Fabrice Schmitt on the first known photographs of the Colombian Speckled Tree-rat taken on the 2015 Colombia: The Santa Marta Mountains tour

The Santa Marta tour is obviously a fantastic tour for birding, but like any trip in the tropics, one encounters other wonderful wildlife: amazing butterflies, riveting reptiles and great mammals such as Cotton-top Tamarin or Colombian Red Howler.

Cotton-top Tamarin

During our 2015 tour we stopped at Isla Salamanca National Park, and when the local rangers realized we were interested in all living creatures, they found for us a pair of rodents. We had great views of these two little mammals, standing in a tree only 2 meters overhead. Thanks to the fantastic Louise Emmons book ‘Neotropical Rainforest Mammals’, they were rapidly identified as Colombian Speckled Tree-rat.

Colombian Speckled Tree-rat

Back home, I posted a few pictures on my Flickr account, between pictures of Black-cheeked Mountain-tanager, Russet-throated Puffbird, Golden-breasted Fruiteater and many more birds seen during that tour.

Black-cheeked Mountain-tanager

Russet-throated Puffbird

Golden-breasted Fuiteater

That was supposed to be the end of the story, but luckily, Louise Emmons saw these pictures and advised me that they are probably the only pictures of living Colombian Speckled Tree-rat! Actually, it is a rare mammals in collections too; only 10 specimens exist in museums!

What a surprise: the ‘drab long-tailed arboreal rat’ suddenly became the ‘first photograph ever of a Colombian Speckled Tree-rat’!

I doubt our rat encounter will make many people jealous, but the story illustrate how little we know about the wildlife in South America. Any trip in the Neotropics can bring a few discoveries, and that is one of the reasons I love so much coming here! I cannot wait to return.