Ecuador, December 2, Bella Vista and Quinde Luna

We concentrated our day around the lodge at Bella Vista and the surrounding roads.

The morning started with the birds coming in to eat the moths and other insects attracted to the lights in the parking lot.

The Golden-crowned Flycatcher was the first of 15 life birds for the day.

There are a lot of woodcreepers in Central and South America.  This is a Strong-billed, a new bird to us.

Blue-winged Mountain-tanager.  Bright and beautiful.  Also a lot of yellow.

Smoke-coloured Pewee.  More brown than grey, but maybe smoke is brown sometimes. This bird stayed here a long time doing the flycatcher thing, leaving and coming back. So much more obliging than warblers or vireos.

A Dusky Chlorospingus.

Or is this a Dusky Chlorospingus?

 

Or most likely they both are. Some of the identifications get a little tricky, especially a month or two later.  If one is not a chlorospingus I'd guess it would be a female Capped Conebill.

This one I am sure of.  It is a Sharpe's Wren, formerly known as Sepia Brown Wren.  I like it's old name better.

 A warbler that sat still.  A Russet-crowned Warbler, with yellow.

This is a Cinnamon Flycatcher.  We saw these several times during our trip, but at Bella Vista one bird had a favourite spot outside the dining room where it stayed seemingly forever doing its flycatcher thing.  Such a cute bird, possibly my favourite flycatcher.

In the afternoon when the other birds were having their siestas we went to Quinde Luna to watch hummingbirds.  It was a wonderful time.  This is a Violet-tailed Sylph, an adult male as the females don't have to carry around that beautiful, long tail.

Another long-tailed bird, the Booted Racket-tail. Once again, the females don't have the long tails with the rackets at the end, but they do wear the boots.

 

While at Quinde Luna a Red-billed Parrot settled on the top of a nearby tree.  We didn't see parrots close up on this trip, but were able to admire them through our guide's scope as well as take distant photos.

The last bird of the day was found on our way back to the lodge.  One of the target birds of our group and a wonderfully colourful member of the toucan family, the Plate-billed Mountain-toucan.  Once again a distant viewing.

Northwest Ecuador, Day 1, December 1, 2018

Our days of lazing around came to an end.  Our first day found us on the road by 6:30 a.m. heading for the Yanacocha Reserve. We spent time on trails and at feeders, but we definitely saw more birds at the feeders.  Who said there is no free lunch?

Lots of opportunities for the birds that come in my favourite colour, yellow.
These are Yellow-breasted Brushfinches.

The Black-chested Mountain-Tanager has a good combination of colours too, with yellow putting on a good show.

I don't know if I could ever make a favourite bird list, but if I did, the Spectacled Redstart would have to be close to the top.  In the top 50 anyway!  So cute!

The Superciliaried Hemispingus is not only yellow but should get a prize for one of the most tongue-twisting names. I understand that the first part of its name refers to its eyebrows.

Naturally not all the great birds are yellow.  Red is a good colour, too, as in this Scarlet-bellied Mountain-Tanager.

And then there are the hummingbirds.  I haven't yet seen one with yellow, but the Shining Sunbeam should be with a name like that.

The Great Sapphirewing is as great as its name suggests.

I love this Buff-winged Starfrontlet. Seems to be having a bad day.

 We can see the purple throat on the male below.  The buff coloured rectangles are lost in the blur of the wings.

No, these weren't all the birds from December 1.  The group's official count was 54 birds of which 30 were lifers for us. 

Puembo, Ecuador

We rose the day before our official birding trip began to see our first Ecuadorian bird, the Eared Dove, at a feeder next to our lodge. This is the first of the many thousands of photos I took in the two weeks we spent in the mostly highlands of northern Ecuador.

It looks a lot like a gathering of Mourning Doves, though I don't recall ever seeing them at my feeder.  Maybe if I stocked it with corn?

Joining them to eat the spillover grain on the ground were Saffron Finches, our only sighting of these birds on our trip.

At the nearby fruit feeders we saw the first members of what is likely the most colourful family of birds we were to see.  Though not as brightly coloured as many of its relatives, this Scrub Tanager was a special sighting as it has a very small range.  We were told that the best place to see this bird is at the Puembo Birding Garden where we were staying.  Indeed, while we were there a guide from a lodge we would be visiting in a couple of days came just to see this bird. (We did get a second, much poorer sighting, on our last day in Ecuador at another lodge in the same city.)

A brighter tanager also visited the feeders during what we called Day 0 in Ecuador. This was our only sighting of the Blue-and-yellow Tanager on the trip.

There were three hummingbirds among the 17 birds we saw this day.  The one that stayed around for the most photographs was the Sparkling Violetear.

Eleven of the 17 day birds were lifers for us.  We might have seen more birds that day but it rained quite enthusiastically in the afternoon so we chose resting over birding in the rain.  Probably a good decision given the pace of the rest of our trip.