sticks in a nest! We enjoyed watching this for a few minutes.

At the same spot was this gorgeous Turquoise Emperor, Doxocopa laurentia, yet another species I had missed on the butterfly tour a month ago.

We finally found a wide spot for lunch, but there was some bird activity including this Masked Tityra.

We ended up spending over an hour and half here, seeing 43 species of birds in a never-ending mixed flock coming and going and making visits to fruiting trees. A female Plum-throated Cotinga, Ocellated Woodcreeper, Red-billed Scythebill, Bamboo Antshrike, Black-backed Tody-Flycatcher, and Yellow-crested Tanager were highlights. After the activity dispersed a bit, I took the opportunity to photograph this grasshopper, thinking that the bright yellow spot on the legs would be a sure-fire field mark. It turns out that the few online resources won’t let me identify this thing even to subfamily.

We arrived at Villa Carmen with plenty of time to take a walk down one of the trails in the afternoon. Right on the lodge grounds, before we headed into the forest, I got this shot of a Purplish Jay, greatly detested by the locally nesting Black-billed Thrushes, Social Flycatchers, and others. This species has more than once given me the opportunity to show of my linguistic expertise as I explain the meaning of the suffix -ish to native English speakers of my tours who complain that it doesn’t look purple to them.

As we entered the forest, we found mushrooms. I call this one the Magenta Polypore, but these don’t seem to have common names; Susanne identified it as Earliella scabrosa.

My friend Dennis Paulson suggests that this dragonfly is Triacanthagyna satyrus, the most common species in the genus in this area.

But this photo is more than a record of the species; it rather serves as a bookmark in one of the most surprising moments I’ve experienced in the rain forest. We were on a level patch of forest not that far from the Piñipiñi River, with a very dense understory of Calathea and Costus about 4 feet high, typical of a flat, wet part of the forest. I was trying to describe to Susanne where the dragonfly had perched just on the side of the trail, and when I used my green laser pointer, suddenly not eight meters away, we both felt that a Stegasaurus was attacking. Fortunately it was at an angle and not directly towards us – in a straight line through the very dense foliage bounded an animal with a thundering sound, knocking down small trees and sticks out of the way. A Brazilian Tapir!

With our hearts pounding, we continued, pausing for a few more mushrooms and this male clearwing relative, Hypothyris euclea. You can see the erect androconial organs along the leading edge of the hindwing, which he uses to disperse volatile pheromones.

This frog was one of three in my bathroom and Susanne also had one. I’m guessing this is the treefrog Scinax ruber. They probably find the cool shade inside the buildings perfect and find their way outside through the most wee cracks during the night to feed.

The lights at the dining hall were great for insects. This giant katydid was pretty impressive and unlike any I had seen before.

This is the Grapevine Sphinx, Eumorpha vitis, a beautiful if widespread species.

There were many of these beetles, identified for me as a female Enema pan by expert Brett Ratcliffe. I knew the males from other trips here and in Brazil, but the females were new to me.

This noctuid moth appears to be Calyptis idonoides, stunning in that the copper and maroon bits shimmered and changed hues according to the angle of the light.

This is one of the moth-butterflies, probably Macrosoma lucivittata. These were formerly thought to be moths for their nocturnal habits, but their morphology and egg shape were a clue, and now their DNA proves that they’re more closely related to some diurnal butterfly families than those butterflies are to each other. So you have to either start calling these butterflies or stop calling swallowtails butterflies.

This moth is probably in the family Bombycidae, subfamily Apatelodinae, but a proper picture match eludes me.

This is the 5th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7.

Today was Susanne’s and my first of two full days at Villa Carmen Biological Station. I first visited here two years ago on a familiarization trip but never did get around to blogging about it. The station is owned by the US-based Amazon Conservation Associationand its partner group in Peru, the Asociación para la Concervación de la Cuenca Amazónica. They also own Wayqecha Biological Station as well as Los Amigos Biological Station – more on that later. They’ve very recently decided that by hosting ecotourists, including birders and butterfliers, they can help further their conservation and research goals, and to do this, they are improving their infrastructure. My WINGS Butterflies & Birds tour last month was the first such group to occupy the new cabins and dine in the new hall. I was pleased to return this month and find more improvements and continually busy construction crews.

At dawn I heard a distant song of a forest-falcon, but it wasn’t a close match for any sound in my library – Buckley’s and Slaty-backed seemed equally close in tone. The pattern was more like the Slaty-backed, but the habitat here is much better for Buckley’s. I recorded it, uploaded the sound, filtered and amplified it, resynched my iPod, and tried playback to no avail. To make a long story short, Susanne and I ended up tracking the bird down a couple hours later, as it had not stopped singing for a moment during that time, and it turned out to be a Buckley’s Forest-Falcon in an immature plumage.

Near our rooms we found this pair of Scarlet-hooded Barbets; the male was just taking off as I took this photo.

Also near our rooms was this Bark Anole, Anolis ortonii.

As we walked the trail between the cabins and the dining hall, we passed beneath this orange-flowering tree that had delightfully fragrant pinwheel-shape flowers falling to the trail in masses.

For the first part of the day we tried walking a trail that would connect us to Trail 8, though bamboo and winding up the hill to a moist valley. We eventually gave up, having to backtrack through patches of thorny Guadua bamboo that had been blown over in a recent storm. In the afternoon we took a different route to the same hill and primary forest, but my memory of how difficult and long the trail was had been affected by the passage of time. It was much longer with much steeper climbs than I had remembered. Amazingly, we made it back before it was totally dark, but not without torn clothing and scratches from the bamboo that had been blown down in many places from a recent storm. Still, we saw some amazing stuff.

Some of the wonderful plants:

A probable Gasterantha species, family Gesneriaceae.

This gorgeous inflorescence is a grass – only a few can be found in the Amazonian rainforest understory. This is likely in the genus Pariana.

Once in a while a flower in the dark understory shocks you with its arresting, improbable colors. This rubiaceous plant (member of the madder family, which includes coffee) is Palicourea plowmanii.

Also a madder relative is this Psychotria poeppigiana, also known by the utterly different scientific name Cephaelis tomentosa; it’s not clear to me which has priority, since both are used on what seem to be rather authoritative websites. These are the fruits.

This photo shows an amazing contrast in species within the same family and genus: both Peperomia species.

As you’ll see in future blog posts from this trip, I’m fascinated by members of the family Melastomataceae. Most are instantly recognizable from either the shape of the anthers or the venation of their leaves, but if you rely upon the size or color of the flowers or the form of the plant, you’ll never figure it out. This one is first I’ve ever seen that combines large, fleshy leaves with a unmistakable vine growth habit. The closeup is of the dried fruits at the end of the stem. I have no idea what the genus is, but will update here if I find out.

We saw lots of cool mushrooms, but we had to keep up the pace, and I didn’t photograph as many as Susanne. This Ganoderma sp.was rather irresistible though.

This colorful little grasshopper looks to be in the subfamily Ommatolampinae.

This larger and distinctively patterned species is Peruvia nigromarginata.

I managed a few butterfly and skipper shots throughout the day. We actually benefitted by the presence of a group of butterfly watchers and photographers, amongst whom were three friends and acquaintances I knew and only coincidentally met here. We first ran into David Geale (whom I met at Abra Malaga 4 years ago) and Chris Tenney (whom I met in Monterey County, California and hadn’t seen since 1996), who had already located this male Clouded Groundstreak, Calycopis centoripa.

Later we found this female metalmark Calospila emylius, which had been attracted to the smelly fish bait that these guys had sprayed in spots in the undergrowth along trail.

This tiny metalmark Sarota myrtea was independent of the bait.

So was this bamboo-dependent satyr Splendeuptychia species, which appears to be one of the two as-of-yet undescribed species from this region.

As we climbed the steep trail, we took a breather while I took photos of this Venas caerulans skipper. I found this same species at Villa Carmen on the tour I led here last month, documenting a new species for the Kosñipata Valley.

This Pheraeus sp. nov. skipper has been documented at least twice from the Kosñipata, but it still awaits formal description.

On the trunk of one tree I spotted this treehopper (family Fulgoridae), probably in a genus closely related Pterodictya. The distinctive red eyes and much smaller body are quite different from the common Pterodictya reticularis, but the overall shape and the waxy filaments on the back are similar. Unfortunately the hindwings of this species didn’t reveal much of a surprise.

I stumbled across this caterpillar in its very last stage, just before the last molt after which it will become a pupa (chrysalis); it was still able to expose its osmidia, revealing the fact that is a swallowtail. Jim Brock believes it is one of the cattlehearts, genus Parides.

There were some fabulous views from the hilltops along this trail; the first is looking south across the town of Pilcopata, while the second is looking northeast over the main station buildings and the union of the Pilcopata and Piñipiñi Rivers beyond.

Finally, here are a bunch of photos from around the dining hall after dark, where the lights attracted lots of interesting insects. This is the male of the same beetle I saw the previous night, Enema pan. Yes, that really is its scientific binomial.

A second Fulgorid of the day was this Scaralis versicolor; this time grabbing the critter to see the hindwings showed this gorgeous blue pattern.

There were always a bunch of cicadas, but the only one that I snapped was this Proarna species.

Lots of moths, first two unidentified members of the family Crambidae, probably subfamily Spilomelinae.

This crambid is actually identifiable: Glyphodes sibilalis, the Mulberry Leaftier Moth.

This erebid moth is Eulepidotis fantissima.

I haven’t yet found a genus for this moth, probably in the family Geometridae (inchworms).

This lovely little Geometridae is probably Leuciris fimbriaria.

I was particularly excited about this moth, Psamathia impuctata. It first looked to be an unusually large geometrid, but it is fact a member of Uraniidae, the same as those very colorful, swallowtail-like day-flying moths.

This moth bears some resemblance to the geometrid above, especially with that crossbar on the hindwing, but the pointy “snout” indicates that it’s probably not even in the same family. A pyralid, perhaps?

There were two different moth-butterflies this evening, both different than the one I had last night. This is probably Macrosoma conifera.

And this is likely Macrosoma ustrinaria.

Finally, a poor close-up of a tiny insect that is worth knowing: a sand fly (family Psychodidae, subfamily Phlebotominae) in the genus Lutzomyia. This crepuscular and nocturnal fly looks like a tiny, pale, hairy mosquito and is responsible for spreading Leishmaniasis in the New World. In fact, this one bit me, a sharp and noticeable pain for such a small thing, and it left a little red dot that lasted several days. Chances are it didn’t actually posses the protozoan in the first place, let alone transmit it – but I did keep an eye on the spot for a couple of weeks. The first photo shows it next to a rather small tortricid moth, for size comparison.

Incidentally, the little black flies that bite you when you are near sandy beaches in Amazonia are not sand flies – those are gnats, also called noseeums, and as far as I know are not vectors for any disease; they just leave itchy welts and a spot of blood thanks to the anticoagulant in their saliva. While Lutzomyia inhabits tropical rain forest habitats, Old World phlebotomine sand flies do in fact live in sandy areas and in North Africa are the vector of Leishmanisis.

This is the 6th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. I’ve been really occupied with organizing the Tucson Valley Christmas Bird Count – scouting, writing blogs for it (http://aztvcbc.blogspot.com), leading a workshop for Arizona Field Ornithologists, leading a field trip for the Tucson Audubon Paton Center celebration, and so on. But Peru is still on my mind, and I deal with the photos bit by bit every day.

This was Susanne’s and my second of two full days at Villa Carmen, and we were looking forward to exploring the primary forest on the other side of the Piñipiñi River. The flat ground and fertile soils on this side were part of a large working farm (hacienda) until recently, much of which is rapidly returning to rain forest, a little of which is still being farmed. But the steep slopes and shallower soils on the other side have only been farmed for the most valuable trees, and the forest is largely intact.

We first took a short, pre-breakfast walk down to the Pilcopata River, but I got out early and was reminded that Kim Garwood’s group of butterfliers were here. Next to the trail was this Sinois Ruby-eye (Talides sinois) on a spit wad lure. It’s well known among butterfly watchers and collectors that many forest understory skippers, especially crepuscular ones like this, will land on bird dropping to get salts and minerals. At some point, someone discovered that a spit wad of tissue paper mimics a bird dropping well enough to fool these skippers, and not just for a moment; laying a trail of spitwads is a great way to boost your species list. I discovered why it works while hunting for scorpions with my little hand held black light – every bit of white paper very brightly reflects ultraviolet light, including little bits of trash, cigarette butts, etc. And I tied that to the research published on how American Kestrels can hone in on active mouse trails because they see ultraviolet light and that the urea in mouse urine reflects it. So these skippers are darting through the forest understory just looking for anything that stands out, brightly reflecting ultraviolet wavelengths. It might be the urea of a bird dropping or it might be a bit of tissue paper, but they can’t tell the difference.

We stopped at the impoundment below the rooms and dining hall where last month I had discovered a huge patch of heliotrope. All members of the family Boraginaceae contain the alkaloids that are so treasured by clearwings and their relatives for chemical defense and the manufacture of pheromones, but heliotrope seems to be much more attractive than others. The problem is that it grows only in full tropical sun, and nearly all Ithomiines dwell only the shady understory of the forest. Very early morning then is when they can safely come out and take a sip. This Ithomiine is Mazaeus Tigerwing (Mechanitis mazaeus; thanks to Jim Brock for the ID).

Down by the river I heard a very distant short drum of Crimson-crested Woodpecker, and then looked up to coincidentally see this one on a Triplaris tree (probably T. americanus). This well-known tree in the buckwheat family has separate sexes (this is a female with the red-winged fruits) and hosts a very pernicious ant that attacks anything landing on the tree and prunes the ground all around the tree, presumably to reduce competition from other plants. I suspect the woodpecker was eating a few ants before they came out of their holes to attack.

Taken later in the day, here is a close-up of the ants, Pseudomyrmex triplarinus (note the similarity in the specific epithet to the host tree’s genus).

The rest of these photos are just a chronologically sorted sample of the day’s highlights, minus birds. We indeed saw lots of great birds today, including a Rufous-capped Nunlet, Spot-backed Antbirds, and Plain Softtails; I just didn’t get any photos of them.

On our way back to breakfast I stopped for this bug in the familiar family Coreidae; it seems to match closely Euagona diana, sometimes called the bull’s horn leaf-footed bug.

Still before breakfast I came across this Black-fronted Prestonian (Tithorea harmonia), another clearwing relative.

As we gathered our packs for a long day hike, I spotted this Duma Silverpatch (Aides duma) on my doorstep. This was one of only two or three species on my doorstep this entire trip; a month ago we saw somewhere around 10 species on our doorstep each day; the changeover in species and abundance was striking. Interestingly, we didn’t see this species of skipper anywhere on our big butterfly tour last month.

I’m pretty sure this black-spotted stinkbug was among the last photos I took before we arrived at the cable car/ bosun’s chair that the quiet, capable and adorable guide Ediberto operated for us to the other side of the river. I’m not sure why I didn’t take a photo him and the contraption.

Almost immediately Susanne began finding exciting mushrooms, with a deeper, darker forest offering a more humid and undisturbed understory. This very Amanita-like mushroom (note the ring on the stipe and the volva) appears to be in the little-known genus Leucoagaricus.

At the seeps in the drainages were several of these very shy damselflies, which my friend Dennis Paulson thinks are probably Polythore boliviana; the first is a female, the second a strikingly different male.

There were quite a few different butterflies over here, most of which we didn’t see on our 550+ species tour last month. This is a Salacia Firewing (Catonephele salacia).

It was difficult to capture the color and iridescence in the leaves of this unusually lush plant in the understory. My best guess is that it is in the same family as spiderwort and dayflower, Commelinaceae.

This Ziba Scrub-Hairstreak (Strymon ziba) inexplicably found my thumb to be more attractive than the leaf I found it on.

This Heart-spotted Heliconian (Heliconius hecale) quickly honed in on the cross-sectioned Xylaria sp. fungus that Susanne had placed on the leaf. A first for science?

These ants were likely mining the wood on this fallen log for their nest; interestingly, a couple hours later they were gone. The spines on their thorax are very similar to those in the genus Aphaenogaster from Arizona.

These mating metalmarks in the genus Mesosemia are perhaps the most difficult of the genus to identify. There are other species whose females look just like this with the males looking quite different and very colorful, but in this one both males and females are very brown. These are perhaps either M. sirenia or M. judicialis.

Yet another difficult genus; I’ve narrowed down this understory skipper to either Staphylus chlora or S. oeta. Jim Brock’s advice is “good luck.”

I was very excited to see this amazing metalmark and am lucky to have even gotten this horrible photo way out of reach of a normal camera. Notice how the spots within the red blocks are metallic like molten silver droplets. I first photographed this Black-bellied Jewelmark (Anteros formosus) in Costa Rica a few years ago. And when my friend Mary Klinkel asked me to submit my favorite butterfly to her, she responded by painting that photo onto a t-shirt in exquisite detail for me.

Surprise: this Castnia sp. is a moth, despite the filamentous, bulb-tipped antennae.

I saw this Orange-striped Pixie (Melanis marathon) with my group a month ago as well, so it must be a relatively common metalmark.

This widespread and very attractive mushroom is Cookeina speciosa.

I don’t think I had ever seen this skipper, a Copper-headed Bolla (Bolla cupreiceps), and we certainly didn’t have one last month.

On the other hand, I remember at least brief views of a stunning Blue-glossed Skipper (Onophas columbaria) on last month’s tour.

These common, dark hairstreaks along the trailside are a bane for people who like to name things. This one seems to be a very good match for (but might very well not be) Malta Groundstreak (Calycopis malta).

If you know the word “puffball” you’re ahead of most of humanity. This one is apparently in the genus Lycoperdon. I’m still on the steep side of the mushroom learning curve. Update: And to prove this point Susanne points out to me that this puffball is actually in the closely related genus Calvatia.

There are a surprisingly large number of confusing, blue-tinted satyrs in the understory here. This one appears to be Cyan Blue-Satyr (Caeruleuptychia cyanites).

Another moth masquerading as a butterfly: Castnia sp.

While Susanne and I kneeled next to a big, very rotten log to photograph a fungus, this damselfly in the genus Philogenia (one of several possible) landed next to us and began laying eggs into the wet, moldering wood.

Near here we found these fungal fruiting bodies emerging from the wet, decaying undergrowth. They are from a fungus in the genus Cordyceps (or a closely related genus) that parasitizes arthropods, though with this one we didn’t find the host, probably a beetle larva well within the wood. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers on a micro level.

We saw a few grasshoppers on this trail, but very few in this region are readily identifiable. This was an obvious monkey grasshopper, family Eumastacidae, and the genus is probably Pseudomastax.

Pure green in butterflies is a rarity, so this widespread Malachite (Siproeta stelenes) didn’t fail to take our breath away.

I had seen this jokingly-named Ritchie Valens' Skipper (Carrhenes bamba) in Brazil, but it appears to be a rarity in these parts.

This metalmark Aqua-banded Scintillant (Chalodeta theodora) seems to be quite frequent in much of the Amazonian basin.

Without Susanne, I probably would have never known that this Camillea sp. (probably C. patouillardii) is merely a fruiting body of yet another fungus.

Grasshoppers are hard to ID here. This is almost certainly in the subfamily Romaleinae.

Based on the general shape and size of the antennae, I’d guess this one is also a romaleine.

My guess is that this beetle larva is a pleasing fungus beetle, family Erotylidae.

These are a mating pair of the Forest Cracker (Hamadryas chloe), the only member of the large genus that occurs in the forest understory.

This unknown flower seems most likely to be in the family Acanthaceae, but I can’t seem to nail it down to genus.

This is the 7th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. For a glimpse into my more recent activities, check out the blog from the Tucson Valley CBC here:

http://aztvcbc.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-new-state-record-165-species.html

This Peru blog is a short one, typical of a travel day. I awoke to a major thunderstorm arriving in the wee hours of the morning, but it was a beautiful sound, with close claps and distant rumbling thunder and a steady rain. It lulled me back to sleep as soon as it woke me up. With such a dark and gloomy dawn, there was no hurry to get out in the field, and I enjoyed this view from within my room.

With our boat ride scheduled for the early afternoon, we had time to bird at Villa Carmen for the full morning. The rain ended around breakfast time, and eventually Susanne and I hit the trail, prepared in case it began to rain again. I haven’t uploaded any of my photos to Flickr yet, so this green cicada remains unidentified by my expert contact there. It’s unusual in being entirely green and rather hairy; the broad, very blunt face and very large, wide-spaced eyes are unlike any of the all-green Carineta species I’ve seen.

This is one of those ants you don’t want to sting you; it’s in the subfamily Ponerinae, meaning more or less that it can deliver a powerful sting.

I noticed more prayer plants (family Marantaceae) blooming this trip than usual, so I took the chance to learn them better. I think this one is the genus Calathea.

My one mushroom photo from today is another insect parasite, a Cordyceps or close relative. We dug into the moldering wood and muck but failed to find the dead host, possibly a beetle larva or ant.

Before the rain began again for another few hours we enjoyed one last bird for the morning. Noticing a Razor-billed Curassow dart off the trail just ahead of us, I whistled liked a stranded chick, something that has worked for gallinaceous birds as diverse as Capercaillie and Mountain Quail in the past. This is what happened:

After lunch we had a taxi arranged for us to take us the few kilometers from Villa Carmen to Atalaya, essentially the end of the road and the beginning of the navigable Amazon River via the Upper Madre de Dios (with a minor waterfall or two farther down in Bolivia and Brazil). Our driver knew about the Great Potoo that nested on an open branch right next to the road, probably the same bird and tree as last year.

Then came our three-hour boat ride to Pantiacolla Lodge, above the west bank just on the far side of the bend where the river makes a huge S-curve to go around the imposing Pantiacolla Ridge. We made one quick potty stop on a river island where I picked up a bunch of “beggar ticks.” It is a pea in the genus Desmodium, and the unusual pods break apart into one-seeded segments, each one covered in miniscule hooks like velcro. This time I noticed it in time to grab some of the pretty flowers too – one usually discovers the seeds on the pants and socks much later, never appreciating the whole plant.

We got to Pantiacolla Lodge in time only to enjoy the noisy bird life right around the clearing (the Sulphury Flycatchers were especially vocal) and to begin our planning for the next two full days here.

On my first morning home this week, back from a nearly a month in Alaska and Oregon, my neighbor Paul found this track in our driveway. A nice welcome home, I’d say.

Just a few days earlier he had seen a large Common Kingsnake just outside my front door, where it disappeared down a hole. We don’t see many snakes here in residential Tucson, so it’s a good guess that this track belongs to it. We do have the occasional Long-nosed Snake and Western Thread Snake, but both of those are much smaller than this. We also have at least five species of lizards, coyotes, and the occasional bobcat and peccary; also this past month, Paul saw only the second ever Roadrunner we’ve had in the yard in 16 years. Thank goodness we do not have any Arizona Bark Scorpions.

I have plenty of photos to share from Oregon, though what I mostly did was recover from my week of cooking in Alaska. At my dad’s in Corvallis I cooked, knitted, and worked on my laptop. These are Salted Chocolate-Rye Cookies, a recipe from Tartine Bakery. I also made their Country Bread, which is the best bread I’ve made.

I also knitted up a storm. These are booties for Mara, who just entered this world three days ago.

This is the back of a vest for myself. The yarn was a gift, and I found just the perfect project for it.

I was often joined by my step-mom Sharon, here knitting herself a pair of socks with Lola the rabbit-flushing beagle looking for attention.

I also went to visit my friends Rob and Eve in Toledo, where we walked a beach twice and did some fun tidepooling (more later on this).

And I went to Sisters to lead field trips for the Dean Hale Woodpecker Festival. This is a Red-breasted Sapsucker, one of 10 species we saw on the field trips I led with Tom Crabtree. (More later on this too.)

After a wonderful dinner with friends in Portland, I flew direct from there to Tucson – perhaps one of the most scenic routes in North America. I recommend a window seat on the left side of the aircraft, Alaska Airlines. As we departed Portland, Mounts St. Helens, Adams, and Hood all stood up above the low overcast. We then flew directly over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. This is looking down on the nearby 40-square-mile Diamond Craters lava flows, at most only 25,000 years old, perhaps as young as 17,000, and one of the few good examples of pahoehoe lava in Oregon.

Looking directly down on Steens Mountain. I can’t quite make out the Black Rosy-Finches, but they are there. I'll be looking for them this coming late August on my Oregon tour.

Just past Steen’s Mountain is the Alvord Desert.

Much of Nevada looks just like this – basin after range after basin, and it’s all gorgeous. Then there is Utah. This is looking eastward into Zion National Park, the little town of Virgin in the lower right.

And a stunning view of the Grand Canyon, which I haven’t seen while standing on solid ground since 1979; I’ve seen it from the air like this maybe 6 or 7 times now.

Before I get back to my series of daily blogs from the SE Peru private tour, here’s a quick update from the Oaxaca at Christmastime tour I just finished.

It was a really great group of 8 participants, and the birding, scenery, holiday festivities, and fabulous food made for a wonderful trip. This was my first time leading this particular tour since 2005, up until which time I had led it nine years in a row. It was nice to be back.

We had a very typical count of about 300 species of birds, but the tour was much more than that. We visited some Zapotec and Mixtec ruins, as well as a couple markets, but the main cultural attraction was the Noche de Rábanos (the Night of Radishes) on December 23. Here’s one carved display to give you a hint of what it’s like, but you really have to be there.

Besides birds there were also butterflies. This stunning Glorious Blue-Skipper (Paches loxus) was outside of Tuxtepec.

We were lucky to have a sunny and warm day up at Cerro San Felipe above Oaxaca city to see this Mexican Pine-Satyr (Paramacera xicaque).

Also not far from Tuxtepec was this amazing cycad, one of the largest in the world, Dioon spinulosum. It is endemic to the limestone hills covered in tropical evergreen forest in Veracruz and Oaxaca, with a distribution map essentially identical to that of Sumichrast’s Wren (which we failed to hear or see). The second photo is a close up of the cone releasing the giant seeds.

But this was indeed a birding tour. This female Black-crested Coquette was on the Valle Nacional Road, photographed using my iPhone through the spotting scope.

This “Mountain” Northern Pygmy-Owl, tooting at 94 notes/minute was at Cerro San Felipe above Oaxaca.

Red Warbler was a bit elusive our first days, but as we crossed the Sierra Juárez on our way to Tuxtepec they came out in force.

Yesterday, our last day, this Boucard's Wren at Yagul ruins was extremely curious about my playback; I snapped this just before it flew to another cactus for a different perspective.

This is the 8th in a series of blogs covering my most recent tour down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. I left off last with Susanne’s and my arrival at Pantiacolla Lodge for our first of 3 nights. Today we decided to walk a nearby trail very slowly, bringing a sack lunch from the lodge and taking all day to walk the 2.8-mile loop of the Monk Saki Trail. The whole trail is lowland Amazonian Rainforest, but it isn't totally flat, crossing several small streams adding some diversity to the habitats.

I knew the are was going to be good for birds when not far down the trail I heard a distant Banded Antbird. With some judicious playback and whistled imitations, I managed to bring the bird right in.

This Curl-crested Aracari was right over the trail.

Even a non-backlit Dwarf Tyrant-Manakin would fail to make a stunning photo, but here one is anyway. And the video does give you an idea of how small this thing is. Most sources mention this as the primary song, and it is often what you hear throughout Amazonia, often when no other birds are singing. But the real song and display take place as a spectacular looping flight high above the 50-meter forest canopy, with the bird landing in the tops of the tallest trees and giving a repeated chatter. This can be seen only from canopy towers like those at Cristalino Jungle Lodge.

This Purple-throated Fruitcrow was one of two that came in to my whistled imitations.

We sat down for lunch on a log by a dense thicket over a stream, and a Scaly-breasted Wren began singing nearby. I played just a little bit of song, and the bird flew in immediately, almost landing on my lap. But it saw us and disappeared into the thicket, minutes later reappearing just a few feet away and singing its most enchanting song.

What's that deep humming sound coming from down trail? Is there something in the dark forest understory? Pale-winged Trumpeters on the trail! We actually ran into at least 3 different groups of these amazing jungle cranes.

The streams were fantastic for odonates. This red-eyed damselfly is probably a dancer in the genus Argia.

This Polythore species is in the New World family Polythoridae, which includes some our most ornately patterned and colored damselflies.

This is an amberwing dragonfly, Perithemis thais.

This clubtail dragonfly is Epigomphus obtusus, with rather striking appendages.

This is either Mnesarete devillei or M. hauxwelli, a damselfly closely related to our rubyspots.

This damsel is a close match for Heteragrion inca in the family Megapodagrionidae.

I was so intent on getting a good shot of this gorgeous damselfly that I didn't notice that it had chosen a leg of a huge walking stick as a perch until Susanne pointed it out to me.

There were lots of fascinating insects and other arthropods along the trail. This planthopper is in the family Dictyopharidae, not that different from Fulgoridae.

This Ellipticus sp. is clearly the most common pleasing fungus beetle in the region. We had seen it on previous days and had several this day.

Another pleasing fungus beetle (family Erotylidae), this one is a Gibbifer species, similar to the one we have in Arizona.

This one is very distinctive, almost surely Scaphidiomorphus bosci.

This gorgeous flare-shouldered Sundarus sp. Is a leaf-footed bug in the same family as our giant mesquite bugs (Coreidae).

This tiny Eumastacid (monkey grasshopper) was surely the smallest one I've ever seen.

And this Trechaleidae water hunting spider was one of the largest ones I've ever seen.

There were a few nice butterflies, even though the forest understory isn't the best place to see a big diversity. This metalmark is the Pirene Grayler, Calospila pirene.

Susanne spotted this stunning Black-barred Cross-streak, Panthiades phaleros, perched on my tripod.

This is another one of those nearly impossible hairstreaks, but it looks close enough to the one I posted a couple days ago to mostly likely be the Malta Groundstreak, Calycopis malta.

Most whites are in open sunny areas; this Dimorphic White, Perrhybris pamela, is called this because the females are strikingly different from the males, looking more like a tigerwing.

This satyr is one of my favorites and hard to get good photos of in the dark understory. Safely known as Cithaerias pireta, it has many common names; I like Blushing Phantom the most.

This Brazilian Bluewing, Myscelia capenas, was a new one for me, and I didn't even recognize the genus when in the field.

I was impressed when Susanne picked out this bit of anomalous pattern in the leaf litter.

Following the body along, we found it belonged to a Brown Sipo, Chironius fuscus. It lay in this position, completely motionless for at least 10 minutes while we were busy photographing bugs and mushrooms nearby.

This flowering shrub in the family Rubicaceae is Palicourea guianensis and is attractive to a few hummingbirds in the understory, probably including a Gould's Jewelfront that we saw nearby.

This melastome is in the genus Tococa, recognized by the swollen bases to the leaves, known as domatia, homes to ants that help protect the plant from herbivores.

And yes, of course there were mushrooms. Lots. This polypore is often called Artist's Conch, as demonstrated here by Susanne.

Some grow in grotesque, odd shapes, but this one was so coincidentally turtle-like to startle both of us.

This may look like a typical wood-ear in the genus Auricularia, but turning it over reveals a surprisingly different structure.

This is yet another Favolaschia (see the blog from a couple days ago), a tiny but beautiful mushroom. The other ones we saw were on dead bamboo, so this one might be another species.

Finally, as-of-yet unidentified (because Susanne hasn't seen my photos yet) is this elegant, tiny crimson gem of a mushroom. It is possibly a Marasmius sp.

This is the 9th in a series of blogs covering a private tour I led down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7.

Today was our second full day at Pantiacolla Lodge. This is a new location for me, by the way. I have passed it while traveling between lodges almost every year for the past five years and each time looked longingly up at the forested ridge around which southern terminus the Upper Madre de Dios makes a big detour. Pantiacolla Ridge is the final of a series of arched Andean wrinkles that seem to radiate to the north-northeast like waves on a pond disturbed by a tossed pebble, this particular pebble landing in the Earth's crust right at the famous ruins of Machu Picchu. The initial ridges close to Machu Picchu and Cusco are brutally high, but at the southern terminus of this particular ridge one can easily hike to the highest point at just over 3100 feet. Easily, that is, if your goal is to get to the ridge and not enjoy the mind-boggling diversity of nature along the way.

With some trepidation and not a huge amount of confidence, Susanne and I took a sack lunch and set off to the ridge. In short, we did well. We made it, 8 kilometers each way, making few lingering stops, and we're glad we did it. But in hindsight, we would have liked another day or two here, in order to explore each stretch of the trail more thoroughly. But that's exactly the same conclusion I come to at every tropical lodge I visit.

I stopped for one bird photo on the way up, this Greater Yellow-headed Vulture that was still waiting for thermals.

We stopped for mushrooms on the way up, of course, but since many were the same ones we had seen yesterday, we photographed only strikingly new ones.
Update from Susanne: this is in the general group Discomycetes.

Update from Susanne: this is a Marasmius sp.

Update from Susanne: Caripia montagnei

This looked so much like yesterday's damselfly that I decided it must also be a Heteragrion, but I haven't been able to ID the species.

I've discovered a new fondness for Marantaceae and would like to get to know the genera better. But I'm still not sure how to tell Calathea from Hylaeanthe. This is clearly one or the other.

Any family in the order Zingiberales also attracts my attention, here two members of the family Costaceae. First, Costus scaber, with a very elegant but typical spiral shape to the growth axis.

And a very handsome Costus erythrophyllus, notable for the red underside to the leaves as well as the very showy flower.

The lodge's trail map doesn't indicate that there's more than just one destination, but the signs here obviously give us a choice. We chose Shintuya.

The views from the overlook were amazing. Since we had stopped several times, we arrived here in time for lunch and a very quiet time of day bird-wise. A White Hawk soared below us right at first, but the next 15 minutes, as we ate our lunch, were birdless and dominated by stingless bees. The first photo below is looking south towards the main chain of the Andes, while the second is looking to the southeast, zoomed on the town of Shintuya.

On the way down we stopped for many cool things. While Susanne photographed a mushroom, I pursued this Three-striped Rocket Frog, Allobates trilineatus.

This speckled stink bug was well camouflaged.

This not-so-well camouflaged katydid was lucky I wasn't a hungry trogon or monkey.

I have seen this long-horned beetle, Taeniotes orbignyi, at Cristalino Jungle Lodge.

The most exciting butterfly on the hike was this rare metalmark, Argryrogrammana rameli.

We stopped at some random spot on the trail, probably to get a closer look and perhaps a photo of a mushroom, when I heard a sudden burst of wing beats nearby, saw a bit of motion, and landed my binoculars on a Hairy-crested Antbird. I instantly recognized the whole situation as a bird flushed from a nest, and quickly noticed a hollowed-out dead tree stem next to the trail.

This is what was inside. A rare find!

A bit closer to the lodge, we came across a group of Brown-mantled Tamarins, Saguinus fuscicollis.

I knew we were close to the lodge when we came to the junction of yesterday's trail where I had hung a piece of heliotrope that I had snagged from Villa Carmen. Here, sucking up the pyrrolizidine alkaloids, was an Agnosia Clearwing, Ithomia agnosia, as well as a clearwing moth.

There's no photo to illustrate here our slow reckoning of a droning sound as we approached the lodge as that of the four-prop, remote-controlled hovercraft, carrying a video camera. We realized soon that it belonged to the Japanese TV film crew that had arrived the same day as us and that they were filming sunset from above the canopy at the banks of the Upper Madre de Dios River. Their focus during their short stay here was the Dusky Titi, a monkey we hadn't seen ourselves yet, but apparently one that captured the imagination of the Japanese psyche.

These photos are from my short weekend visit to northern New Mexico over the Four of July weekend. Last time I visited my friends Cathy and Gabe here, we drove to Roswell in the southeastern part of the state for Lesser Prairie-Chickens. Finally, more than five years later, we reunited for another chicken, this time the White-tailed Ptarmigan.

We started on the east side of Santa Barbara Ridge on a well-used trail that takes hikers up to Serpent Lake and beyond it to Jicarita Peak in the Pecos Wilderness.

We were joined by New Mexico birders John Parmeter and Wyatt Egelhoff. John had been here several times before, while Wyatt’s first time was only 10 days ago. One of the strategies in finding the ptarmigan is to have several pairs of eyes, with birders spreading out over the tundra-like ridge above treeline, scanning for cryptic lumps of feathers. Wyatt missed it on his hike here alone.

It was about 4 miles to the point where one might start looking for ptarmigan, and we had at least a half mile more to go before splitting up for the serious search; it had taken John a few hours of searching in the past.

I stopped to photograph this Yellow-bellied Marmot when I heard John yelling my name from only about 50 yards up the trail.

He flushed this White-tailed Ptarmigan from right in the trail, nearly stepping on it.

Characteristically unconcerned with humans, it walked only a few feet off the trail and watched a bit. When I arrived it sat only for a few more minutes before strolling slowly, browsing on plant shoots among the boulders.

It was only another couple hundred yards up to the windswept saddle to the south of Jicarita Peak. This is looking west towards the Jemez Mountains.

With amazingly early success in finding White-tailed Ptarmigan, we had time to photograph the fabulous wildflowers here. This is Ross's Avens, Geum rossii (thanks to Jerry Oldenettel for the names of some of these plants).

Arctic Alpine Forget-me-not, Eritrichium nanum

Cushion Phlox, Phlox pulvinata

This Rocky Mountain Nailwort, Paronychia pulvinata was a bit tricky to identify, but the papery sheaths around the leaf clusters convinced me to browse members of the family Caryophyllaceae in the Taos County list. It’s at the very southern end of its range here.

We also decided to take the short trail spur to Serpent Lake, something John had never had the time to do.

On the way down the transition zone from krumholz to pine-fir forest, we stopped for more wildflowers.

Colorado Blue Columbine, Aquilegia coeruleabeing visited by a syrphid fly

Mountain Deathcamas, Zigadenus elegans

Ledge Stonecrop, Rhodiola integrifolia

Matted Saxifrage, Saxifraga bronchialis

Alpine Clover, Trifolium dasyphyllum

Here we are at Serpent Lake.

The dense willow thickets here are home to one of the southernmost breeding populations of Wilson’s Warbler.

We were surprised to see the lake full of Tiger Salamander larvae. This is apparently about as high in elevation that the species can occur, about 12,000 feet (3650 m).

The moist meadow and slightly protected basin was good for butterflies. This is Draco Skipper, Polites draco.

Mustard White, Pieris oleracea

Purplish Fritillary, Boloria chariclea

We stopped to pish and attract birds with our Northern Pygmy-Owl imitations a few times, usually bringing in just Mountain Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos (Gray-headed), and a few other nice things such as Olive-sided Flycatcher and Cassin’s Finch. Once we heard a pygmy-owl tooting back, but it didn’t take long for us to realize it was this Gray Jay imitating one in response to my whistles. This is a very rare type of mimicry in birds, certainly requiring a relatively high level of intelligence.

The forest on the hike back was in general very quiet, so we hiked back quickly, stopping for only a few wildflowers.

Fern-leaved Lousewort, Pedicularis procera

Sickletop Lousewort, Pedicularis racemosa

Western Red Columbine, Aquilegia elegantula

Single Delight, Moneses uniflora

Near the parking lot was this Hoary Anglewing, Polygonia gracilis.

And a Sleepy Duskywing, Erynnis brizo.

We took the scenic drive back to Bernalillo on the southern end of the Taos High Road. I made Gabe stop for road cut with some beautiful composites.

Beautiful Fleabane, Erigeron formosissimus

Newberry's Hymenopappus, Hymenopappus newberryi

This is the 10th in a series of blogs covering a private tour I led down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7. Today was a travel day – eight and a half hours of motoring down the Upper Madre de Dios then the main Madre de Dios rivers to Los Amigos Biological Station. So as to avoid any possibility of arriving after dark, we departed Pantiacolla at 6:00 a.m., and all went without a hitch.

The Pantiacolla Lodge grounds are a reasonably sized clearing in the rain forest, and one can actually see quite a bit from here. We were both wishing we had more time here.

The Japanese film crew I mentioned in my last blog were chasing after some very noisy Brown Titis (more on that monkey in an upcoming blog), while in the meantime I spotted these Venezuelan Red Howlers nearby.

Our last new bird here was this cooperative Red-throated Caracara.

Forty minutes into our ride we could look back and see Pantiacolla Ridge fading away. The next significant mountain ridges to the east of here are 2000 miles away in eastern Brazil.

We were always on the lookout for interesting birds and animals along the way; a jaguar or giant anteater is always possible, but we had to do with birds on this trip. We had great views of a pair of Orinoco Geese on one island, for example.

We made a quick potty stop on one young river island, and I picked up this grasshopper, a typical spur-throat (a huge subfamily, so I have no idea what species it is).

Farther downstream was this Horned Screamer on the main bank. Screamers are a small family of very weird birds. They are in the same order as geese and ducks so technically qualify as waterfowl, but the three species (all restricted to South America) don't even remind one of any kind of dabbler, diver, or honker. None of them scream, either. This one pipes and honks in a way that invariably elicits laughter from humans, but it is loud.

Lacking exciting mammals, the banks do have some variability. Some stretches are dominated by the colonizing plant Tessaria, in the family Asteraceae, very much like a giant version of the arroweed that grows near the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California.

On others, the giant cane Gyneriumdominates, clearly a competitor with Tessaria.

Yet another competitor for colonizing plants, this one winning for the moment, are miners looking for gold, supporting a few small towns in this remote area.

Finally, I recognize the tall dirt bank above which sits the Los Amigos research station.

We didn't know it yet at this point, but the roof of this building will be Susanne's cabin.

We wasted no time using up the remaining daylight to walk one of the trails. The need to keep the trails clean results in a lot of dead wood on the sides, perfect habitat for many mushrooms. This is a bracket, shelf, or conch, generally called a polypore. It's pristine condition, gorgeous caramel colors, and the way it looked as if it were splitting open the log were all part of the attraction.

One of the nice surprises was this family group of adorable White-throated Jacamars. When Sam Woods and I were here two years ago, we searched all over for this species, finally finding it very late on our last afternoon, one of the last new birds Sam saw on the trip. Here they were just a few hundred yards down from our cabins.

I'd seen this gorgeous metalmark Huebner's Grayler, Adelotypa huebneri, nine years ago at Cristalino Jungle Lodge, Brazil. This time I noted that there were two or more males chasing each other at about head height on either side of the trail, occasionally perching before heading out on another chase. In flight they looked white, so it was quite a nice surprise to see this gorgeous pattern.

This is the female of the Dimorphic White, the male of which I had photographed a couple days ago at Pantiacolla. (See the Day 8 blog.)

In the very late afternoon this skipper, a Nicephorus Scarlet-eye, Nicephellus nicephorus, was coaxed to land close to the trail. It had been trailing an army ant swarm and associated birds, hoping to find some bird droppings to get some nourishment, so I put down a spit wad of tissue on a leaf, which it almost immediately landed on. I had seen and photographed this species three years ago, also at Cristalino Jungle Lodge, also with an ant swarm.

This is the 11th in a series of blogs covering a private tour I led down the Kosñipata Road and the Madre de Dios River in SE Peru from October 25-November 7.

Three full days at Los Amigos Biological Station was something Susanne and I were both very much looking forward to, but at the same time we were already aware that this wasn't going to be enough time. I'd only been here once before, on a fam trip with Sam Woods of Tropical Birding, and it was partly from my blogging on that trip that Susanne suggested we come here. Without trying, Sam and I had seen just under 200 species of birds on one day, only walking down trails from the lodge and spending a lot of time trying to see sneaky anthrushes and tinamous.

This morning we had a hard time tearing ourselves away from the clearing, where bird activity was nearly nonstop. A huge fruiting melastome tree was right next to our cabins, and flocks of wintering Eastern Kingbirds and many tanagers, such as this Paradise Tanager came through.

This Straight-billed Woodcreeper preferred the edge habitat created by the lodge clearing.

Possibly a migrant or at least a lingering wintering bird, this Swainson's Flycatcher was also feeding from fruits in the clearing.

We were required to mark on a chalkboard which trails we would be taking and when we would be returning, but I had no idea how fast we would be walking and how much ground we might cover. I did know one thing – we were going to be heading towards trail 13. We had the great fortune of meeting Nito Paniagua when we arrived, a well-known guide from Corcovado National Park, Costa Ricawho looks more Irish than Costa Rican. He is here volunteering as a consultant for the station, finding the best birding trails and thinking of ways to improve them for birding groups. He had been birding for several days already and told us about finding the nearly mythical Black-faced Cotingas recently. That was one of my most wanted birds! This was Nito's first trip to this part of Peru, so he was seeing lots of new birds himself. He is very enthusiastic about all other aspects of natural history as well, and his enthusiasm was contagious. So after breakfast, Susanne and I started down the old road towards trail 13. As you can see from this trail map, we didn't make it far – the red is our morning route, the blue is what we did in the afternoon.

It wasn't long before we encountered our first mushroom, a Polyporus species.

It had apparently rained plenty recently, and many mushrooms meant we weren't traveling very quickly. Here are two species of wood-ear for a convenient comparison: Auricularia fuscosuccinea with the smooth underside and Auricularia delicata with the web-like structure.

We encountered quite a bit of bird activity too, but this White-bellied Tody-Tyrant was the only one I managed to photograph.

This mushroom is in the huge genus Marasmius, more of which we'll see in the next days. They tend to have very durable, flexible, almost wiry stems, an equally durable and rubbery cap, and come in all sizes and colors. Most decompose small sticks and leaf litter.

Eventually we made it down to the area where Nito had seen the cotingas, and when I heard a Smooth-billed Ani calling from the distant canopy, I thought I might have it. Indeed, it sounds surprisingly similar to that species, and one flew in almost instantly to my playback. It also responded quite well to my whistled imitation as well. I got one poor photo, as it tended to stay quite high in the back-lit canopy. This species is the answer to the trivia question, which bird is named after a hot sauce? Conioptilon mcilhennyi.

Both us of very content with the Black-faced Cotinga, Susanne got back to work photographing mushrooms while I worked on butterflies and plants. This widespread hairstreak is the Common Stripe-streak, Arawacus separata.

A not-so-common hairstreak, and perhaps unidentifiable to species is this Janthecla sp.

Skippers are sometimes gorgeous but often brown and with only very subtle differences between species. I don't even know the genus of this one yet.

This one is in the genus Pellicia.

And this is in Nisoniades, a genus known as tufted-skippers.

Closely related to the Dimorphic White of the previous blogs, this is the very widespread Painted White, Pieriballia viardi.

Only after getting these shots (out of dozens of useless ones) was I able to identify this restless swallowtail as an Emerald-patched Cattleheart, Parides sesostris.

This tiny gem is a Gyas Jewelmark, Sarota gyas. This species seems to be quite variable, but at least in males the second blue line in on the forewing seems to always be only three cells high, followed by a big gap.

The almost inflated bracts in the inflorescence makes me think that this prayer plant is in the genus Hylaeanthe rather than Calathea.

We played around bit with this bess beetle, in the small family Passalidae. I'm pretty sure that “bess” comes from the word meaning “kiss” (still used in English as “buss” and in the Spanish “beso”), for the kissing sound the beetle makes.

We took a short break for lunch back at the cafeteria, where I photographed this jumping spider, always photogenic, seeming to show a real sense of purpose, if you can get them to sit still long enough.

We were out again at 1:30, determined to go a bit more quickly to cover some more ground. It was hard. We first spent a fair amount of time trying to see this Fiery-capped Manakin, and we eventually had amazing views.

Another prayer plant in bloom, and this one I think is a Calathea species.

This appears to be the very widespread Cayenne Forest Tiger Beetle, Odontocheila cayennensis, one of the few species of tiger beetles one can find in the forest understory.

I'm pretty sure I've narrowed down this grasshopper to the genus Episomacris, in the subfamily Ommatolampidinae. There are two species known from this area, according to orthoptera.speciesfile.org.

The two sombermarks Euselasia pelorand E. pellonia are so similar, I don't know if this one can be identified to species.

For some reason the satyrs in the genus Magneuptychia don't seem to be well known. According to http://butterfliesofamerica.com/, Gerardo Lamas is in the process of naming 11 new species; this could easily be one of them, or perhaps yet another undescribed species.

I got a bit caught up in the fabulous mushroom diversity here as well.Thanks to Susanne and the book The Kingdom of Fungi by Jens H. Petersen, I could name this oddball one as Camillea leprieurii. It's one of many flask fungi, to which group the parasitic Cordyceps also belongs (more on that in upcoming posts). I'm not sure what the little white filaments are on some – maybe another mushroom growing on it?