International devote birders who share a passion for identifying rare species are taking part of the fourth annual “Big Day” birth watching tournament being celebrated across Peru’s northernmost regions of Tumbes and Piura.
The event is being carried out with bird-watchers attempting to see as many species as possible in 24 hours through their binoculars throughout Tumbes’s National Mangrove Sanctuary, the nation's largest mangrove ecosystem, and Piura’s Amotape Hills National Park.
The country’s export and tourism promotion board (Promperu) stressed the 7,340-acre watery wilderness and the 225,600-acre valuable park, managed by the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (Sernanp), are remarkable for their hundreds of species of birds and butterflies.
“These two national parks have a rich bird life as the former has 300 species while the latter, a whopping 400; which is the reason why the sites were chosen for hosting this year’s edition of the competition,” Promperu said in an statement released early today.
The teams which are participating in the bird event left at 05:00 local time El Caucho Biological Station heading to the Amotape Hills provided with binoculars, cameras, bird travel guide for Peru and bird sound recording equipment.
The competition judge and expert bird-watcher, Barry Walker, highlighted that Big Day’s goal is to promote nature tourism through birdwatching and birding tourism nationwide.
So far, there have been three editions of the Big Day, a birding championship. The first one was held in the Manu National Park, in November 2013, where competitors were able to observe 186 species.
The following editions were carried out early this year in the regions of Arequipa and Tingo Maria, were participants recorded 140 bird species and 188 bird species, respectively.
(END) SRP/JCR/MAO/LOG
Published: 9/18/2014