With an estimated 1,935 species of birds, Colombia boasts the world’s richest avifauna. Nearly 20 percent of the world’s bird species occur there, many of which are unique to that country. Join us for a program by Lynn Haugen and Julian Lee titled “From the Guajira Península to Otún Quimbaya: Birding the Colombian Andes” on December 6 at 7 PM in Harlan Hall, room 219, on the WNMU campus at 12th and Alabama Street.
Their search for birds took them to the rain forests and cloud forests of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an isolated mountain range in the north of the country. It includes the two highest mountains in Colombia: Pico Cristóbal Colón, 18,950 ft., and Pico Simón Bolívar, 18,497 ft., and is home to numerous endemic birds. In contrast to the wet slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the nearby Guajira Península is a harsh desert land of extreme aridity. Yet it, too, supports many endemic and near-endemic birds. It is also home to some 140,000 Wayuu, an indigenous people whom the Spanish were never able to subjugate.
Farther to the south, they spent several days in the Cordillera Central of the Andes, including the cloud forest site of Otún Quimbaya, named for certain pre-Colombian people of central Colombia. At Parque Nacional Los Nevados they searched Páramo habitats (alpine tundra) on the flanks of Volcán Nevado del Ruiz (elevation 17,457 ft.), a volcano that erupted in 1985, killing an estimated 25,000 people.
They spent their last full day in Colombia touring Bogotá (population 9,000,000+), including a visit to Parque Regional de Florida, where they added several more birds to their list. The tour included a tram ride to the top of a promontory that provides a 360° view of the city, and later they dined at a charming restaurant, the walls of which were decorated with whimsical images of duendes (elves or goblins). Lastly, they visited the Gold Museum, a state-of-the-art facility that attracts 500,000 visitors a year who come to see the amazing array of pre-Colombian gold objects on display.
Lynn Haugen grew up in La Canada-Flintridge, near the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. She received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in biology from California State University, Northridge, and her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Her doctoral dissertation, conducted over a period of two years in a remote sector of the Amazon rainforest of Peru, explored the reproductive biology of a little-known species of frog. Her research revealed an unusual form of biparental care of the developing tadpoles. Dr. Haugen is a professor in the Department of Natural Sciences at Western New Mexico University.
Julian Lee grew up in Bloomington, Indiana and San Francisco, California. He studied biology at the UC Davis, took a Master’s at San Diego State, and his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas. During his undergraduate years he was a seasonal employee with the U.S. Forest Service, working on a Hot Shot crew in southern California. Dr. Lee taught biology at the University of Miami for thirty years and is the author of two books on the amphibians and reptiles of the Yucatan Peninsula, both published by Cornell University Press.
The program is free and open to the public. Light refreshments follow. For additional information, send an email to swnmaudubon@gmail.com.