We spent a few hours birding an unbirded road within the Amazon rainforest near the "oil town" of Lumbaqui. The birding was slow, with the legendary barrage of sound that you would expect from an Amazonian site completely missing, with just a "mute" dawn experienced by us today. A constant backdrop however were the noisy troops of Squirrel Monkeys "whistling" and crashing through the trees by the deserted roadside. The birding was desperately slow until Nick Athanas picked up a group of Scaled Pigeons hanging out in the treetops, and better still Iain Campbell noticed a massive Ornate Hawk-Eagle sitting majestically in a tree.
We then hit the long road back to the capital Quito, picking up few birds but some impressive volcanic sights along the way - well worth a stop or two. The snowy one is Cayambe, (that sits impressively above forest-cloaked Andean hillsides below, and the vast Amazon jungle framing it lower still stretching out onto the horizon), and the smokin' one is Reventador, one of Ecuador's more active volcanos that covered the local area in a layer of ash when it erupted spectacularly in November 2002.
1 comment:
just found your blog Sam - superb!
cheers P
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