Global Big Day 2015 at Los Amigos

June 21, 2015

A collared puffbird at Los Amigos on last month's Global Big Day. Photo by Jorge Valdez.
A collared puffbird at Los Amigos on last month’s Global Big Day. Photo by Jorge Valdez.

Wow, the results are in! Los Amigos Biological Station participated in this year’s Global Big Day on May 9th in a big way. Global Big Day a day on which birders worldwide attempt to record as many species of birds as possible within a 24-hour period.

The 4-person team at Los Amigos included University of Michigan Ph.D. candidate Sean Williams. “My backyard in the Peruvian Amazon held more than 500 species in an area the size of Central Park, and I could not extinguish the blazing thoughts of the species I would encounter that day,” he wrote in a blog about the experience. 

By the end of the day, birders had seen a total of 308 species at Los Amigos—the fifth highest recorded site total in the world! Peru was also the country that saw the most bird species, totalling 1177 in all, almost a hundred more than the next closest country. (By the way, the two southeastern regions where we work, Madre de Dios and Cusco, saw the most bird species within Peru!)