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