Saturday 21st/Sunday 22nd November. At the hotel in Quito I met the other members of the forthcoming tour, all two of them. Mike Martin from Perth in Scotland and our local guide Gabriel Bucheli Suarez of Quito. If I could personally choose my ideal colleagues for a bird tour I could not do better than these two. Mike, a consultant social worker and a keen birder is excellent company, and Gabriel is the young, university educated guide with encyclopaedic knowledge of the birds, and importantly of their calls.
Mike, myself and Gabriel at las Gralarias Lodge, by Gabriel's excellent Nissan 4 x 4 Photo courtesy of Mike Martin
Gabriel picked Mike and I up at six in the morning and drove us to Las Gralarias Lodge. I won't go into detail here about the Lodge, the Reserve and the las Gralarias foundation but interested parties can follow the link, http://reservalasgralarias.com/history_2.html All I will say is that it stands on its own nature reserve and the Lodge is spacious, comfortable and welcoming, and the food is outstanding.
After settling in and watching the Hummingbirds around the various feeders for a while we set off to walk some of the forest trails through the Reserve. The first bird of note was this beautiful Masked Trogon, a superb introduction to the birds of Las Gralarias.
After settling in and watching the Hummingbirds around the various feeders for a while we set off to walk some of the forest trails through the Reserve. The first bird of note was this beautiful Masked Trogon, a superb introduction to the birds of Las Gralarias.
Masked Trogon
Even better was to come. In a stretch of deep forest Gabriel said "See the bird on that tall, dead treestump". Well I looked but all I saw was the treestump. So Gabriel said take a closer look and then I saw it, a Common Potoo. What an extraordinary sight. Later we could hear the haunting and sonorous call of the Potoo at night, a lovely sound.
Common Potoo with chick
If you look closely you can see a Chick nestled snugly between the adult bird's legs. Potoos remain frozen in this position to remain inconspicuous during daylight then at night take off to catch flying insects. They build no nest and lay just one egg, so at night the egg or chick is left on the stump or branch, whatever the bird has chosen as a roost. It would be easy to walk right past a Potoo and never see it, the camouflage is that good.
Swallow Tailed Kite
Another bird I was pleased to see through a gap in the trees was this very elegant Swallow Tailed Kite, I had seen them before in Florida but it is definitely a good bird to see at any time, pure black and white with a long forked tail, nice.
Grey Breasted Wood Wren
Back at the Lodge I was lucky to capture a Grey Breasted Wood Wren in the gardens before it made a sharp exit. It's a bird we heard all the time but rarely caught a glimpse of.
Sickle Winged Guan
Here's an interesting garden bird. This Sickle Winged Guan would sneak in from the forest to raid the bananas on the fruit feeder. Quite a weight on the bird table. At the first sign of any human though it was off so I had to use some stealth to capture this shot by lurking around the corner of the house.
Violet Tailed Sylph
There are an incredible 133 species of Hummingbird in Ecuador, many of them endemic. With feeders at every lodge and at many other locations too they become part of the scenery, and after a while one hardly notices them, I really didn't try to photograph them all it was just too much. However the Violet Tailed Sylph is one of the most beautiful species so I did make an effort in this case. Here is my best shot. You can see why I liked it.
The Oilbird Grotto
There are many strange birds in Ecuador and the Oilbird is definitely one of the strangest. It looks like a cross between an owl, a a falcon and a nightjar. It is nocturnal and although it looks fierce in fact it only eats fruit. Oilbird groups spend the daylight hours in caves or dark rocky places such as this narrow, overganging ravine that I call a grotto, although I wouldn't expect to see Santa in here.
Oilbirds - steatornis caripensis
In order to photograph these birds it was necessary to use flash. I don't like doing this but it had no visible effect upon them. Perhaps they are used to it as they are something of a tourist attraction, one has to arrange a visit in advance and there is a fee to the landowner. It is located near the town of Chontal in Northern Pichincha which was about one and a half hours drive from our lodge in the Mindo/Tandayapa area. It was worth the trip
Oilbirds
Oilbirds are the only nocturnal fruit feeding birds in the World. They eat the fruits of the oil palm and tropical laurels and chicks were formerly collected and boiled down for their oil, hence the name. They have specially adapted eyesight but also navigate by echolocation, like bats, the only bird known to do so. Their call has been likened to the screams of tortured men but they also make loud clicking noises for echolocation purposes.
What more can I say? a fascinating bird and a species well worth seeing.
What more can I say? a fascinating bird and a species well worth seeing.
Black Vulture
After this we did some general birding from the car as we made our way home along some small country roads, and I remember that there were not many photo opportunities because of intermittent rain and poor light. However I did ask Gabriel to stop for a few seconds so I could photograph a Black Vulture, posing nicely with outstretched wings on a palm frond. Also a handsome Roadside Hawk showed nicely. We saw many of these fine looking raptors, probably because as their name suggests, they hang out by the roadsides.
Roadside Hawk
At some stage in the afternoon we stopped somewhere with fruit feeders as I have shots of several small birds taking advantage of free food. The one below is a Chestnut Capped Brush Finch.
Chestnut Capped Brush Finch
Blue Winged Mountain Tanager The Blue Winged Mountain Tanager is another fine looking member of this large and usually spectacular family. There are at least 93 species of Tanager plus many other closely related cousins so they always brighten up a birding session. Regardless of habitat or location there are always tanagers to seen.
Velvet Purple Coronet
The same could be said for Hummingbirds and although they are most easily observed at feeders we came across hummers at virtually every location, from high Andes to Amazon rain forest and everything in between. One can be trekking through dense jungle and hummers whizz past your head like bees. Trouble is they move so fast you rarely get a chance to identify them in those circumstances. This one however sat nicely for a photo which was pleasing as the Velvet purple Coronet is not one of the most common varieties.
Many other birds are seen than the ones illustrated by photographs here. Examples of other birds seen today are Barred Hawk, Spotted Sandpiper, White Tipped Dove, Squirrel Cuckoo, Bronze Winged Parrots, Chestnut Collared Swifts, Lesser Swallow Tailed Swift,Tawny Bellied Hermit, Rufous Tailed and Loja Hummingbirds, Fawn Breasted Brilliant, Buff Tailed Coronet, Gorgeted Sunangel,Booted Rackettail, Pale Mandibled Aracari, Pacific Hornero, Slaty Spinetail,Common Tody, Cinnamon, Social and Golden Crowned Flycatchers, Cinnamon Becard, Scaled Fruiteater,Brown Capped Vireo, Blue & White Swallow, Blackburnian Warbler, Slate Throated Whitestart, Masked & White Sided Flowerpiercers, Orange Bellied Euphonia, Beryl Spangled, Flame Faced, Swallow, Blue Capped, lemon Rumped, White Lined and Dusky Bush Tanagers, Variable Seed Eater, Orange Billed and Rufous Collared Sparrows. I have even omitted some of the common species but one can see just what birding is like in Ecuador.
