Birding 'The Birders' - The Colombian Pacific Coast
Bird from home! We've prepared a comprehensive birding checklist to accompany our documentary "The Birders: A photographer's view of Colombia's Pacific Coast." Identify some of the Pacific region's rarest birds from the comfort of your armchair, sofa, or hammock. No binoculars required!
As much as we wish we were in quarantine in one of the spectacular birding lodges where we filmed our 'The Birders' series of documentary films, sadly, our storytelling agency team is mainly in lockdown in urban Bogota. Many of us are keeping bird lists from our windows and balconies, but no-one has managed to crack ten species yet!
So we came up with the idea of "quarantine birding." We have created birding checklists for all five of our Colombia birding documentaries, including the feature-length film 'The Birders.' All you have to do is watch the videos and see how many species you can tick off the list. It's a fun and interactive way to enjoy birding without being able to travel.
Let's bird the Colombian Pacific Coast!
You can download the comprehensive birding checklist here. This list features all of the avian stars of "The Birders: A photographer's view of Colombia's Pacific Coast" that can be "ticked" as you identify them throughout the film. You can download the Merlin app from our partners at eBird to help you ID any tricky species, or explore eBird lists for clues. We filmed this video in the jungles and beaches surrounding El Cantil Ecolodge near Nuqui, in the department of Chocó. It's a vital eBird hotspot with almost 200 species recorded, so you can study those lists for some additional hints.
The Colombian Pacific region is one of the most biodiverse regions on earth (as well as being one of the wettest, as you'll see in the video!). The spectacular confluence of the Pacific ocean, lowland tropical rainforest, and the fringes of the Western Andes, makes for an extraordinary birding destination.
El Cantil is a beautiful ecolodge on a wild Pacific beach, a couple of hours south of the small village of Nuqui by speedboat. Its owner, Guillermo' Memo' Gomez stars in our film alongside Morgan Heim. Memo is a bird photographer and his passion for his winged neighbours shines through in every frame. This video also focuses on the challenges of trying to film small birds like manakins in this dense jungle while being constantly soaked through by torrential rain! Filming it was hard work, but what we wouldn't give to be sweating through that muddy jungle right now while we're stuck at home!
Share your efforts with us on Instagram with the hashtag #TheBirders, or leave a comment below.
YOU CAN ALSO BIRD FROM HOME IN:
'The Birders' -The Northern Colombia Birding Trail
Birding 'The Birders' -The Colombian Plains
Birding 'The Birders' -The Colombian Amazon
Birding 'The Birders' -The Colombian Andes
Interested in working with our storytelling agency? Get in touch here.
For our latest WhereNext Live video, we present our resident bird expert Chris Bell in conversation with the National Audubon Society and the Colombian Embassy in Washington DC.