Ecuador: February 27 – March 8, 2016

As the manager of roughly 6 birding tours a year to Ecuador I decided a trip to the country was long overdue. My first and only visit to the country took place 16 years prior and my bird list probably didn’t top more than 40 species in the 5 days I was there. With a short break after my Jan-Feb tour run it took little persuading to get Jake Mohlmann, Corey Mitchell, and their friend Rachel Woodward to join me on a trip to the East Slope.  We would basically follow our regularly scheduled tour itinerary with 1 night extra at Cabanas San Isidro and Wildsumaco Lodges. I much prefer montane habitats over lowland jungle for its cooler temperatures and lack of biting insects.  While the diversity isn’t comparable to that of the lowlands the quality of birds is still high and most importantly, hummingbirds actually visit feeders which makes for easy viewing.

The trip began in Puembo (Quito suburb) with a drive up to Papallacta pass and a stop to look for the Seedsnipe at the towers (15,000 feet).  Unfortunately, we didn’t quite luck out with the weather (cloudy, windy, misting) and the birds eluded us requiring another trip up at the end of our stay.  With roughly 10,000 feet of altitude change during the course of the week the habitats and bird composition were ever-changing.    

We spent the better part of three days birding at and around Cabanas San Isidro. The lodge grounds were probably the best and we managed to find some mixed flocks complete with colorful stuff like Emerald Toucanet and Blue-winged Mountain-Tanager, and not-so-colorful (but still subtly beautiful) birds like Montane Woodcreeper and Azara’s Spinetail. The light near the parking area brought in the San Isidro owl and the lingering insects provided a feast for mixed flocks in the morning.  Some of the best birding was spent by the parking area as mixed flocks came in to feed then proceeded on to be quickly replaced by another group.

 Wildsumaco was warm and humid, but sunny while we were there. An entirely new set of hummingbirds awaited us on their back porch feeders, including a rare vagrant from the Amazon lowlands, a Rufous-throated Sapphire. It’s really something when great birds can be seen while enjoying a cold beer. We like to call it civilized. But, sometimes we can’t watch birds while holding a beer, so we walked out from the lodge on some trails into the interior of the foothill rainforest. We also sometimes just walked along the roads where the edge-favoring birds were easy to see. Some of the big distinctive things we saw included Military and Chestnut-fronted Macaws, Yellow-throated Toucans, and Red-headed Barbets. Also at the lodge were a troop of Brown-mantled Tamarin monkeys who came in to the feeding stations in the trees, which are services by a rope and pulley.

After a few glorious days birding the trails and visiting the feeder during our downtime, we left for Guango Lodge, which would be our last accommodation of the trip.  The hummingbird feeders weren’t explosive, but we got some nice new things like Tyrian Metaltail and Buff-tailed Coronet. Around the lodge there were gangs of Turquoise Jays and Mountain Caciques, and a Gray-breasted Mountain-Toucan. Perhaps our contribution to the “weird list” was a wayward Horned Screamer found by Jake, perched at the top of a tree across the road, thousands of altitudinal feet above its usual haunts in the lowlands.

On our final day we finished up around Guango Lodge then made another attempt to the towers. It looked nice up there and fortunately the weather held up.  We drove through places that last week had been completely invisible through the fog, now exposed into vistas of the surrounding mountains and valleys, even a little corner of Quito far below. This time, with the weather on our side, we quickly found a pair of Rufous-bellied Seedsnipes. This bizarre bird being one of the few that lives exclusively in some of the most blasted, rugged terrain in the high Ecuadorian Andes. Finding it, and with such ease, was a fitting end to a great trip of birding with good friends.