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Hello and welcome to the American Birding Podcast from the American Birding Association.

I'm Nate Swick.

I am back from a somewhat whirlwind trip to the western Andes of Columbia.

I was there for the Columbia Bird Fair. I mentioned it a little last week in the context of

messing up a previous episode, but it is a fascinating event that I will talk about more coming up.

I have an interview with one of the founders that will run next week.

I think we've talked about Columbia more than any country other than the United States and Canada on this podcast.

And I guess there's a good reason for it.

In the seven years since we started the American Birding podcast, I can't think of a destination that has blown up as a, as an ecotourism hot spot

more than Columbia. Part of that is that Columbia is after decades of conflict, increasingly

open to tourists interested in promoting birding and nature as a reason to visit.

There's buy-in at all levels of community and government.

It is a fascinating thing to witness because it's birds as an avenue to bringing sustainable

jobs to the people and also as a source of pride for Colombians. I had the opportunity to not

only bird with American and European birders like you normally do in the tropics and with local Colombian guides, but also with Colombian burders, regular Colombian birders, of which there are many and for whom the bird fair exists.

In fact, it was one day I went out. I was the only non-Spanish speaker on a field trip full of

Colombians. The guides were skilled hobby birders, not professional guides. Spanish is not great,

and I ended up missing a couple of birds because I didn't recognize what people were looking at

in the moment. You don't realize how much you sort of rely on the cues of overhearing things that people are saying.

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