‘Bogota Sunangel’ photos on Colombia Birding website

I was scheduled to interview James Currie of Birding Adventures TV this week, but received an email saying that a trip to Colombia had been extended because he’d been offered a chance to go to Rogitama Biodiversidad Nature Reserve (in Arcabuco, Boyacá) to film the near-mythic Bogota Sunangel! The Bogota Sunangel is a hummingbird known from only one specimen purchased in 1909 and which for decades was thought to be a hybrid until DNA work two years ago proved it was indeed a full species, one assumed to be extinct because of massive habitat change and the fact it hadn’t been since the specimen was taken…anyway, to cut a long story short, a blog with six excellent photographs and a video has been posted on Colombia Birding (in Spanish and English) describing its possible rediscovery. More work needs to be done on determining whether the three birds seen are indeed Bogota Sunangels rather (as has been suggested) than hybrids or abberrant-plumaged sylphs – but if they are Rogitama is on the verge of becoming one of the Neotropics most twitched reserves…