Andean foothills

 Monday, November 14, 2022

Our final full day in Peru featured a birding expedition to the north of Lima. The Loma de Lachay reserve covers a variety of environments in the western foothills of the Andes. As previously mentioned, the coastline including Lima is very dry, a desert in which it literally never rains. During our 90 minute drive north this morning, it rained lightly for about two minutes: our guide said it was the first rain he’d seen in 2-3 years!  The narrow but heavily populated coastline gets all its water from streams coming down out of the Andes. 

 Lima is also cloudy 9 months of the year, and the clouds tend to hover at about 500 meters above sea level. So once the elevation of the foothills exceeds 500 meters, there is a bit of a cloud forest effect. Grasses, scrubby bushes and a native tree called the Tara grow at these elevations. The trees tend to cluster around exposed rock faces, which collect more condensation and drip it to the soil, creating better growing conditions in their immediate vicinity. Eighty years ago, when there were more trees, the area was more lush and hosted deer, mountain lions and guanacos. Many of the trees were cut down to help build the coastal railroad, and now the area only hosts foxes, vizcacha (a long tailed rabbit like creature) and small rodents.  It also hosts more birds than might be expected from such a desolate landscape, including mountain parakeets.  Our second stop in the same reserve was truly desert, rocky and filled with an endemic cactus, but even there we saw a few bird species and two vizcacha.  

Pictured: mountain parakeets, vizcacha, Andean tinamou, black-chested buzzard-eagle taking off, oasis hummingbird