Ecuador, December 6, Rio Silanche

December 6 gave us the canopy tower experience.  We were up in the air with the birds.  I don't know how the builders knew the birds would stick around after the tower was built, but they did.  We had a packed breakfast with us and were planning to eat it while leisurely watching a bird flit by.  Instead, the birds came too quickly for more than a bite now and then.  It was great.  118 species of birds in the day, 52 were new trip birds, and 30 were lifers.

Orange-fronted Barbet.  A pair of these stayed around a long time.  Perhaps we looked as strange to them as they did to us.

 The Guayaquil Woodpecker with a beautiful red head.

A stunning Black-faced Dacnis.

A Golden-bellied Warbler.

A White-tailed Trogon.

The rather strange looking Masked Tityra.

A Yellow-throated Toucan

Ecuador, Dec. 5, Mashpi Amagusa Reserve

It was Day 5 of our Ecuador experience, our first day to discover what the term cloud forest really means.  We were introduced to the spectacle of rapidly advancing clouds, or what we normally call fog.  It came and hid everything.  When we were especially blessed it also left.


My chart shows we saw 37 new trip birds on this day, 27 of these were lifers for Ray and me.  Do I remember all 37 of these birds?  Did I see them all clearly?  Do I have photographs of them all?  Well, not so much.  I have added 17 photos to my best birds file. 1 of those is so bad I find it painful to look at, and 3 others are more parts of birds than an actual picture of a bird.

One of the early birds in the day was a Choco Tyrannulet, one of the endemic birds to western Ecuador and Columbia.

Three of my favourite birds of the whole trip were also seen on this day.  They included the Orange-breasted Fruiteater

 the Ornate Flycatcher

 and the Glistening Green Tanager.  Both this Tanager and the Fruiteater above are also Choco endemics.

I was excited to see this Striped Cuckoo, a cooperative bird that stuck around for several minutes.

 This Sooty-headed Tyrannulet is sitting on its nest. When we first arrived it appeared to be doing some housecleaning.

The strangest birds of the day were a colony of Oilbirds, roosting in a cleft between rocks before going out at night to find their diet of fruit by echo location.

I am straying from the constant stream of birds to show some fog shots.  We stopped along the road for breakfast some time after 7 a.m.  I took this photo at 7:25 as the clouds began rolling into a valley that had been completely clear a few moments before.

At 7:35, in approximately the same spot.

One can imagine how difficult this can make finding birds.  I have enough trouble when it is clear.

We had a similar experience later in the day when the clouds rolled in on the fruit feeders.

These Crimson-rumped Toucanets were difficult to see. (The Toucan Barbets in the further away trees were totally invisible.)

 But with a little help from the software the birds appeared, though the background did not.

And for a non avian creature.  How would you like to meet this earthworm in your garden?

Ecuador, Day 4

On December 4th we drove to the Refugio Paz de las Aves where we were blessed by the appearance of five different antpittas.  However we started with a visit to the lek of the Cocks-of-the-Rock. It was everything I'd hoped.  Lots of male birds making a lot of noise.  All that could have improved it was a visit from a female. Dianne and I had one major goal in our photos.  Get the beak.  She succeeded better than I did, but if you look closely and not exactly where you expect you might glimpse a tiny pale orange bill.

Because I took so many thousands of photos on our Ecuadorian trip, I am trying to delete multiples. With some birds I can do this, but not very well with the Cocks-of-the-rock.  They are so red, and so  plushy looking and so unlike anything I had ever seen before.

Leaving the lek, Angel Paz and his brother Rodrigo called, or lured, in some birds that are very difficult to see randomly in the forest.

The first of these was Maria the Giant Antpitta.  We are not certain that this is the first Giant Antpitta named Maria.  We aren't even sure it is a female.  But neither of those things is important.

Our next discovery were three Dark-backed Wood-Quails.  They were fed on the edge of the mountain path where we were walking.  The guide worked diligently to hide the bananas that had lured them in so that we could pretend we'd seen them unexpectedly.  It does make for a better photo. I try to do the same thing at the more conventional feeders.

 

Then it was time for the Rufous-breasted Anttrush, a very pretty bird showing similar colours to the previous birds, just arranged differently. They must be colours that fade well into the forest floor.

The next hour or so was all Antpittas. First was the Yellow-breasted Antpitta.  Not bright yellow, but so pretty.

Then the Chestnut-crowned Antpitta, the one I was most hopeful to see before we arrived.

The Ochre-breasted Antpitta is cute and little.

The last of our five antpittas was the Moustached Antpitta.  More serious looking than the others.

Following this we wandered along some paths which revealed the Powerful Woodpecker

and a Toucan Barbet, one of my target birds of this trip. It has as many colours asJoseph's coat.

We watched this bird fly into a hole in a tree, assume that it fed a baby, and fly out again.

Later in the day we saw a few new birds including a Golden-olive Woodpecker,

a Pale-legged Hornero

and a Coopman's Elaenia whose biggest claim to fame was that it was recently separated from the Lesser Elaenia and so was a new bird for our guide as well. This is yet another member of that huge family of birds, flycatchers.

Day 4 had 30 new trip birds including 16 life birds for us.

Ecuador Day 3, Bella Vista to Sachatamia

The morning of our third day was spent around Bella Vista. We saw some of the same birds again, but spent more time looking for new ones.

One of our first life birds of the day was also the first of several using the same word in its name, the Plumbeous Pigeon. Plumbeous means dull gray such as the colour of lead.  This could have been called the Grey Dove or the Plumbeous Dove, but the namer appeared to appreciate the alliteration.

There is a family of birds that uses an interesting form of camouflage to hide in the woods.  The Common Potoo looks so much like a piece of a tree that it is very easy to miss.  Fortunately we were the recipients of inside information so our guide, or possibly our driver, found this fellow with not a lot of trouble.  The trouble came when our inexperienced eyes searched him out from quite a distance away.  As you can see, there were trees separating us but I managed to find a hole in the foliage.

Coronets are another family of birds that share a characteristic.  In this case it is the habit of holding their wings in the air for a second after they land.  If pixels can be wasted, I wasted a lot of them trying to get this Buff-tailed Coronet with its wings up.

 

 In the afternoon we went to the San Tadeo Feeders where, appropriately, we saw this male White-lined Tanager feeding a juvenile almost as big as him. With the banana right beside them, I wondered why he didn't just say "Help yourself" but maybe the youngster was younger than it looked.

 

This Golden Tanager adds colour to our day birds. We had seen one on day 2 but this was our best photo opportunity.

 

 This Masked Water-tyrant was an unexpected sight at the feeders.  We didn't see either of the pair eating bananas, but they were bathing in a little fountain.

 

 The female Flame-rumped Tanager has no red on her to suggest flames, but then, neither does her mate.  A lot of flames are yellow, anyway.

 

 The male is striking with his black suit and yellow contrasts.

 

 The Three-striped Warbler, seen earlier in a tree, was also easier to photograph as it waited its turn for the pool.

This was the third of ten days on which we were able to see Slate-throated Redstarts. Another bird that could win awards for cuteness.

We counted 73 different species on Day 3, 22 were new trip birds and 15 were lifers for Ray and me.

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.