Lima Birding Tours: Pucusana & Mini-Pelagic Tour

Our Pucusana & Mini-Pelagic tour is the easiest way to add true seabirds to a Lima trip — a gentle, sheltered half-day on the Humboldt Current without the cost, distance or seasickness of a full offshore pelagic. We leave the city before dawn and drive an hour south to Pucusana, a working fishing village on a sheltered bay, then head out by boat into the cold, plankton-rich upwelling that makes the Peruvian coast one of the most productive seabird waters on Earth. In a single morning you can pair the tubenoses and marine mammals of the open water with the rocky-islet specialists of Isla Pucusana, then finish with relaxed birding in the nearby Azpitia Valley — the most bird-diverse Lima day trip available before lunch.

The boat trip is the heart of the tour. Out over the upwelling within about 15 km of shore we search for the Peruvian Diving-Petrel — the tiny, whirring speciality of the Humboldt Current — alongside Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters and a run of storm-petrels: Wilson's, Elliot's, Wedge-rumped, Markham's and Ringed. In the cooler months the same water can produce Waved Albatross, Pintado (Cape) Petrel, Southern and Northern Giant-Petrels and Slender-billed Prion, while Swallow-tailed Gull, Chilean Skua and jaegers hunt overhead and pods of Dusky, Common and Bottlenose Dolphins — with Humpback Whales in season — move through below.

Closer in, we work Isla Pucusana and its guano islets for the Humboldt Current's coastal seabirds: Humboldt Penguin, Peruvian and Blue-footed Boobies, Guanay, Red-legged and Neotropic Cormorants, Peruvian Pelican, Inca Tern and Blackish and American Oystercatchers, with the endemic Surf Cinclodes scrambling over the wave-washed rocks and South American Sea-lions hauled out below. It is point-blank seabird photography in sheltered water, ideal for anyone who wants the full Humboldt experience without a long, rough day at sea.

Back on land, after lunch in Pucusana town, we make the short drive to the Azpitia Valley on the Río Mala, where desert scrub and riverside thickets hold a completely different cast — Amazilia and Oasis Hummingbirds, Peruvian Sheartail, Purple-collared Woodstar, Long-tailed Mockingbird, dry-country seedeaters and Harris's Hawk. Between the boat, the shore and the valley, our three free eBird checklists for this tour — the Pucusana coastal list, the mini-pelagic seabird list and the Azpitia Valley list — are the complete record of what turns up on the coast, the open water and the valley. Groups are small, the boat is sheltered and the walking is easy, and we are back in Lima by mid-afternoon.