Manu Road Short 6 Days

Birds of Peru Tours has designed a short birding tour along the Manu Road. This tour is for 6 full days to experience the diversity along the mountains of Manu and part of the high rainforest. where the birds are genuinely breathtaking. We should encounter more than 350 species, including some endemic, species of highly limited range distribution, specialists and mixed flocks assemblages.

The ruins at Machu Picchu tower above the rushing waters of the Rio Urubamba snaking its way fifteen-hundred feet below. By staying one night at 6500 feet, on the outskirts of Aguas Calientes we will be able to experience the site both culturally and for its great birding. Although the ruins alone are worth the visit, the subtropical slopes and the narrow gorge below are surprisingly good for birds.

Manu Biosphere Reserve is a vast, spellbinding wilderness in southeastern Peru replete with some of the richest flora and fauna to be found anywhere in South America. It offers the uncontained possibilities of an entire ecosystem, from golden grasslands of the Puna zone, down the eastern Andean slope through cloaking montane cloud forest, to seemingly endless lowland rainforest.

Starting in Cusco valley, we climb the endemic-rich arid slopes to the high Puna zone and then descend from treeline through temperate and subtropical cloud forest, down to the foothill zone at the eastern base of the Andes. Based at several comfortable lodges, we bird up and down one of the most famous birding routes in the world Manu Road, which ribbons its way through a wilderness full of flagship east-slope species like Lyre-tailed Nightjar, Red-and-white Antpitta, Andean Cock-of-the-rock, White-collared Jay, Golden Tanager and Versicolored Barbet, and a handful of endemics and regional specialties. Then we have a full day of birding in upper tropical rainforest while based at the elevation of 1600 feet, with hummingbirds like Rufous-crested Coquette and Violet-fronted Brilliant, at garden feeders, Tawny-bellied Screech-Owls and potoos calling outside our rooms at night, and great trail systems leading from the lodges into several different habitat types.