Thick-billed seed finch female, Uraba, Colombia

Moving on to the next location in our Colombia 2017 set: Uraba. In our trip throughout the Northwest, this one would be the most disputed in terms of safety, due to still relatively recent incidents and militias claiming territory. By the time we arrived there, these issues were solved about 8 months earlier.

Onwards to more positive things: we met our local guides here, two brothers named the Band brothers. One of them is calm, calculating, a scientist and zoologist, a powerhouse of knowledge. The other half of these brothers is a crazy enthusiastic guy that knows no fear and has an endless excitement in discovering nature. A wonderful pair! Combined they have unique local knowledge. They also have unique ties with the indigenous community, which is required to even be allowed to access some lands, as some of it is private.

Uraba isn't some enormous large jungle where you settle in a single location. It's a larger partly urbanized area with modern infrastructure, including well maintained roads. So you can just drive to various small parks, locations, public and private. We visited several sub locations, of which this is the first one. Situated behind a school was a large area of open and mixed forest, which turned out to be a paradise for birding.