FROM JAMES AND ANN WILLIAMS:
 

Barry,

 

I like the idea of learning more about where local birders go when they leave our area so, in the interest of promoting your idea of trip reports as a part of the web site, I’m sending along the following brief note.

 

Business necessitated a very short trip to Paraguay last year between Christmas and New Year’s.I was gone from December 27th. through the 30th. My work was completed with enough time to spend the morning of the 29th walking through the Botanical Gardens just on the edge of Asuncion.Parts of the gardens are not maintained and have become quite wild and attractive to forest dwellers.A visiting graduate student from The Netherlands kindly took me around.His name is Arne Lesterhuis and he is working with a local non-profit studying shorebird migration.His e-mail, and that of the organization, is guyra@highway.py.

 

We were out for about 4 hours in humid, still weather, temperature in the high 80’s.We used the Collin’s guidebook that Anne thought had lousy colors and drawings.

 

If anyone is planning a first time trip to Paraguay I know a good hotel in Asuncion.Accommodations in the countryside are generally primitive although I understand hunters visit the woods and plains and have encouraged the development of camps.

 

Birds we saw in our all too brief walk included:

 
 

Southern Screamer

Black Vulture

Plumbeous Kite

Roadside Hawk

Crested Caracara

Rock Dove

House Sparrow

White-tipped Dove

Monk Parakeet

Canary-winged Parakeet

Squirrel Cuckoo

Stripped Cuckoo

Guria Cuckoo

Glittering-bellied Emerald Hummingbird

Little Woodpecker

Fieldflicker

Pale Crested Woodpecker

Narrow-billed Woodcreeper

Rufous Homero

Pearly-vented Tody Tyrant

Brown-crested Flycatcher

Great Kiskadee

Boat-billed Flycatcher

Variegated Flycatcher

Tropical Kingbird

White-winged Becard

Brown-chested Martin

House Wren (not “ours”)

Fawn Breasted Wren

Creamy-bellied Thrush

Chalk-browed Mockingbird

Greater Ani

Rufous-browed Pepper Shrike

Sayacar Tanager

Red-crested Cardinal

Red-crested Finch

Saffron Finch

Rufous-collared Sparrow

Bay-winged Cowbird

Shiny Cowbird

Great Egret