Amazon to Andes; Topaz to Sunbeam (Ecuador): 18 Sept 2017

One of the great advantages of birding in a country as small as Ecuador (similar in size to US state of Colorado, smaller than Italy), which also has a decent road network, is that you can move from one sort of birding area to another rather swiftly. That is exactly what we did on this day, beginning our day with some dawn time birding at 300m/980ft in a hilly part of the humid Amazon jungle, but ending the day in the high Andes, in the positively cold Antisana area (in view of some distant snow cones), at nearly 11,600ft/3550m. Waking up at Gareno Lodge, having already visited their centrepiece attraction, the currently nesting Harpy Eagles, we did some local birding around their garden to start with. Once again, this yielded Fiery Topaz, a single male hovering overhead repeatedly, but typically refusing to land somewhere he could be photographed; (i.e. always in the near pitch-black forest understory. Grey-breasted Sabrewing was also visiting some flowers in the garden. With little else happening, we set off for an area near Tena, in the hope of a Sungrebe, on a lagoon there. En-route, a pair of Laughing Falcons were clearly worth stopping for...

While the day had opened without rain, this changed as we arrived on site, when the skies emptied above us. We sheltered for a while, waited for the rain to ease and then set off by boat for the Sungrebe. Unfortunately, during this rainy boat ride, we did not find that Amazonian wraith, but did see a feisty Poeppig’s Woolly Monkey, which seemed to take particular objection to us...

Meanwhile, an acrobatic White-bellied Spider-Monkey, doing gymnastics style movements overheads that US Olympic champion Simone Biles would be proud of. Nearby, a Graells's (Napo) Tamarin hugged the trunk of a tree tight, before suddenly launching into the jungle, and evaporating into thin air!

While nothing out of the ordinary was seen, any boat ride in the Amazon is exciting and magnetic, and we enjoyed some “Jurassic birds”, in the form of the many hissing Hoatzins that lumbered around the cecropias lining the banks of the lagoon, and a White-necked Puffbird sitting typically high on an open branch, with all the horrific backlight that goes with that; (the constant foe of nature photographers). If you have not seen a Hoatzin, this species/monotypic family is well worth observing, they simply feel like they are a species that existed while T Rex wandered the Earth, and has refused to evolve ever since! I mean this as a compliment by the way, I love Hoatzins, as they are unique, bizarre, and emblematic of the Amazon, a place that every keen birder should adore, as I do. 

An excellent traditional meal was taken for lunch (Maito de tilapia), prepared by our guide Pedro. This took the form of fish wrapped tightly within the leaves of a particular tree species, and cooked over hot coals, making it incredibly flavoursome, and combined with yucca and hot red chiles.  

With one of the party flying out of Quito that night, we had decisions to make; with limited time remaining, do we retry for the sungrebes at this new site (stated as normally reliable), or head straight for the high Andes and another target, the largest hummingbird on Earth, the Scarlet Tanager-sized, Giant Hummingbird? The odds were quickly weighed up, and with the hummingbird being nearly guaranteed, it was decided that we should in the direction of the 5700m (18,715ft)-high Antisana volcano, and a certain café that sits within its shadow. As we traveled there from our position in Amazonian Tena, the time to get there ended up being a little longer than expected, making it a little tense in terms of bagging a last big bird for the tour participant. However, we arrived at Tambo Condor restaurant in time, with 45 minutes of light still remaining in the day. Immediately, the stark change in climate was palpable, and we were scrambling for extra layers, in spite of a slim time limit left to find that Goliath among hummers. Before, we had even started to look for that though, we admired Ecuador’s national bird on the wing overhead – Andean Condor, another giant of the bird world, with a wingspan that can reach 10ft/3m, or to put it another way, considerably wider (nearly 3feet more than), the height of NBA player Shaquille O’Neal, (think about that)! We admired its grace, and lack of need to take a single wingbeat, as it cruised the entire length of the valley effortlessly. 

We then moved to a small set of hummingbird feeders at Tambo Condor, where even in the frigid temperatures creeping into the late afternoon, hummingbirds were bustling, chasing their final feeds of the day. The first we were to see were a pair of Shining Sunbeams, both revealing their metallic coloured rumps that give rise to its extravagant name. Then, just around the corner sat the object of our quest, a Giant Hummingbird sitting there like he owned the joint, and dwarfing the sunbeams at their nearby feeder. While sunbeams may take the trophy for looks, Giant Hummingbird is impressive for its girth, it is one big hummingbird. 

A great end to a day that started with us watching Fiery Topaz hovering in the humid air of the Amazon, and finished with Shining Sunbeams rushing around within the icy air of the high Andes, where condors still circled overhead…

It had been a very memorable 3 days of birding, which were never meant to be for me, were it not for a delayed bag on American Airlines that opened the way for me to travel to the Amazon with said bag, (and bins and camera!). The rest is now part of my own personal avian history.

The Fourth Musketeer…ECUADOR (23 Sept)

My first Ecuador tour in some time, started out with a dawn-time meet in Quito, before we were quickly heading further east up to Antisana National Park. This newly minted national park is a great spot to access high Andean birds close to Quito. It is also the Ecuadorian stronghold for the Andean Condor, one of the largest flying birds, with a huge wingspan, and also Ecuador’s national bird. And so it was only fit that this was an early feature of our time there – an adult rested on a cliff opposite the official condor viewing area, and several others were seen on the wing, exposing their white upper “shield” on the wing as they banked in the air, with never a wing flap seen, or needed, by these masters of the air to remain airborne. As we drove higher into the park, the scrub and trees that featured near the start, soon gave way to an Andean type of moorland known as paramo; we were now above the treeline. At such a heady altitude (around 4000m), the bird list diminishes somewhat, compared with the considerably richer forests downslope. However, a trip into Ecuador’s high Andes is about specialties of that environment, and not about building a big bird list. Stopping at an old, long abandoned, farm building, the usual birds were in attendance; a female Ecuadorian Hillstar zipped in and out of the ailing thatched roof, attending to its tiny nest, and Stout-billed and Chestnut-winged Cinclodes – both ground-dwelling “Ovenbirds” – regularly probed the earth below. 

A Many-striped Canastero, another bird from the Ovenbird family occurring at high altitudes in the Andes, also performed in the same area, as did several Andean Lapwings. We continued upwards though soon after, and quickly emerged onto the open plateau, where the endangered Black-faced (Andean) Ibis, can often be found. They were strangely inconspicuous on this day, however, with only two birds seen in flight, despite long looks at the grassy plain. This did pay off with stellar looks at several Carunculated Caracaras that foraged terrestrially. 

The same area also held a paltry 3 Andean Gulls, and offered up great looks at a Plain-capped (Paramo) Ground-Tyrant that preened in full view from the red-tiled roof of another abandoned building. Another roof provided a perch for an Aplomado Falcon that surveyed the surrounding paramo with intent. The same plains also tipped us off to some newly arrived boreal migrants, when a small flock of 15 Baird’s Sandpipers was revealed when they took flight. A toilet stop provided relief but also absurdly close views of a friendly local Tawny Antpitta, and also led us to see a pair of Andean Tit-Spinetails (yet another high Andean Ovenbird), nesting in the roof of the park’s information center. 

Our final session before lunch at a local hacienda was to scour Mica Lake, where small groups of Silvery Grebes bobbed among the shallow waves at the lake edge, while Andean Ruddy Ducks, Yellow-billed Pintail, and Andean Teal also featured there. A Blue-mantled Thornbill was also seen foraging on some inconspicuous roadside flowers.

In the afternoon, we left the park and following an unsuccessful search for Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, at a windswept, and cloud covered Papallacta, rolled into Guango Lodge, a known hummingbird hotspot. Before the day’s end we were admiring the flurries of these birds swarming the feeders. White-bellied Woodstars were plentiful, as were Tourmaline Sunangels, which were joined by Long-tailed Sylphs, Collared Incas, Buff-winged Starfrontlets, and the always aggressive Chestnut-breasted Coronet, that try as they might, could not keep the other species from their chosen feeder. Best of all, among the hummingbird horde, for me, were several Sword-billed Hummingbirds, a cartoon bird that I dreamed of seeing as a kid, following David Attenborough’s landmark programme on hummingbirds called “Birds of the Sun God”. We had no sun at the time, but we had long, long, looks, at that incredible, and barely believable bill, the longest of any bird (relative to body size), in the World.

My eBird List for Antisana

The Other Comet Landing...PERU (17th Sept.)

Mark and I were now alone to explore a completely new area for the both of us; the spectacular Santa Eulalia Valley, east of Lima. We had two days in which to target numerous lifers for us both, using this first day to explore the lower reaches, and also dip into a remnant patch of polylepis woodland higher up too.

My reason for staying on for this was the chance to find the rare and beautiful White-bellied Cinclodes, while Mark was particularly focused on Diademed Sandpiper-Plover, as he had not previously seen that one. However, both those birds would not be looked for until the next day, when we were set to drive up to the lofty heights of 4,600m, where those birds can be found.

Unlike the main tour, where I was along to learn from the "master", Nick Athanas, who was our guide for the trip, we were on our own here. Although, that was not entirely true, as we were armed with a driver with ten years of experience of taking birders into this area. His experience was evident from the word go; he knew the spots, and knew the English names of the birds at them, we simply needed to find them! Luckily, we found nearly everything we wanted over the two days, missing very little indeed.

While the driver was clearly experienced, his car clearly was too, perhaps a little experienced, as a muffler dropped off the car before we had reached our first stop! The road into the valley is a true challenge for any car, and it quickly took its toll on ours. Never mind though; the car was a little louder, but bearable, and we survived the two days unscathed thereafter. Our first stop was for a fourth Inca-Finch to add to the three we had seen on the main tour. The driver knew the spot, and so did the bird, which responded well, and sung in the open in front of us: Great Inca-Finch. Driving just a little further we moved into the valley bottom, where Pied-crested Tit-Tyrants quickly showed themselves, as did the first of two Bronze-tailed Comets for the day, and the first of many Rusty-bellied Brush-Finches; all three lifebirds for us both. Working our way higher, we checked a spot for the rare Rufous-breasted Warbling-Finch, and eventually dug out two of them, after getting cracking looks at several Canyon Canasteros in the same area. The supporting cast in the lower areas included Mourning Sierra-Finches, half a dozen Peruvian Sheartails, a number of Giant Hummingbirds too, and. finally, my first Andean Swift, (a group of 6 or so were seen really well later that day). 

We rounded out a great day, by visiting a patch of polylepis woodland, a known hang out for the rare endemic White-cheeked Cotinga. As expected, we had not sign of that bird, as it known to be easier in the morning, but we did track down a super Stripe-headed Antpitta, (my 5th new antpitta on this Peru trip), a few Andean Condors, a perched Variable Hawk, a single d'Orbigny's Chat-Tyrant, both Plain-breasted and Striated Earthcreepers, and another pair of Rusty-crowned Tit-Spinetails to add to the ones seen on the main tour.

It had been a whirlwind day, with 7 lifers for me, and numerous great birds, and generally plentiful birds around. However, the next day was to be the true landmark day of this short extension, which brought some classic birds at lofty elevations decorated with dramatic high Andean scenery too...