Cuzco Birding Tours: Sacred Valley

Our Sacred Valley Birding Tour is the finest single day of birdwatching within reach of Cusco — a first-light departure that trades the city for the high lakes, cloud-forest sanctuaries and river canyons of the Valle Sagrado de los Incas. In one relaxed day you climb and drop through nearly a thousand metres of elevation, moving between roughly 2,800 and 3,800 metres and, with that, between three completely different habitats: a high-Andean lake, a flowering hummingbird sanctuary and a torrent-fed river gorge. Each holds its own community of birds — from puna waterfowl to some of the most sought-after Peruvian endemics of the southern Andes — and the day suits first-time visitors, serious listers and photographers alike, travelling by private vehicle with an expert bilingual guide.

We begin with the one-hour drive up onto the Chinchero plateau to Lago Piuray, a beautiful high-Andean lake ringed by reedbeds, pasture and Inca terracing. In the cool of the morning the open water and shallows are busy with Andean waterfowl — Andean Goose, Puna Teal, Yellow-billed Pintail, Cinnamon and Yellow-billed Teal, Andean Duck and rafts of Slate-colored Coot — while Silvery and White-tufted Grebes, Andean Gull, Andean Lapwing and Plumbeous Rail work the margins and around twenty Chilean Flamingos are often out on the far side. Puna and Black-faced Ibis, Andean Flicker, Spot-winged Pigeon and Burrowing Owl feed in the surrounding fields, and the reeds hold Many-colored Rush-Tyrant, Wren-like Rushbird, Brown-bellied Swallow and Greenish Yellow-Finch.

Dropping off the plateau into the Sacred Valley proper, we spend the middle of the morning at the Yanahuara hummingbird sanctuary — the cloud-forest 'Ensifera' camp and the neighbouring ACP Mantanay reserve, one of the best places in southern Peru for point-blank hummingbirds. The feeders and flowering slopes are a blur of Giant Hummingbird — the largest hummingbird on Earth — Sparkling Violetear, Tyrian Metaltail, Shining Sunbeam and the endemic White-tufted Sunbeam, and, with luck, the sanctuary's namesake Sword-billed Hummingbird, the only bird alive with a bill longer than its body. This is also the place for a run of Peruvian endemics — the Green-and-white Hummingbird, the giant Bearded Mountaineer at its tobacco flowers, Creamy-crested and Marcapata Spinetails, White-browed Tit-Spinetail and Chestnut-breasted Mountain-Finch — while a skulking Undulated Antpitta and Red-crested Cotinga reward patience at the forest edge.

After a relaxed lunch at a local restaurant in the valley, we continue to Pachar, where the Río Vilcanota — the Urubamba — cuts white water through steep Andean slopes. This fast, clear river is the home of the superb Torrent Duck, regularly seen riding the rapids or resting on midstream boulders, often with a Torrent Tyrannulet flitting along the same stretch. The riverside scrub, gardens and Inca terraces around Pachar and nearby Ollantaytambo add Andean Swift, Green-tailed Trainbearer, White-browed Chat-Tyrant, Blue-and-yellow Tanager and Peruvian Sierra-Finch, and — for those keeping a Cusco endemic list — the chance of Inca Wren, Cuzco Brushfinch, Rusty-fronted Canastero and Unstreaked Tit-Tyrant in the dry montane thickets.

Across the day you can reasonably hope for sixty or more species, and the wider area — as our three free eBird checklists for these sites show — has produced well over three hundred species and a dozen Peruvian endemics between them. We keep every group small, just one to four guests, travel by private vehicle so we can linger wherever the birds are, and log our sightings to eBird so you leave with a complete record of the day. We are back in Cusco before nightfall, after what is, for many visitors, the birding highlight of their time in the Peruvian Andes.