The last few days involved our Pacific Coast extension, a combination of birding ‘arid’ coastal scrub on the Santa Elena Peninsula (in the newly designated Santa Elena province) for a special group of passerines and a host of shorebirds, with more birding in the deciduous woods of the Tumbesian realm. We began on the Santa Elena, where as with elsewhere areas that would normally and often appear arid were far from that in this wet year in Ecuador. A carpet of green covered this coastal peninsula that was packed with birds in the full throws of breeding. Crimson-breasted Finches were frequently heard ‘jangling’ from the tops of the bushes, and frequent parties of Parrot-billed Seedeaters were encountered. Other specialties included a Short-tailed Woodstar or two, some smartly-dressed Collared Warbling-finches, four or more Short-tailed Field-Tyrants (a strange ‘leggy’, ground-dwelling flycatcher), noisy Necklaced Spinetails, Tumbesian Tyrannulets, white-winged West Peruvian Doves, a glaring Pacific Pygmy-Owl, and a few ‘horny’ Grey-and-white Tyrannulets. The place was just alive with birds at the height of the breeding season, and just a quick burst of a pygmy-owl tape bought in almost all our target species in one fowl swoop. On one particular occasion all the main species (with the exception of the owl) were gathered around angrily scolding the unseen owl.
With time to kill before a steamy seafood soup in Salinas, we scoured the salt lagoons for wintering shorebirds from the north. Numbers were not high for many of the species, although one lagoon with around 500 or more Wilson’s Phalaropes was quite a sight. Other shorebirds included Wilson’s Plover, Stilt Sandpipers, and a group of three Surfbirds roosting on some rocks along the shore of the Pacific Ocean. A large pink number in the centre of the lagoon though was what most caught the eye, a lonely looking Chilean Flamingo still hanging on in the area. A roadside wire produced a Pearl Kite clinging onto a recently caught lizard.
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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