A treat for you: A visit to Lomalinda, thanks to a video!

 

May 8 is Global Big Day. (Click on that link to learn all about it.) While you can participate in Global Big Day in your own location, others around the world will be doing the same.

 

AND, thanks to a Facebook video, you can make a brief trip to Lomalinda for Global Big Day. (If you’ve read Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, you know Lomalinda is an out-of-the-way spot in vast open plains in central Colombia, South America, where Dave and I and our two small children lived for three years.)

 

Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology planned the Global Big Day international competition and last year, 2020, Colombia won the global birding contest for the fourth year in a row as birdwatchers recorded 1,440 species! (Other sources say Colombia has more than 1,958 species of birds, more than any other country.)

 

According to the video, more than 160 species of birds live in that little cluster of hills known as Lomalinda (“pretty hill” in Spanish).

 

Why did we live and work in Lomalinda? It was the home base for extensively trained linguists who worked for many years among illiterate indigenous people groups and put into writing educational, medical, agricultural, and religious materials to benefit those groups. And it took place in an especially lovely place—lovely birds, flowers, trees, scenery, animals, insects, fish . . . on and on.

 

You’ll enjoy another short video about birds throughout the departamento (state) of Meta, where Lomalinda is located. Click on “Meta Colombia is the new hotspot for birding.”)

 

In that video, in addition to seeing the area’s beautiful birds, you’ll experience:

• the geography and plantlife of the area and,
• the llanero music in the background—especially enjoyable!—and,
• what it’s like to listen to someone communicating with you in Spanish.

 

What fun! Enjoy these videos!