Tag Archives: Fuertes’s Parrot

Indigo-winged parrot aka Fuertes’s Parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi)

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The Fuertes’s Parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi), also known as the Indigo-winged Parrot, is a parrot which has a highly restricted range on the west slope of the Central Andes of Colombia.  You know a bird profile is going to be a challenge when Wikipedia doesn’t have a photo.  Birdlife does have a drawing I can hopefully use (link below).

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Fuertes’ Parrots are endemic to Colombia in an extremely challenging location to go birding with the bad weather and high altitude cloud forest.  See my description on how to find them on my post and the Birds of Passage blog.  Pereira or Santa Rosa de Cabal are the staging points, both can be easily reached by bus but you need a hired car-SUV to get to the habitat.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT FUERTES PARROTS

You can see some photos by professional photographers on some of these sites.

Wikipedia

World Parrot Trust

Birdlife

ProAves

World Land Trust

Birds of Passage

VIDEOS

On Youtube, I found a video taken by Peter Odekerken during his trip to Colombia.  He managed to get into the Giles Fuertes Reserve that I couldn’t get into.

You can see what a cute little bird this is!

You can see how well they blend into the trees but Oswaldo Cortes got a good clip.

One more clip by Alejandro Cartagena, very clear footage!

 

 

 

 

Quest For The Fuertes Parrot

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The rare and endangered Fuertes Parrot is highly sought after by birders in Colombia.  I knew that ProAves had a reserve south of Armenia, the Giles Fuertes Reserve.  I had contacted them to inquire about a visit but was told that the reserve was not open to visitors.  So I turned to eBird to see where other people had been seeing them and found a few sightings near the Termales San Vincente which was easily reached from Pereira or Santa Rosa de Cabal.  But what really turned this expedition around for me was finding a blog (Birds of Passage) by two American birders – Josh & Kathi who were traveling around South America in a camper van.

This is what it looks like from Pereira to Termales San Vincente, then the small road leading up the mountain to the Fuertes Parrot site.

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This post on their blog had detailed instructions on how to get to the Fuertes Parrot site!  Now all I needed was transport.  This was when I chose the Kolibri Hostel in Pereira as an overnight staging point.  I knew backpacker places would have drivers available at backpacker prices………….and they did!  Although I don’t remember the exact cost, it was around 130,000 COP for the morning and we would be dropped at the airport afterwards..

This is the junction of the Termales San Vincente and the road on the left is where you turn.

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This is the checkpoint at 3000m and it was manned.  We told them we were birding and there were no problems.  We signed in and back out again as we left.dscn3429

Rough road best done with an SUV at least.dscn3430 dscn3431 dscn3433 dscn3435

We kept driving past the farms as instructed.dscn3437 dscn3440

Drove over the little yellow bridge.dscn3442

Time we arrived after leaving Pereira at 5am.dscn3443 dscn3444

We drove slowly with windows and ears open.  I was dismayed with the weather, the clouds (yes it is a cloud forest) would make finding the parrots very difficult.dscn3447 dscn3452 dscn3463 dscn3466

We parked at a good vantage point and waited well over an hour with only this bird (whatever it is) being seen.img_6632

More waiting until FINALLY some Fuertes Parrots appeared out of the mist and flew into a tree.  I couldn’t get a focus on them.img_6638

They were flying from tree to tree but unfortunately came nowhere near us.img_6645 img_6650 img_6661 img_6670

Interesting group of people driving up the road.img_6676

Meanwhile the weather was getting worse and I was no longer hearing the parrots squawk and couldn’t see them flying anymore.  img_6683

We headed back down the mountain past the yellow bridge, weather getting worse by the minute.  I really HATE cloud forests, especially ones at high altitudes.  Why can’t these awesome birds pick more accessible places to live?img_6685

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We decided to visit the Termales San Vincente to see if there were any interesting birds.  As we got near, the heavens opened up so we weren’t able to walk around the grounds.dscn3457 dscn3458 dscn3459

This Andean Motmot felt sorry for us having such a lousy day so posed for a photo to cheer us up.dscn3460 dscn3461 dscn3463 dscn3466 dscn3467 dscn3469

Continuing back towards Santa Rosa, we found another Andean Motmot.img_6686 img_6689 img_6690

A pretty Fork-tailed Flycatcher on a wire.img_6692 img_6698

Random raptor in the mist.img_6702

It was still raining as we drove back through Santa Rosa.dscn3470 dscn3471 dscn3473 dscn3474 dscn3475 dscn3476 dscn3477 dscn3481

The end of the trip as we enter the Pereira airport.dscn3482 dscn3483 dscn3484

Fuertes’s Parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi)

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The Fuertes’s Parrot (Hapalopsittaca fuertesi), also known as Indigo-winged Parrot, is a critically endangered parrot which has a highly restricted range on the west slope of the Central Andes of Colombia.The Fuertes’s Parrot is about 24 cm longand is green with indigo wing feathers, red shoulders, and a blue crown. The bird’s pale ivory bill has chestnut feathers at the base.  It was rediscovered in 2002 after an absence of 91 years on the slopes of a volcano in Colombia.

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HELP THIS PARROT

For over 90 years, the Fuertes’s Parrot was thought to be extinct; it was the cause of great celebration when in 2002 a team of Colombian conservationists from Fundación ProAves, a WLT partner, rediscovered a small colony of 15 individuals clinging to existence on a small and highly fragmented patch of cloud forest habitat located above the town of Cajamarca in Central Colombia.

ProAves has worked tirelessly since then to save the species and in 2009 established the 361 acre Giles-Fuertes Nature Reserve to protect one of only two tiny surviving populations of parrot, as well as many other threatened birds and mammals that are dependent on these cloud forests.

It is now vitally important to protect a further 363 acres alongside Giles-Fuertes Nature Reserve. While the parrot’s core breeding colony is protected, the encroachment of pasturelands into the sensitive cloud forests surrounding the reserve threatens further fragmentation and destruction of key foraging and nesting areas for this magnificent parrot.