The Best Backyard Birding on Earth
For the latest Field Guides series of The Birders Show, we visited Colombia’s Valle del Cauca region. In the first episode, our hosts spent time at some of the best backyard birding locations on earth: Avistamiento de Aves Doña Dora, La Florida Birding, and Araucana Lodge.
We quickly decided that Valle del Cauca department would be the perfect location for our second series of Kowa-sponsored Birders Show episodes. With three distinct ecosystems within easy reach and a variety of cultural and culinary experiences, we knew we could capture a wide range of activities beyond just birding. In fact, some parts of the Cali region are considered some of the best backyard birding locations in the world. All of this made Valle del Cauca an ideal choice for our filming needs.
We decided to focus the story on these backyard birding paradises for the first episode of the series. Friend of the show, Christopher Calonje of Araucana Lodge, generously offered us room and board in his luxurious birding lodge, just an hour from Cali. With Araucana as our base, we could efficiently bird and film at some of the marvelous surrounding bird observatories.
For our first morning, we departed pre-dawn from Araucana and drove an hour towards the western slopes of the Western Andes. Our destination? Avistamiento de Aves Doña Dora: a roadside bird observatory that has recently become a byword for excellence in Neotropical birding circles. Doña Dora and her family started selling coffee and empanadas to passing drivers along the old road down to the Pacific coast. Still, after passing birders alerted her to her home’s vast birding potential, she started putting out bananas for the tanagers. She soon had a wealth of exotic and range-restricted Chocó endemic species visiting her back garden. Now she makes a living from birding. She even added an extra level to her house: the third floor is now an incredible 360-degree birding platform, sitting at eye level with the giant ficus tree that helps attract birds to her garden.
Doña Dora and her lovely family outside her house
After arriving and tucking into some fresh cheese empanadas, we started the day by filming the house’s most charismatic species: the stunning Toucan Barbet. This Chocó endemic species can often be scarce and hard to spot, but a resident family lives behind the house. They’re now so relaxed around humans that they perch on the windowsills at dawn, eating moths attracted to the lights. As cooperative breeders, Toucan Barbets live in family groups, and we enjoyed at least six individuals perching at arm’s length, making for some incredible footage.
The rest of the morning was dedicated to filming the spectacular species found around the house: we got incredible footage of Black-chinned Mountain-Tanager, Silver-throated Tanager, Rufous-chested Tanager, Chocó Brushfinch, Velvet-purple Coronet, Purple-bibbed Whitetip, Green Thorntail, and many more species in just a few hours of birding.
A gorgeous Toucan Barbet at Doña Dora’s place
Around lunchtime, we met up with a young birder named Junior Torres from El Danubio, a small town further down the road to the Pacific. A local contact had connected us with Junior and told us that he would be an ideal candidate to receive a brand new pair of binoculars donated by our partners at Kowa Sporting Optics. That contact was absolutely right: Junior was passionate, engaged by birding, and an exceptionally talented young bird artist. He was also determined to save money to buy his own binoculars. The moment when we were able to give him the binoculars was probably the highlight of the trip.
Junior Torres proved to be a dedicated and passionate young birder, and giving him his own Kowa binoculars was a highlight
After a few more hours of birding and filming with Junior, we packed up and headed back to Araucana Lodge for the night.
Another early start saw us driving just up the road to La Florida Birding, a small reserve and observatory on Km. 18, something of a Mecca for local and international birders. This stretch of cloud forest road, 18 km outside of Cali, hosts some of the best backyard birding in the country, and we had decided to spend the morning filming at La Florida.
After meeting with the owner, Javier, we started to film the first groups of tanagers and barbets arriving at the banana feeders. Soon our main target bird, the endemic Multicolored Tanager, showed up, giving us fantastic footage. Other highlights included Golden Tanager, Red-headed Barbet, Saffron-crowned Tanager, Black-capped Tanager, and Golden-named Tanager. The feeders were highly active, and we filmed incredible shots of these remarkably colorful species.
The breathtakingly beautiful Multicolored Tanager
Pretty soon, it was time to film our second primary target at La Florida: the endemic Chestnut Wood-Quail. These normally-shy forest dwellers come to feed on corn at La Florida, offering extremely close views. We installed ourselves in the hide behind the main house and waited patiently. We didn’t need to wait long, as a family group of wood-quails soon appeared, happily tucking into the feast of corn on offer.
The Colombian endemic Chestnut Wood-Quail at La Florida Birding
We ended the morning birding with two young local birders, Toussaint and Marcel. At just ten and seven years old, these French-Colombian kids were passionate about birds and nature and extremely excited to bird with us. We spent a fun few hours showing them toucanets and tanagers in the scope and gifted them a brand-new Colombian bird guide to continue their journey in the world of birds. As Diego says in the episode, it was beautiful to see two young kids spending time in nature instead of glued to their phones.
Diego spotting birds with Toussaint and Marcel
We ended our shoot for Episode One with an afternoon filming around Araucana Lodge (more on this wonderful lodge here). Our videographer set up shop in front of the extremely busy bird feeders, where he filmed Green Jay, Yellow-backed Oriole, Lineated and Acorn Woodpeckers, and more. Diego and I headed out with our other videographer and the lodge owner, Christopher, to explore the grounds. He explained to us how most of the food at the hotel is grown on-site, and we enjoyed a few cups of their fresh, organic coffee.
After our evening studio session, we wrapped the Episode One shoot with some birthday cake for Diego and a few local craft beers before heading to bed: there were two more episodes to shoot and many long days ahead.
