The Not-so-rare Great Kiskadee

 (Léase en español / Read in Spanish)

The thing about birds is that what may appear exotic and rare depends on your perspective. We spent a morning in Coimata, just 20 minutes from Tarija by vehicle. The area has plant covered cliffs and beautiful cascading falls. We enjoyed seeing the native flora and fauna up close. Then, as we are leaving the park, we hear a loud, unusual bird call. We look around quickly and finally spot a large bird in a tree. Due to the distance and the shaded light only one shot came out good enough to see details. Here’s what we got.

The bird in the center has his back to us and head turned to the right. We were really excited about this rare sighting and when we got home we carefully examined

Is the Cuckoo Bird really cuckoo?

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What comes to your mind when you think of a “Cuckoo Bird”? How about a cuckoo clock? Or the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”? Or perhaps the phrase ‘out of cloud cuckoo land’? I have to say that I always imagined the cuckoo bird to be a small, cute, innocent-looking, albeit slightly crazy, bird.
 
Well Bolivia is full of surprises, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when we saw a real-life cuckoo bird.

We first saw these birds in Santa Cruz while visiting Bolivia two years ago and at the

Pigeon Courtship Dance

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Do you recall our post about the Pigeons? I commented on their interesting mating dance. I’m still hoping to get a good video of this filmed in Bolivia of the Rock Doves. However I remembered a video of this ritual that we had recorded in Mexico, and it’s pretty much the same here. (Warning! This movie does not end with ‘Happily Ever After’!)

(Please note: to watch the video again click on the circular arrow on the bottom left of the box above. After our video plays, YouTube may advertise related videos from other people.) 

 (Léase en español / Read in Spanish)

The Ubiquitous Finch

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“The finch?”, you’re saying to yourself. “They’re going to show pictures of a finch?”
 
Okay. Admittedly the finch is rather ubiquitous. Sparrows are also in the finch family, so between the two of them there are finches in every corner of the globe, except frigid Antarctica. They’re rather like our friend the pigeon, right? However, while you may not think of the finch as being an exciting bird, did you realize that in southern South America alone, there are at least 77 species of finches? And just in the department of Tarija, Bolivia, it is possible to see 32 of these. So now you should be saying: “Oh, well then I wonder which finch they will show?”

Meet the Saffron Finch.

We were excited to see this bright yellow bird flitting around so we got quite a few

Cyclone Monica and our Fascination with Birds

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We are fascinated with birds. We are fascinated by their antics, their habits, their songs. We are curious to seek out and identify species that are new to us. We love to shoot them with our camera and capture them on film. However, our fascination with birds has not been a lifelong one. The truth is, this fascination started in 2006, and the funny thing about it is we owe it to a cyclone.

In April 2006 we spent three weeks in the ‘Land Down Under’. And as chance would have it, shortly after we arrived in Cairns, in northeastern Australia, Cyclone Monica made landfall. Although Cairns was not in the direct path of the storm, there was still enough wind and rain that at one point the roads in and out of Cairns had to be closed. So we were forced to cancel some of our planned activities and found ourselves ‘trapped’ in Cairns.

Oddly enough, being trapped is what gave birth to our fascination with birds. Our principal motive for going to Cairns was to snorkel. But since snorkeling in a cyclone was clearly out of the question, and we couldn’t leave the city, what were we to do?

Just a Pigeon?

 (Léase en español / Read in Spanish)

I’ll admit right away that the birds you are about to see are certainly not what one might call ‘exotic’. But they were our 'first' birds. Yes, they are Bolivian, but then again, they are global, too. I present to you... THE PIGEONS!

Can anyone name a city where pigeons can NOT be found? I didn’t think so.

Rock Doves in the Plaza Luis de Fuentes, Tarija, Bolivia

Why do I say these were ‘our first birds’? Because the picture above is the first one we took of birds just two days after arriving in our new home of