Summer Eastern Venezuela
Posted by David Ascanio
David Ascanio
David Ascanio, a Venezuelan birder and naturalist, has spent the last 22 years guiding birding tours throughout his native country, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, n...Sixty-eight years ago Thomas Gilliard, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History, sailed from New York with some of the staff of the museum hoping to reach the summit of a tepui yet unexplored in southeastern Venezuela. Nobody then thought that such an expedition would change the course of the history of ornithology in Venezuela. Yet, the results of the Auyan-tepui expedition inspired William Phelps, the supporter of the expedition, to create a year later the Phelps Ornithological Museum in Caracas. Since then and for decades, efforts to understand the avifauna of these geological wonders continued under the support of the Phelps family, who published their first accounts in 1967 in a manuscript entitled The origin of the Bird Fauna of the South Venezuelan Highlands. In this work, Mayrn and Phelps summarized the avifauna of several table-top mountains and analyzed the origin of many endemic species.
Amazingly, the origin of these "tepui endemic species" is still a mystery, and a source of many scientific interpretations. The manner in which they reached these distant table-top mountains is still under debate.
Enchanted with the mystery about the origin of these endemic species and with hopes to see as many as possible, we began our Summer Eastern Venezuela tour in the Sierra de Lema where, besides many "Tepui" and "Roraima" named species, both bellbirds (White and Bearded) were enjoyed almost every day of our visit.
But it wasn't only these endemic species that attracted us to this region, which is protected partly as a national park and partly as a forestry reserve. Many rare, skulking, gigantic, and bizarre birds of Venezuela are also found here. We had encounters with the Flutist Wren, the Roraiman Antbird, and twice the Roraiman Barbtail. In the lowlands we saw the Capuchinbird, Musician Wren, Capped Heron, and the gorgeous Crimson Topaz.
Other species observed included a pair of Marail Guans, Crested and Harpy eagles, 19 species of Psittacidae (macaws, parrots, parakeets, and parrotlets), 46 species of tyrant-flycatchers, nine species of swifts, 20 species of tanagers, and 23 Pantepui endemics among the 334 species reported on this ten-day trip.
One morning we left the lodge very early and were rewarded with a close encounter with the Roraiman Nightjar, the first VENT group to appreciate this tepui endemic. Also, in the savannas of El Palmar we had the first record of Pinnated Bittern for that area, while we found a minor range extension of Black-striped Sparrow along the bank of the Orinoco River. Other memorable moments included a Crested Eagle soaring over the forest canopy and flying right over our heads in Sierra de Lema, and the Tepui Antpitta silently moving on the ground and hiding behind roots while Red-fan Parrots, the Capuchinbird, and the majestic Harpy Eagle were seen through the scope.
On our last day we spent some time exploring the riverine sandy scrub of the Orinoco River. I wasn't certain about what we would find there, since no birders have been in the area before. Surprisingly, we added a good number of species to the list including Tawny-crowned Pygmy-Tyrant and Yellow-bellied Seedeater.
As we took off from Puerto Ordaz, I looked down from the plane at the majestic Orinoco, with islands still unexplored, patches of intact forest, and probably a new bird still to be found.