VENTflash #86 October 15, 2007
Posted by Victor Emanuel
Victor Emanuel
Victor Emanuel started birding in Texas 63 years ago at the age of eight. His travels have taken him to all the continents, with his areas of concentration being Texas, Ari...Dear Friends:
Every day I come to work I am reminded of all the marvelous destinations to which VENT operates nature tours. I am proud that we offer more than 150 tours worldwide annually. Because all the places we visit are so special, I wish I could share with you my feelings about every one of our tours. Unfortunately time is limited and it just isn’t possible. But every so often I like to focus attention on a particular tour or region that I feel you would enjoy reading about. Over the next few weeks, I will be sending out a series of VENTFLASHES highlighting some of these special tours or regions that are often overlooked or which receive little promotion. The first one is dedicated to Venezuela, a country that has been in the news a lot recently because of the controversial remarks and actions of its president. Steve Hilty, who leads many of our Venezuela tours, contributed greatly to this edition of VENTFLASH.
In this issue:
DREAMS OF BIRDING IN VENEZUELA
DREAMS OF BIRDING IN VENEZUELA
To all of you who dream of Venezuela as a birding destination, we are completely confident that the country remains as safe and secure now as it has always been. Despite inflammatory rhetoric from the country’s president, tourists, general travelers, birders, and naturalists are as welcome as ever at hotels and restaurants. Europeans flock without incident to Venezuela for the beaches and trips to Angel Falls and the ranches in the famed llanos, or plains. Perhaps most importantly, VENT clients are perfectly safe at all the various hotels, country inns, and ranches where our tour groups are accommodated.
Venezuela is one of the great birding and nature destinations in South America. Ask six people to describe their travel experiences in Venezuela, and, like the six blind men poking the elephant, you may get six different answers. One person may remember a spectacle of waterfowl beneath spacious llanos skies, another a larger-than-life-landscape of towering tepuis, and a third may see Rancho Grande’s dreamy cloud forests dissolving in gossamer mists as magically as Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat.
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Ptari Tepui, Venezuela — Photo: Steve Hilty |
To a naturalist, Venezuela’s myriad habitats are sheer nirvana. From white coraline beaches and muddy mangroves, to tropical deserts and rainforests, to elfin worlds in miniature atop the Andes, these habitats represent a biological playground of epic proportions. In a birder’s mind, each habitat represents a new avifauna waiting exploration. One may see blushing flamingos on a mangrove-fringed shore, macaws and toucans in a rainforest, and sparkling hummingbirds whirring among rain-spattered flowers on an Andean cliff.
OUR HISTORY IN VENEZUELA
VENT has operated tours in Venezuela, without interruption, for almost three decades. In past years we’ve offered as many as eight or ten tours a year. Due to ongoing development of the country’s economy and infrastructure, tourism facilities and services have improved dramatically over the years. Today there are more interesting places accessible to birders than ever before, and some aspects of tourism, especially the buses now available to us, have improved by orders of magnitude?think air-conditioning, more spacious seating arrangements, much quieter interiors, and better visibility?and it makes for much more comfortable and enjoyable trips.
A NEW FIELD GUIDE
The original Birds of Venezuela, published in the 1970s, was the first field guide ever produced on a South American country. It was recently revised, with many new plates and a new text written by none other than the leader of many of VENT’s Venezuela tours, Dr. Steve Hilty. In Steve’s own words:
“While the book may not fit in your hip pocket, it provides a wealth of information on the country’s rich avifauna and should make your trip more enjoyable and informative. The terrific new plates by John Gwynne, one of the world’s leading bird artists, complement the many other illustrations by Guy Tudor, whose work is regarded by many as the best. And, for the first time, detailed maps reflect the distribution of each bird within the country. Turn a few of the plates and take a gander at those gorgeous hummingbirds and wonderful looking cotingas. Personally, I can’t wait to see them again and I’d love to have the opportunity to show as many of them to you as I can!”
BIRDING IN VENEZUELA
Over the years we have refined our itineraries and discovered numerous new locations for viewing rare and locally distributed species. Finding some of these exceedingly localized birds has become nearly routine on our tours. In fact, sometimes it almost seems too easy, but in this business experience counts?and in that regard, you cannot find a more experienced team to guide you in Venezuela than Steve Hilty, David Ascanio, and Jeri Langham. Furthermore, Venezuela is a relatively easy place to see birds as much of the birding takes place in open country habitats or involves walking roadsides where birds are easy to find and observe.
THE GUIDES
I can’t imagine a better trio of leaders anywhere in the world than Steve Hilty, David Ascanio, and Jeri Langham.
Steve is one of the most respected figures in South American ornithology. He has led tours to Venezuela for VENT for nearly 30 years and has even discovered species new to science. He brings an impeccable level of expertise that ensures you will receive a first rate travel experience.
Among his credentials, Steve Hilty is the senior author of the monumental A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, and the recently published Birds of Venezuela, both by Princeton University Press. Other credits include Birds of Tropical America, A watcher’s introduction to behavior, breeding and diversity, republished by the University of Texas Press. He has also written a number of scientific papers on birds and plants, and is presently preparing the text and species accounts for the tanagers for a forthcoming volume of the acclaimed Handbook of Birds of the World, published by Lynx Press in Barcelona. Steve holds a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Arizona and has worked at the Arid Lands Department at the University of Arizona, as a consultant to The Nature Conservancy, and as a stockbroker. He is currently a research associate at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. With three decades of experience in South America and a wide range of natural history interests, he brings a unique breadth of expertise to his Neotropical tours.
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VENT leaders David Ascanio and Steve Hilty — Photo: Peter English |
David Ascanio, a Venezuelan birder and naturalist, has spent the last 20 years guiding birding tours throughout his native country, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, northern Peru, and western Ecuador. He is especially interested in bird vocalizations, and has a private library containing sounds of more than 70% of all the birds of Venezuela, including some which are the only ones known to science. David speaks excellent English and combines superb birding skills with an astonishing command of bird vocalizations. He has published several manuscripts about the birds of the llanos (plains) and the tepui endemics for which he has become an authority. Like Steve, David has also discovered species new to science in Venezuela. More recently, David has emerged as a key figure in promoting awareness of conservation and birding among Venezuela’s young people. He is currently involved in projects to create an introductory field guide to the birds of Venezuela and also a new website that emphasizes educating young people on the natural treasures of the country. David is the best known and most popular guide in his country. He has led many tours for VENT and is a rising star in South American ornithology.
A third member of our team, Jeri Langham, was raised in Venezuela and speaks fluent Spanish. Jeri has a Ph.D. in plant ecology from Washington State University and has been a professor of biological sciences at California State University in Sacramento since 1970. Many of you know Jeri from VENT tours to such destinations as Costa Rica, Churchill, Panama, and California. Jeri has led our Hato Pinero New Year tour for over a decade.
GRAND VENEZUELA EXPERIENCE
Our Grand Venezuela tour has it all?deserts, lush cloud forests, coastal lagoons, tropical dry forests, and the grasslands (llanos) and gallery forests (now virtually legendary for their immense numbers of birds and wildlife during the dry season). We have operated this trip longer than any other in Venezuela. Among the areas we visit is a lovely German village in the Coastal Cordillera, where we get acquainted with some of the northern region’s mountain birds. We continue with a visit to Henry Pittier National Park, often known as "Rancho Grande.? The park boasts a bird list of over 500 species and was once a research site for William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society. Here, among green mountains, swirling clouds and breathtaking views at every corner, birders and naturalists can follow brightly-colored tanagers in mixed species flocks, search for shy antpittas, and thrill to the jewel-like colors of a dozen kinds of hummingbirds.
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Desert vegetation in northern Venezuela. Site of Pearl Kites, Pale-headed Jacamars, Vermilion Cardinals, and many other spectacular desert species. — Photo: Steve Hilty |
This tour can be taken as one Grand Venezuela experience or in two separate parts. With an easy arrival and departure point involving one short air flight, you can either depart at the end of the first eight days or join for the final nine days. Better yet, you can come for the whole epic journey, from cloud forests and deserts to a wildlife spectacle at the Cedral Ranch at the end of the trip that ranks as one of the greatest on the continent.
Part I of the Grand Venezuela trip visits the Coastal Cordillera west of Caracas, site of the German village of Colonia Tovar, as well as the cloud forests of Henry Pittier National Park, and then continues on to dry and moist forests and estuaries near Chichiriviche, an expansive marsh northwest of Valencia, and finally a morning in the lovely Barquisimeto Desert. Part I will add the greatest number of endemic and range-restricted birds and provides a nice cross-section of northern habitats.
Part II continues west and south from Barquisimeto to the Andes, completing a lovely transect up the west slope and down the east slope, and ending with three days at the incomparable Cedral Ranch. This trip features lots of hummingbirds and tanagers, the glorious Andean Cock-of-the-rock, quetzals, and the spectacle of wildlife of the Cedral Ranch.
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Andean Cock-of-the-rock — Photo: Karen Clark |
Our website currently reflects our Grand Venezuela tour as a single tour, January 5-22, 2008. Please note that the tour can be taken either as a single tour:
Grand Venezuela, January 5-22, 2008, with Steve Hilty and David Ascanio, $5050 from Caracas.
Or in two parts, with separate pricing for each part.
Grand Venezuela, Part 1, January 5-13, 2008, with Steve Hilty and David Ascanio, $2470 from Caracas; Part 2, January 11-22, 2008, with Steve Hilty and David Ascanio, $3525 from Caracas.
RANCHLAND PARADISE
Steve Hilty offered this description of Hato Cedral, one of the most popular birding and naturalist destinations in Venezuela.
"This ranch (hato, is a Spanish word for ranch) has top flight accommodations and, in my opinion, offers THE MOST SPECTACULAR CONCENTRATION of waterfowl, waders, and wetland associated species found anywhere on the continent. The numbers of waterbirds are staggering?tens to hundreds of thousands of herons, storks, egrets, ibises, and whistling-ducks are present throughout the dry season. Even rare and difficult-to-find species like Pinnated Bitterns are numerous here, and the gallery forests teem with parrots, macaws, and smaller birds.
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Hato Cedral — Photo: Steve Hilty |
Visitors are sure to see thousands of caimans and capybaras, and perhaps even a giant anteater or anaconda. A boat trip through Cedral’s vast marshes and swampy and wooded waterways is like stepping back in time?into a wildlife-filled landscape only our ancestors might have known. Rare Orinoco crocodiles, Boat-billed Herons, Agami Herons, Yellow-knobbed Curassows, Sunbitterns, and unbelievable numbers of waterfowl, waterbirds, and raptors flush before us. Even the near-mythical Zigzag Heron turns up here. From the first pink blush of dawn, with a hundred Chestnut-fronted Macaws streaming from a roost, until the last strings of ibises peddle into the sunset, the Cedral Ranch is a wildlife show of epic proportions. But it doesn’t stop there. Beneath star filled nighttime skies, a new cast of nocturnal players emerges?savanna foxes, crab-eating raccoons, potoos, owls, nightjars, and maybe even an ocelot treading softly across a field. The Cedral ranch, in the heart of the Venezuelan ranch country, is the perfect complement to the Andes.
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Viewing wildlife from the comfort of a covered truck with padded seats on the Cedral Ranch. — Photo: Steve Hilty |
I have visited Hato Cedral at many different times throughout the year and have found that it is always a great place to go. On the first evening of a January trip I led a few years ago, we counted 104 Chestnut-fronted Macaws flying in to roost in trees adjacent to the ranch building. The next morning we counted 12 Scarlet Macaws along a short section of gallery forest at the north end of the ranch. Orinoco Geese (a species listed as “threatened” by BirdLife International’s Red Data Book) were much in evidence, perching in trees along the Río Caicara, walking in pairs along the river, standing in muddy open areas, and everywhere giving husky purring calls. We saw rare Spot-tailed Nightjars twice on the ranch?a big surprise as I had never seen them here before?and several species more typical of the rainy season, including 5 Azure Gallinules, 2 Pinnated Bitterns, and up to 8 Masked Ducks. Our driver caught a 14 foot anaconda by the tail for all to photograph that same evening. The next morning we flushed a giant anteater along the same road and watched it waddle off to the safety of tall grass."
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Scarlet Ibis and Snowy Egret — Photo: Steve Hilty |
This account of a boat trip at Hato Cedral is from a journal entry of mine (S.H.) from a past trip. Without hesitation, the Cedral boat trip was the best I’ve experienced in nearly 30 years of work in the Neotropics. Aside from the spectacle of a quarter million or more ducks, herons, ibises, storks, lapwings and assorted other fare in the marsh, and a blizzard of whistling-ducks that rose in great sheets before our advancing boat, we saw a couple of immense Orinoco crocodiles, whose heart-stopping size prompted me to take a second look at the size of our boat (the crocs were longer than our boat!). Later, along a wooded stream, after running a gauntlet of cormorants, herons, storks, ibises, wood-rails, sunbitterns, night-herons, hoatzins, kingfishers, and kiskadees that flushed nonstop before our boat, we pulled into a secluded swampy area and called up a very rare Zigzag Heron, a pocket-sized little heron that sat for a long time and watched us from a discreet distance. An Agami Heron, one of at least 6 that evening, also watched us from a nearby pool, and was then chased away by a young and inexperienced caiman that mounted a fruitless attack. I was amazed that within minutes the Agami calmly walked straight back into that same caiman-infested pool.
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Sunrise over Cedral Ranch, a time when hundreds of birds join in spectacular dawn chorus. — Photo: Steve Hilty |
We watched as caiman with malevolent eyes approached to within a few meters of our boat. A Black-collared Hawk waited patiently for the boatman Ramón to throw it a fish. Along the banks of the lagoon there was a momentary scuffle as a Roadside Hawk, with startling quickness, stole a morsel from a hapless caracara. A Sungrebe, with head pumping, swam by. In the gathering shadows, behind our backs, nine Yellow-knobbed Curassows silently mounted in a high bare tree, and one by one began gliding over our heads to trees on the opposite bank. At about the same time, a group of Boat-billed Herons took leave of this same leafy retreat, heading off for their night shift. Seven more curassows, splendid silhouettes with curly heads, now appeared in the high bare trees behind us, giving an amazing total of sixteen in all. A distant Green Ibis called and a kingfisher rattled into long shadows. As darkness fell we continued to sit, small and humble before such an unimaginable gathering of wildlife. Night-herons, anhingas, cormorants, and dozens of other waders large and small, with startled cries and unfathomable errands to run, croaked and swished through the night. It was a surreal experience. It could have been a scene from the Pleistocene and, perhaps for just a moment, it was. Not a single light from the hand of man could be seen on the horizon.
UPCOMING TOURS TO VENEZUELA
From the end of 2007 through 2008, we are offering 5 other tours to Venezuela besides our flagship Grand Venezuela tour. Our Hato Pinero tours feature fantastic open country birding and mammal viewing at another of Venezuela’s well known private ranches. Large tracts of tropical dry forest, grasslands, and amazing concentrations of waterbirds are the attractions here. Our two Eastern Venezuela trips offer an unbeatable lineup of large, showy species, tepui mountain endemics, Orinoco Delta restricted distribution species, and perhaps the best opportunity anywhere for Harpy Eagle.
Hato Pinero
At Hato Piñero, you can expect a wealth of tropical birds and some of the easiest and most pleasant birding anywhere. During the tour, many participants really get to know the 200-plus species that include such spectacular birds as Yellow-knobbed Curassow, Sunbittern, Agami Heron, both Great and Common potoos, Scarlet Macaw, Jabiru, Gray-necked Wood-Rail, and many others. Evening spotlighting of mammals, night birds, reptiles, and amphibians from the custom-designed, observation truck is superb and often considered the highlight of our tour.
Our Relaxed & Easy (R&E) tour in February is designed especially for those who want to enjoy all that Hato Pinero has to offer, but at a more relaxed pace. This trip is characterized by shorter walks, later starts, and longer breaks.
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Giant Anteater — Photo: John A. Kaye |
Venezuela, Hato Pinero New Year, December 27, 2007-January 4, 2008 with Jeri Langham, $3145 from Caracas; SOLD OUT
Venezuela, Hato Pinero (R & E), February 16-23, 2008 with David Ascanio, $2810 from Caracas.
Venezuela: Hato Pinero New Year, December 27, 2008-January 4, 2009 with Jeri Langham and David Ascanio, Fee TBA.
Eastern Venezuela
This tour has become known as the “Harpy Eagle tour” and we have had excellent success in finding this magnificent eagle here; but eastern Venezuela also offers a stunning lineup of large, showy birds, and some of the most spectacular scenery on the continent. It is the tepui mountains, with their sheer, vertical sides and flat tops, that give this ancient landscape?this legendary land of “El Dorado”?its distinctive appearance. Further, the tepuis harbor one of the highest degrees of avian endemism in all of South America.
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Adult Harpy Eagle — Photo: Jim Brown |
Eastern Venezuela, February 25-March 7, 2008 with David Ascanio, $3565 from Caracas.
Summer Eastern Venezuela, June 18-28, 2008 with David Ascanio from Caracas, Fee TBA.
I have had wonderful birding experiences in Venezuela and it remains one of my favorite areas. I hope you’ll consider one of our tours there in 2008 or beyond.