Colombia — The World’s Most Bird-Rich Country
Colombia holds a record that no other country on Earth can claim: with over 1,900 recorded bird species, it is the most avian-diverse nation in the world. That number accounts for roughly 20 percent of all bird species known to science, packed into a country that spans tropical lowlands, Andean cloud forests, Pacific coastlines, and Amazon basin. For a photographer, it is almost overwhelming.
I spent one and a half weeks exploring Colombia’s forests and river edges, focusing primarily on its extraordinary diversity of songbirds and hummingbirds. Colombia is home to well over 160 hummingbird species, more than anywhere else on the planet, ranging from tiny sheartails to large, slow-moving hermits. Each habitat holds its own community of species, and moving between elevations can feel like moving between entirely different worlds.
One of the most memorable encounters was with the Blue-crowned Motmot (Momotus momota), a bird that rewards patience. Motmots are medium-sized, remarkably calm birds that sit still for long periods in the forest interior, their distinctive racket-tipped tail feathers swaying slowly from side to side. Watching one in the filtered light of a Colombian forest is one of those quiet, unhurried wildlife moments that stays with you.
Colombia’s biodiversity exists under significant pressure. Despite a peace agreement in 2016 that ended decades of armed conflict, deforestation has accelerated in former conflict zones as land became accessible to agriculture and cattle farming. Colombia loses an estimated 170,000 hectares of forest per year, much of it in areas that were previously protected by the presence of armed groups. The species that depend on those forests have no such protection. Conservation in Colombia is not a slow, abstract challenge. It is urgent.
