gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

After our late arrival at Cerulea, a reserve set up to preserve the wintering grounds of the increasingly rare Cerulean Warbler, we were woken up by torrential rain during the night. We spent much of the first morning watching the hummingbird feeders from the shelter of our veranda and scored with several rare species.

Rod watching birds from the comfort of the veranda.

It looks like the road to Cerulea could disappear after another downpour.

Scrub Tanagers are fairly common in secondary growth.

Thick-billed Euphonia male

A colourful, if common bird is the Bannaquit. As it has no close relatives it has been placed in its own family.

The rain didn’t affect the hummingbirds which could be watched coming to the feeders from the shelter of our veranda. This is the widespread White-naped Jacobin.

Cinnamon-rumped Hummingbird is much rarer and was a life bird for me.

Later we made our first of three hikes up the hill to the reserve proper. An extensive set off hummingbird feeders in the forest allowed views of shyer species like Black Inca , but by far the best birds were the two Gorgetted Wood-quail seen feeding on the track. Wood-quails are usually ‘heard-onlys’ and this is only the second time I have seen any wood-quail species.

A climb of 300m up the hillside took us to some primary forest where we saw a range of goodies like Gorgetted Wood-quail and this Black Inca. A large hummingbird feeder inside the forest makes these elusive hummers easy to see., even if the light conditions weren’t optimal for photography.

The metallic colours of this Violet-crowned Woodnymph are brought out by the flash.

Over the next two days we made two more visits to the forest, making the tough ascent before dawn. We saw some wonderful birds like Brown-billed Scythebill, Highland Tinamou, Bicoloured Antvireo and Yellow-throated Spadebill, all lifers for me and none of which I photographed. As I indicated earlier my old Lumix camera is giving up the ghost and I have taken very few quality pictures with it and soon after this I gave up on it completely. I have ordered a replacement which I hope arrives soon.