Tosser on the Trails…(Tandayapa Bird Lodge, Ecuador): 26 Feb 2009

With the group being a relaxed crowd of Finnish photographers, I was surprised to find a single taker for an early morning walk along the Tandayapa Bird Lodge trails. We settled in to the hide with another independent birder who was staying at the lodge, to check again for the Scaled Antpittas that we’ seen a few days before, although were quickly distracted by a number of calling birds in the area. We left the hide therefore in pursuit of these. The first one, a Tawny-throated Leaftosser, a rarish bird on the lodge property tested our patience, as it called incessantly but only gave snatches of itself in the shady forest undergrowth. Patience wearing a little thin, a call a bit further upslope on the Potoo trail had us dropping the leaftosser like the proverbial hot rock. If it would not perform we figured we had bigger fish to fry with the Ochre-breasted Antpitta whistling a short distance away. A little use of the tape and this dumpy little antpitta popped up in some near vines and continued to call away, allowing us to see the characteristic grallaricula ‘shimmy’, where they wiggle their breast from side to side. Not long after having tried and failed to attempt at seeing the leaftosser again, we walked along the trail and bumped straight into a Tawny-throated Leaftosser sat right out in the open in the middle of the path, where we watched it probing away with its oversized bill in the muddy banks on the side of the trail. Along the same trail we also found the regular ‘lek’ of a male Wedge-billed Hummingbird, and were also treated to the site of a strutting Rufous-breasted Antthrush walking along the trail ahead of us.