The following days were spent in the high temperate forests on the eastern side of the Andes. We had a morning on the rough Cerro Toledo road an area of lush temperate forest close to the treeline (c.3050m), where we were on the look out for a rare and localized hummingbird that somehow manages to eke a living out in this often foreboding climate. This chunky metaltail, the Neblina Metaltail proved not too difficult to find, when just a short distance from the car 3 or 4 birds were seen chasing each other around in the mist. Tougher though was getting the ‘clinching views’, although with a little playback we tempted in a single red-throated bird to a near snag that nailed it for us. Also up there we hunted for tanager flocks, and soon after found a group of chunky tanagers moving through the low temperate scrub, that held a gorgeous Golden-crowned Tanager, a couple of Black-chested Mountain-Tanagers, and the star of the bunch, a few bruising Masked Mountain-Tanagers. A pair of Mouse-colored Thistletails, a southern highland specialty was also in this same area. A little lower down the road we entered into the thick of the temperate forest and found a small party of Orange-banded Flycatchers, and a flock holding a number of Black-headed Hempispinguses and a Citrine Warbler, both special to the high forests on the east side of the Andes.
A pair of tits (Blue and Great) in a London park 30 years back changed my life; I became a birder, and an obsessive birder by the following weekend. Works like Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book and Richard Millington's A Twitcher's Diary helped in no small part to nurture this in my formative years.
30 years on I am still an avid birder but have also learnt to appreciate other sectors of the natural world, especially frogs and primates in particular, through the undoubted influence of David Attenborough The Great and others. I now work as a full-time professional tour leader for Tropical Birding Tours, and now reside in the Andes of Ecuador. I love my job, sharing birds with people provides every bit of a buzz as a lifebird, which, of course, still creates a wave of excitement every time. I have been lucky enough to see well over 6550 bird species on my travels, which does not make me any more talented than anyone else, just one that is always greedy and impatient for more, which has taken me to all seven continents, and always yearning for that ONE...MORE...B-I-R-D!
I use Swarovski binoculars & scope, & shoot with Canon 7D and Canon 400m f5.6L lens.
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