I arrived in Medellin, Colombia on Oct 2, 2021 from Los Angeles via Ft. Lauderdale, FL on Jet Blue on a red-eye that left the night prior.
Brett met me at the airport, and surprisingly I didn’t feel badly at all. We relaxed that day, and on Tuesday Brett, Valeria and I visited the Museo Casa de la Memoria, and enjoyed the city. The museum was intense, difficult as all of the plaques were Spanish only and it would have taken me hours to get through just a few of them, but it was very good.
Monday, Oct 4th was day 1 of guided birding in Colombia with Ivan Lau, a guide recommended by Diego Calderon, a prior guest on the podcast. Ivan was terrific, and handled taking me along with my son Brett and his girlfriend Valeria on a very nice, long and strenuous day of birding near Medellin.

We met near my hotel in Medellin, and struck off for La Romera, a preserve just south of the city. We were birding there shortly after 7:30 AM after a a couple of stops along the way where we saw a nice variety of birds, including Colombian Chachalaca, Yellow-faced Grassquit, a fly by Bald-faced Ibis, Cattle Egret, House Wren, Blackburnian Warbler and others.

Once at the preserve, which is a place you can park outside and access on foot, we got into lots of birds from the get-go. I’ll not try to walk through bird by bird, but give an idea of the place. It is a well maintained mostly paved trail, which is long and at times fairly steep. The primary reason many birders go there is for two endemics that can be accessed there nearby a major city. We managed excellent looks at both of these. The easy one is Red-bellied Grackle, which was noisy, not shy, and seen multiple times.

The hard one was picked out quickly by Ivan, Yellow-headed Manakin. It is tough because unlike many manakins, it tends to be silent, and often sits still. He picked it off a branch well off the road, and got not just our group, but another guide and his client on the bird for great looks and for me a documentation photo.
The rest of the walk was overall birdy. Highlights were cool hummingbirds (no feeders there so tough to find and see) like the very elegant Western Emerald, Tourmaline Sunangel (cool name or what), Collared Inca (my favorite) and Long-tailed Sylph, which would have been my favorite if not distant and in poor light. Lots of colorful and novel species to a North American birder like me, including Tanagers (bay-headed, golden, scrub, flame-rumped, blue-and-black, and the common palm and blue-gray), Flowerpiercers (Rusty, masked, bluish, and white-sided), several tiny Spectacled Parrotlets, Turdus thrushed Black-billed and Great Thrush, White-naped and Chestnut-capped Brushfinches, Russet-crowned and Slate-throated Warblers (the STWA here is yellow not red with black), tons of always cool Blackburnian Warblers and Swainson’s Thrushes, and Black-winged Saltator.
After lunch, we went to a higher elevation area called San Sebastian de la Castellana where a much rougher trail took us from about 1900 meters to over 3000 meters above sea level, and pretty much exhausted me though it was a beautiful hike. We came into two nice mixed flocks along with several bamboo specialists and higher elevation birds. Maybe the coolest was Southern Emerald Toucanette seen near the top of the hike, along with nice hummingbirds, a Black-browed Peppershrike, and lots more.

I have two more days with Ivan planned on Wednesday and Thursday so am excited about that. I think today was 70+ species with 35 +/- lifers. I’ll count later.
I took a day off on Tuesday, and spent the day with Valleria and Brett in Medellin. We visited a really cool area called Comuna 13, an area that until recently was notorious for being the epicenter of the Colombian drug trade, extremely dangerous and now is a prime tourist attraction, with music, street performers, vendors, restaurants etc. It is a cool story well outlined here.
Wednesday Brett and I headed for the mid-Magdalena Valley area with Iván and a drive Harley, who is also a birder. The day prior with three of us we took a larger van, but today was a standard taxi, which worked out just fine. It was about 1 ¾ hour drive to get to the final destination, with a couple of roadside stops and a quick breakfast along the way. The breakfast stop was at a roadside restaurant near the final destination, which has stunning valley views. When we arrived it was clear at the stop, with clouds in the valley below, just stunning, and there were a few birds in the treetops just outside the restaurant. By the time we left, we could barely see the trees for the dense fog that had rolled up the valley.
The day of birding was on a public dirt road from the highway down to the river below, maybe 2-3 miles long, and active birding the whole time. A couple of endemics were the primary attraction for listers, Beautiful Woodpecker (lives up to its name) and White-mantled Barbet, but the birds were just flat out great the whole morning. We spent about 4 hours altogether, with lots of great birds including new families for me including my first Jacamar (Rufous-tailed) and lots more. Out eBird list, which Iván was very helpful to keep had 70 species for Iván and 68 that I kept on mine. Unfortunately I messed up my photo download due to terrible internet at my hotel, and lost most of the photos for the day.
After lunch at another place with birds and a view, we made a brief stop at a small wetland area near the airport adding several birds to my Columbia list like Blue-winged Teal, Common and Purple Gallinule, and Cattle Tyrant to my life list.
Thursday was a shorter day. Just Iván, Harley and me, and we went to the San Pedro de los Milagros area with the primary goal to bird a family dairy farm there and find one of the newest species in the world, Antioquia Brush Finch.

This bird has a cool story. It was initially listed in a species in 1969 after a museum specimen was found that was a new species. Extensive looking for the bird in the San Pedro area did not yield any live birds, and it was suspected to be extinct. This area is heavily used, mostly for dairy farming and potatoes. The potatoes there are heavily treated with pesticides, and not a lot of habitat is left. A local birder and environmentalist, Rodolfo Cporrea Peña whose uncles run the areas largest dairy farm, had known people looking for the Brush Finch, knew what it looked like, and after church one Sunday noted a brush finch on outside church. He took a cell phone photo, sent it to the researchers, and it was felt to be an Antioquia Brush Finch. More searching on his farm led to several individuals, and now there are felt to be about 20 birds on his families farm, and maybe 150-200 total known individuals. Rodolfo Carrea Peña has formed an organization to help try to preserve the species, and is working with local landholders to try to improve habitat. Here is the article by Rodolfo and others about the bird. They seem to like brushy edges of fields, and his family farm has not cleared, and has protected the steep ravines and other difficult to farm areas, leaving quite a lot of good habitat. Overall a cool story, and we managed to get great looks at 4 individuals, some at pretty close range.

The birding there was not as exciting as the day prior, but for a heavily used agricultural area we did see some pretty cool birds including Golden-fronted Redstart (or as Iván prefers Whitestart), a metaltail, finally good looks at Lesser Violetear which we had been hearing and barely seeing for all three days, and soaring Broad-winged and White-tailed Hawks (one each).
I got back to town in time for lunch, to find a place for a Covid test (negative) so I could fly home Saturday, and to spend the rest of the visit relaxing and visiting with Brett and Valeria.
A total of 159 species in 3 days of birding, about 86 of these lifers. I visited and birded a new continent for me, South America, and saw a really cool city, Medellin. We also visited the cultural museum in Medellin on Friday morning. Tuesday we visited a really cool area called Common 13. This was infamous in the late 1980-2010 time frame as one of the most dangerous crime and drug riddled areas of the world. It is on an extremely steep hillside, and had very poor road access, leaving residents with few work options, and making it nearly impossible to police. An infamous police attack in the early 2000’s led to a number of deaths (drug gangsters? Innocent residents? It is unclear) but did not lead to much real change. The turning point seems to have been building a cable car line to the area in about 2012. This gave residents the ability to get to work, get in and out of the area reasonably, and in addition good sidewalks and a large escalator system was built onto the hillside. It has since turned into a major attraction, with famous graffiti artists/murals on every concrete roadside wall, many street vendors and performers, and it seem much safer and is bursting with energy now.
I loved the cable car system. On Friday visited the Parque Arvi, at the end of another cable car line to the large park there. A bit of a hike gave us time in the forest and a few birds, but mostly a spectacular vista on the way up and down.
From what I saw Medellin is a fine place to visit, with good hotels, pretty inexpensive food and lodging, and excellent birding nearby. I can’t wait to explore more of South America on future visits.