Day 14 Lima and the coast

Our last day in Peru and it was a long one as we checked out of our hotel at 5am for the short journey to the airport. We arrived we we’d started the trip almost two weeks earlier, at a hot, busy airport in Lima. We’d arranged some last day birding on the coast so we didn’t have to spend the whole day in the airport and we were soon heading slowly through the traffic jams of Lima south onto the Pan America Highway with the Pacific Ocean alongside. We managed to see Franklin’s and Belcher’s Gull, Neotropic Cormorant, Inca Tern and Peruvian Booby from the car before we’d made our first stop.

Inca Tern

At a lookout over the ocean there were dozens of very close Inca Terns as well as better views of the afore-mentioned seabirds. We carried on to our main stop – Villa Marshes, which consists of several large lagoons just inshore of the beach. The spits and islands were covered by hundreds, if not thousands of Franklin’s Gulls and there were plenty of new waterbirds to look for.

Franklin's Gull

We unearthed the first Yellow-billed Night-Heron of the trip plus a small flock of Andean Duck, a stifftail very similar to Ruddy Duck, quite a few waders including American Oystercatcher, Killdeer plus some introduced Yellow-hooded Blackbirds, a couple of stunning Great Grebes and some distant Chilean Flamingos, while out to sea there were lots of Elegant Terns.

American Oystercatcher

Yellow-hooded Blackbird

Black Skimmer

Great Grebe

We drove back to the centre and took a boardwalk trail where we enticed out a Many-coloured Rush-Tyrant - a small rainbow-coloured flycatcher - a sun-drying Neotropic Cormorant, close-up Pied-billed Grebe and a Plumbeous Rail which crossed the boardwalk in front of us to a marshy pool. 

Neotropic Cormorant

Pied-billed Grebe

Plumbeous Rail

All too soon it was time to leave and we drove down to a bustling fishing port where we had a boat trip around a rocky island. 

The first stretch was on the open sea which was very bumpy but it soon settled down and we could enjoy our last bit of birding. There were seabirds in view constantly, either crammed onto the ledges of the island or flying past us out to sea. Most of these were Peruvian Boobies but we also saw a small number of Humboldt Penguins, a single Blackish Oystercatcher, Guanay and Red-legged Cormorants and our last endemic of the trip, a Peruvian Surf Cincloides.

Peruvian Booby

Humboldt Penguin

Belcher's Gull (aka Band-tailed Gull)

Guanay Cormorant

Red-legged Cormorant

Blackish Oystercatcher

Peruvian Surf Cincloides

A few Blue-footed Boobies were perched on the rocks, perhaps just visiting from the Galapagos where they breed, while huge South American Sea-Lions slept on the lower slopes.

Blue-footed Booby

South American Sea-Lions

As we approached the harbour the boat owner threw scraps of fish overboard and very quickly we were surrounded by squabbling Peruvian Pelicans fighting each other for the flesh, like a scene from The Walking Dead.

Peruvian Pelicans

Turnstones

Once back on dry land we walked through the throng of people in the harbour down to a restaurant for our last meal together. Then it was back north through the traffic into Lima. The traffic jams did at least give us time to locate and identify a flock of about 100 Broad-winged Hawks, apparently an unusual sight over the Capital. Once we’d dropped Jane off, we headed back to the airport for our flight on KLM to Amsterdam and onto the UK. It was a great trip which totalled 373 species, and thanks go to our guide, Jose Antonio, our drivers and all at Partnership for International Birding for making it go smoothly.