The Early Bird...

Amazon birding (and so much more) - unparalleled opportunities!    

Photos: All courtesy of Tom Murray and taken during the July 2025 birding expedition. From right to left, top to bottom: Couroupita guianensis, the cannonball tree; pygmy marmosets grooming; clearspot bluewing dragonfly; Nycerella sp. jumping spider; Bothriopsis bilineatus (2-lined forest viper); masked crimson tanager.

Peru has an amazing biological diversity across numerous taxa - frogs, reptiles, plants, mammals, insects, fish, and of course birds. Globally, it is in 2^nd place after Colombia for having the most species of birds (around 1,900, or ~15% of all the bird species globally), with more being described or reported from Peruvian territory every year. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen (and mist-netted, i.e., captured and released) an undescribed antbird species, but that is another story and another expedition!

In our early years, we conducted an annual Christmas Bird Count at one of our field stations. Changes in airline schedules and holiday pricing ended up putting an end to that, but the birds are still there!  In July 2025, we ran a prototype birding trip as a fund-raiser for operating and maintaining our field stations. The trip was a blast. The participants were super-fun and enthusiastic, and we found some quality birds, as the photos in this post attest. The species count was about 220 species in 11 days - not super high (full disclosure!) - but the quality of birds was. And, if you want to look at species of birds seen per dollar spent, this was a very good deal.

 There are lots of (very) high-end birding expeditions to Peru (or South America in general) that all but guarantee 400-450 species of birds in the space of 14 to 20 days. You pay for that, of course – there are often several flights involved, 2 to 4-star hotels, and on-the-spot hot (top-notch, that is, stop fantasizing!) birding experts who have mapped out exactly where and when to see x, y and z bird specialties. Such trips start at $6-8K, and don’t include many meals, tips, bar, and the like. If you want really high end, be prepared to shell out $11,500 per person, double occupancy for a 12-day Amazon boat trip…sell your children and mortgage the house if you must. As is standard, you also must fly yourself to the starting point.

On many trips, you change habitats almost daily – often along an altitudinal gradient, so that increases the opportunity for adding new species very rapidly.

The Amazon lowlands are a different story. We are in the Department of Loreto, which has a total bird count approaching a very respectable 800 species – a new tinamou species was very recently described just across the border in Brazil, and it is likely that it occurs in adjacent Peru, so the list grows every year. Loreto is about ¾’s the size of California, and the elevation ranges from 70m to 220m (220’ to 720’). Not much of an altitudinal gradient, and rather than elevation determining the distribution of bird species, river barriers are what separate out numerous pairs of sister species. The Amazon, Napo, Marañon and Ucayali Rivers are all obstacles to the movement of non-migratory forest-based birds, many of which will not even cross a small clearing to say nothing of a mile-wide river. As a side note, ~700 bird species have been recorded from California, but the topography and habitat variability is vastly different than Loreto, and the Peruvian Amazon does not border on any ocean either, so marine birds are not present.

Just for a bit of comparison, here is the USA superimposed on the Amazon Basin. Iquitos is about where Salt Lake City, Utah, would be located, and Loreto comprises the north-eastern third of Peru.

While the totality of Loreto can be considered to be humid lowland rainforest, it is far from homogenous and bird distributions reflect this. We are still trying to figure out what habitat features birds are cueing in on - many species have extremely patchy distributions tied to soil nutrients, vegetation type, and various mysterious factors. Some of the main "habitat" environments are as follows:

·      Urban landscapes – cities, towns, villages – We’ll start with this since your arrival point will be the city of Iquitos with a population of ~600,000 people. A surprising number of bird species can be seen within and at the edges of the city, and resident birds are quite habituated to people. Ubiquitous residents include purple-throated euphonias, blue-gray tanagers, red-capped cardinals, white-eyed parakeets, smooth-billed anis and the always present great kiskadees and tropical kingbirds. Iquitos is also one of the best locations for adding peregrine falcon, American barn owl, limpkin, snail kite, lesser hornero and orange-headed tanager to your Loreto list.

·      Rivers and sandbars – transportation in the region is almost entirely by boat, so travelers have many opportunities to observe many of the most conspicuous birds, including several species of kingfisher, swallows, shorebirds, herons and egrets, and many seasonal migrants (both austral and boreal) including fork-tailed flycatchers, barn swallows, purple and southern martins, pectoral and buff-breasted sandpipers, and osprey. My personal favorite residents are pied plovers and oriole blackbirds. Rivers are also the best place to see many species that can be hard to see in forested areas themselves, including many parrots and macaws, numerous raptors, and even the Amazonian umbrellabird (I once witnessed a peregrine harassing an umbrellabird as it flew across a river).

Photos: All courtesy of Tom Murray and taken during the July 2025 birding expedition. From right to left, top to bottom: White winged swallow; white-headed marsh tyrant; large-billed tern (center) and yellow-billed tern (left); red-breasted meadowlark; red-and-white spinetail; yellow-hooded blackbird; yellow-browed sparrow; swallow-wing puffbird, horned screamer; capped heron. 

River islands – young second-growth to mature island forest. There are about 35 bird species that are mostly or entirely restricted to these habitats, although some of those are now spreading into human created secondary areas in upland areas. Various spinetails, flycatchers, woodcreepers, woodpeckers, antbirds and tanager are among the river island specialists that are never going to be encountered in primary forest habitats.

·      White-sand forest – another habitat that is very restricted in area are ancient nutrient-poor sand-dunes with stunted or otherwise specialized vegetation. White-sand forests are home to many species of birds that are strictly restricted to these habitats. The most famous example is the critically endangered Iquitos gnatcatcher with fewer than ~300 individuals. I’ve searched unsuccessfully for this species several times. I’ll keep trying though!

Photos: Birds from the Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve (white-sands). All courtesy of Tom Murray and taken during the July 2025 birding expedition. From right to left, top to bottom: Red-necked woodpecker; many-banded aracari; paradise tanager (unfortunately not showing the brilliant red rump); green-backed trogon; black-necked red-cotinga; brown-banded puffbird.

·      Agricultural and upland secondary habitats. With a growing human population, these habitats are also increasing in area but can also be surprisingly productive in terms of bird sightings. Vegetation structure is lower (less warbler-neck), farmers always leave useful trees standing, and polyculture is the norm, with a mixture of root, vegetable, grain and fruit crops growing together. Such areas can be one of the more productive locations for seeing hummingbird and seedeater species.

·      Primary forest – this of course, is the Holy Grail of Amazon birding but it can be challenging. You hear far more birds than you see, and it takes a long time to learn all the calls (here comes the Merlin app to the rescue, but Merlin DOES make mistakes!). Some species are just so incredibly rare that seeing one will be a stroke of luck – ground-cuckoos, for instance. For others, we have known locations where the chance of a sighting is increased – harpy eagle, lanceolated monklet and agami heron fall into that category. Persistence is the key – you can walk the same trail several times and add new species on each visit – don’t assume that because you spent three hours there yesterday, that you’ve seen all there is to see. With luck you’ll run into a mixed species flock which can be as aggravating as it is exciting. Where do you look? What bird do you focus on? Who are you missing? Or you might run into an army ant swarm with all the attendant ant-following birds. Very exciting. Just watch where you are standing (rubber boots rule!).

Photos: A bit of a grab-bag of birds, but most are forest based birds. All courtesy of Tom Murray and taken during the July 2025 birding expedition. From right to left, top to bottom: yellow-tufted woodpecker; white-throated toucan; white-eared jacamar; wedge-billed woodcreeper; thick-billed euphonia; slate-colored hawk; scarlet macaw; rufous-capped nunlet; plum-throated cotinga; pheasant cuckoo; least grebe; king vulture; hoatzin; great antshrike; crimson-crested woodpecker; barred antshrike; dusky-headed parakeet; Amazonian umbrellabird, bare-necked fruit-crow.

I am currently (Dec 2025) putting together the logistics and costs for a September 2026 birding trip when both austral and northern migrants will be overlapping. River islands will be dry and accessible (without knee deep mud!), and the weather should be ideal (mostly dry with perhaps a mid-afternoon rain at most). In addition to some land- and boat-based (accommodations on board) birding, I’m looking to add an optional several days out of Lima including a pelagic trip if the logistics can be arranged. Add to that a visit to Tarapoto and Moyobomba in the eastern foothills of the Andes at the end of the Amazon portion of the trip, and we’ll reach that 400-450 species for a lot less than the high-end trips charge. Expect early mornings, modest accommodations, good food and even better company. If you’d like to be kept updated, let me know at devon@projectamazonas.org, and I’ll add you to my trip contact list.