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.