As I noted a post or two ago, I’ve been spending a lot of time sorting, editing, and keywording some older images. The whole process, while at times tedious, has been to relive some very good memories. One of those times has been thinking about a particularly glorious morning of bird photography on Isla Taquile in Lake Titicaca, Peru. It isn’t a birding destination, far from it. Most visitors to the small island in the middle of the big, high elevation lake drop in on a tour boat for a couple of hours, have a basic lunch, buy a handicraft and then take off. Due to this daily influx and the rather poor experience had by many travellers, Taquile sometimes gets the reputation of being too “touristy”. It is a completely different story, if you opt to spend the night, as I did, on a trip a few years ago. By about 3 in the afternoon, every tourist had re-boarded their boats, and headed back to Puno, except me. I’d opted to spend the night in a strange, hobbit-like guest house with a friendly family of Quechua speaking locals. I spent the next day on the island with the locals, making some friends, and portraits of the people, their unique costumes and lifestyles. But the next morning after a long night of rain, I went after birds.
Isla Taquile has been occupied by people since… Well who knows when? The Incas lived there before the current Quechua residents, and before that was a pre-Incan culture. So a long, long time. What that means is that the landscape is hardly pristine. There is little native Puna habitat, instead dominated by the terraced Inca hillsides still used for growing crops, gardens, and occasional stands of introduced Eucalyptus. Nonetheless, a surprising number of native birds have adapted to this human-created environment and are thriving rather happily. The morning I made these photos, there was glorious cloudy light, perfect for bird photography. When it started to burn off around mid-morning I was sorely disappointed. It was great while it lasted.
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Ahhhh! Beautiful photos, Dave! Reminds me of my time on Isla Taquile. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to spend the night there, and were forced to participate in the mass tourist afternoon exodus. But the hours I spent on that tiny, magical island in the middle of Lake Titicaca are some of the best of the entire Peru trip. I think I saw all the birds you show there, too…except the flowerpiercer. But that one I got in Cuzco. Beautiful pics!