Hi Tweets:

Clarice and I took the stroll to El Triunfo with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours from
March 17 through 27. The reason I delayed so long in reporting it was that one of
the hikers, Don Roberson, was putting together a trip report on his website. It is now
finished, and I urge anyone interested in checking it out. Full of good stuff, photos,
descriptions, lists, etc. The address is:


http://montereybay.com/creagrus/eltriunfo02.html

I'll try to keep this short, as Don did a better job than I would ever do with general trip
reporting. A few personal observations from the two of us:

This is a truly special place. It does not get anything like the traffic you see at Monte
Verde or other developed cloud forest tourist sites. Visitation is limited, and last year
only 250 people went there. Victor has done an exceptional job opening it to birders
without overburdening either the place or the local people that depend on it. I have
never been on a better tropical birding trip, all things considered.

We have birded the American tropics many, many times, yet this trip showed us 50
lifers (and yes, we had already seen quetzals). 50 new species speaks for a high
concentrationof endemics. The Chipas highlands apparently allow for a sort of "sky
island" effect due to there natural history of forming actual islands before the Central
American land bridge was fully exposed.

The portion of the El Triunfo preserve that is open to visitation is a fairly large valley
just below the ridge top at the continental divide. It reminds me of many "alpine"
valleys such as you see forming basins just below the crest of the Cascades--except
of course for the vegetation. The cloud forest itself takes up a very narrow altitudinal
band pressed tightly against the slope of the ridge top itself. Of course, the
vegetation zone exists because Pacific winds force clouds to curl around the ridge
top and get trapped there as the main wind force cruises over the top. Main tree
groups are oaks and elms. You can, however, hardly see the tree trunks for the
epiphytes, ferns, and orchids.

This place crawls with resplendent quetzals. They called and displayed every day.
One evening a male looped about over the camp area calling, displaying, and
generally showing off in the sun. I saw as many as five at one time. People on the trip
saw horned guans every day. On my lucky morning I went out with Don, Victor, and
a guide and we saw six, including the same ones that are in Don's photos on the web
site. A family group of male, female, and two young hung about in clear view eating
mulberries. These are striking cracids; they must be fairly light weight to be so large
yet totally at home on small tree branches. Victor and I also saw another young male
display to a female. On another day I watched a highland guan in full display perform
his buzz saw sounding dive-- twice-- from treetops beside the trail.

The place also humbles you with those migrants we call "our" birds. By far the most
numerous bird species was Wilson's warbler. They were poking about every fern,
branch, twig, dirt clod-- everything. We saw many hundreds. There were also a
large concentration of Townsend's warblers and quite a few hermits. The horned
guans had to share their mulberries with Swainson's thrushes. One night we had a
storm blow in (very cold, windy, and rainy) and it obviously stressed the little guys as
they were packing for migration. The next morning the ground was moving with
Townsend's warblers and several different empid species. When we were walking
out we passed through a zone of practically pure willow leafed oaks-- and they were
alive with waves of Swainson's thrushes. You can read all you want about the
importance of these little valleys and ridges for migrants, but the system hits you with
its enormity when you sleep there.

We also got a bit of learning about shade grown coffee. Most of the preserve, below
the cloud forest, is open to coffee production. The trail exists as the main cross
mountain coffee route, and the clearing in the cloud forest, where the station sits,
was cut originally for a rest stop for coffee carrying horses. Coffee prices in general
are in the tank-- except for shade grown. As a result many plantations are cutting
understory and replacing it with coffee, and appear to be subsidizing their traditional
plantations that way. In short, it could be the shade grown market is in reality
accelerating cutting rather than replacing a clear cut system with another one. I
guess we will always be cutting that forest, so who knows what is really worse.

Go to this place if you can. Definitely worth the walk.

Jerry Broadus, PLS
Geometrix Surveying, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371