Colombia program
Looking for the Tumaco Seedeater
The Tumaco Seedeater was known for decades from a handful of museum specimens. When the bird was seen again in the 1990s, the Center helped support surveys of its Pacific coastal habitat.
A bird known from specimens
Four skins from Tumaco, collected in 1921, were the only evidence of the bird for most of a century. Then, in 1994, Paul Salaman and Robert Giles found it alive. The sighting changed the species' status from lost to merely overlooked, and it raised new questions about range, population, and habitat.
The surveys
Two Colombian groups took on the field work: Asociacion Calidris and Sociedad Antioquena de Ornitologia. Their search covered the Ensenada de Tumaco, the northern Narino coast, and sections of Sanquianga National Park.
Field teams looked for seedeaters in coastal scrub, mangrove edges, and open grassy areas. The surveys also recorded other birds that share the same habitat, including a possible race of the Ruddy breasted Seedeater.
What the surveys found
The early results in the Center's record suggest two more possible populations. The teams also found an unusual seedeater with white on the rump, perhaps a form of the Ruddy breasted Seedeater.
Those findings were preliminary, and the record calls for further work in late 2000 and early 2001. Even so, they show why museum records alone are not enough. A bird can be rare and still persist in places that have not been surveyed.
A coastal habitat under pressure
The Pacific lowlands of Colombia are shaped by tides, rivers, mangroves, and farming. The same places that support seedeaters are used by people. Conservation here depends on local knowledge, careful survey work, and land use decisions that leave room for birds.
The Center's role was modest: it helped fund and coordinate a survey by researchers who knew the region. That model, small support for local expertise, runs through much of the Center's work.