Back to Quito - August 5, 2010

After almost a week in Ecuador, many nights of waking up before 5 in the morning had conditioned us to wake up at ungodly intervals before dawn. Thus, although our alarm was set for the blissful hour of 5:35, we both woke up at 3, and 4, in the morning. Finally, we crawled out of bed to pouring torrential rain. We struggled to the dining room, a short walk from our cabin, where many cups of fresh hot coffee awaited us. After lingering awhile, we put on our jackets and hit the trails, rain be damned.

orchids are scattered about the cloud forest

Birding was slow, but a few beautiful flocks full of saffron-crowned and beryl-spangled tanagers (what names!) danced in the canopy overhead. After trying our luck birding the entrance road, we went for a walk through the mystical primary forest that envelops the property. Every limb was festooned with absurd quantities of epiphytes--a truly shocking amount of greenery. The rain started to let off, and we were treated to shafts of light piercing the canopy, highlighting the amazing complexity of the forest, with layers upon layers of leaves and vines, branches and flowers, some in shade, some pierced by sun, all wreathed in mist and cloud. Then the sky darkened over again and rain returned. Time for lunch.

Emily in the beautiful cloud forest of Cabanas San Isidro

As anticipated, lunch was spectacular: eggplant lasagna, fresh ravioli with basil, salad dressed with fresh naranjillo, and perfect plantain fritters. After gorging we walked the road once more, spying some perky flycatchers, beautiful trogons, and a toucanet, all hunkered down in the rain. As the rain picked up once more, we headed back to the cabin. It was time to return to Quito.

We gathered our gear and piled into our driver Miguel’s 10 seater van. Emily sat up front, and managed to keep up an intermittent conversation entirely in Spanish for the length of our 3 hour ride back up the Eastern slopes. The steep ascent to the high pass was graced with waterfalls that were now crashing through every sheer forested slope, flush with the recent rain. We picked our way up the road, avoiding the few rockslides that the weather had unleashed. Eventually, we entered a land of cold fog and tawny tussocks--a spitting image of County Donegal in Northwest Ireland, with alpacas replacing sheep. Finally we crested and started down into the inter-Andean plateau. As we dipped below the clouds we were greeted by hundreds of sun rays alighting on the valley below, with the sparkling edifices of greater Quito glinting in the distance.

entering the inter-Andean plateau from the East

Making our way to Quito, Miguel took us along the old Camino de Francisco Orellana--the same route that the Conquistadors, Incans and Quechans before them had used to travel back and forth from Quito’s lofty heights and the Oriente. The narrow cobbled road was lined with hand crafted rock-walls that might have been laid before Columbus was born. We stopped to look out at the sun slipping behind the volcanoes, and then headed in to the bustling traditional heart of Quito.

Miguel stopped and took Emily to buy some fritada, a luscious dish of deep fried pork, potatoes, corn, lima beans and plantains (our $2.50 serving was more than enough for two). I waited in the van so it would not be broken into--a task I doubt I was well suited for. The food was superb, however, and we made it to our hotel already full, and ready for bed. The next day we would enter the Amazon Rainforest.

looking back down the Camino de Orellana

The Suburban Wilds

This post is rather long, I hope you'll forgive me, but after spending some time recently wandering around the woods I grew up near, I felt compelled to write something about them.
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I grew up in the Maryland suburbs, where the natural world was experienced primarily as a smattering of wispy parks, bike paths through ribbons of second growth forests, and man made lakes sprinkled with paddle-boats and Canada geese. Even still, nature was a source of constant joy and revelation. Near my house was a stretch of low-lying woods bordering the Little Patuxent River--more creek than river, but a wonderland nonetheless.    
    Bordering the creek were a few wisened sycamore trees that must have been sentinels shading the lazy creek as it flowed past croplands and pastures, but were now largely hidden by the thick woods that had grown up around them. One of the sycamores was large and hollow enough to crawl inside and stand upright in the gloom, staring at imaginary bat-roosts. Even more impressive was an epic tulip-poplar, perhaps twenty feet in circumference, that stood guard over the bike path. Most of the woods however was newer growth, a few decades old, of oaks and straight young tulip-poplars--descendants perhaps of the giant near the path, who had seen the forest logged and was now there to witness its rebirth.

The Good Life

Well, I've gone a little while now without any new posts. As many of you loyal readers (there are now at least 18 of you!) might have surmised, this was due to the fact that I had to help carve two roast goats, scoop out handfuls of succulent squash, and open up many many bottles of cava to quench the appetites and thirsts of the dancing mobs of friends and family that were kind enough to celebrate my recent wedding. Never fear, there is more to be shared about Ecuador in the days to come--all the more appropriately shared after the wedding, as our justification for the trip in the first place was that it could count as a pre-honeymoon of a sort. But right here I'd like to simply thank everyone who helped pitch in to forge the greatest festivities of my life. May there be many more to come.

Across the Andes - August 4, 2010

On Wednesday we slept in late (until 6 AM), and enjoyed our last Mindo breakfast of fresh squeezed blackberry juice, flakey buttery breads with jam, eggs, coffee, and slices of fresh fruit. Our new driver Miguel showed up with our new guide (conveniently also named Marcello) and we were on the road around 8. Our plan was to bird our way up and over the Andes, en route to Cabanas San Isidro on the East slope. We wound our way up to the inter-Andean plateau, and after driving through a few suburbs of Quito we stopped in a dusty back lot, where we saw a golden-rumped euphonia flitting around the bushes. A simple start to what would be become an epic day of new bird after new bird.

Next we wound our way to the high paramo near the Papallacta Pass. This was an ancient portal across the Andes to the Amazon, and had long been used by native peoples to traverse the often snow-covered summits of the Equatorial Andes. We were over twelve thousand feet high, and the ground was covered with strange spongy alpine-like plants and laced with trails of icy mist. We tracked down Andean tit-spinetails and Sierra finches, but the harsh wind made birding difficult and we had little patience for time spent outside the warm car. So we continued on, to the cloud forests on the Eastern side of the Andes.

blooming bushes of the paramo

We stopped near the thermals of Papallacta to eat lunch, and stumbled upon a fantastic mixed flock of tanagers and flower-piercers, as well as one of the more spectacular high-elevation hummingbirds, the stunning purple-backed thornbill. Moving down again, we stopped to wander the grounds of Guango Lodge. The hummingbird feeders at Guango were overwhelming, with sylphs and swordbills and sunangels and woodstars all zipping about inches from our faces. After sipping coffee and making use of the first truly plush bathroom facilities of our trip, we walked through an adjoining pasture down to a torrential river. There, on a rock 100 meters downstream, perched a female torrent duck! We watched her swim about until she vanished in the foam and slipped out of sight, and then we piled back in the car and continued our journey.

the preposterous sword-billed hummingbird

collared inca and tourmaline sunangel

Our last stop of the day was a dirt road near the town of Baeza, close to our destination San Isidro. The scrubby forest bordering the road was overwhelmingly full of birds. Trees filled with turquoise, golden, emerald and silver shimmers of tanagers. Woodpeckers, spinetails, bush-tanagers, brush-finches, barbets, foliage-gleaners and more whirled past in dizzying succession. We crept along the road until it got too dark to see, all the while finding new bird species after new bird species, until we finally were forced to call it quits. All told we saw almost 90 species of birds, nearly all of them new to me. Spent, we arrived at the beautiful Cabanas San Isidro in pouring rain. We were met by the proprietor, the lovely Carmen Bustamente, who saw us to our cabins and alerted us to dinner at 7.

runoff from the paramo splashing down to the Amazon

Dinner was superb--Indian nouveau with curried meatballs and cardamom bread pudding. We shared a table with a couple from St. Louis who had been to South America many times, often while leading tour groups, and we listened to the equivalent of birding war-stories while the evening wore on. After dinner our table-mates pointed out an owl perched near the cabins--an undescribed subspecies of black-banded owl. There were hot showers awaiting us back at our cabin; a magnificent end to a magnificent day.

Junio 23 and Mindo - August 3, 2010

Our last day in Northwest Ecuador began at the ungodly hour of 3:45 AM, as we needed to arrive at our destination before dawn to have a chance at spotting our quarry in action. We had a new driver Mauro--Marcello’s brother--and we were on the road by 4:30. Mauro didn’t believe in lanes, and the ride was spent in absolute terror as he drove at 100+ km/h along a two lane highway perched on the far-wrong side of the road.

sunrise near Junio 23

But the recklessness was worth it, as we arrived at the intended foothill massif just in time to watch the sun rise over the cloud forest-covered hills, accompanied by the hoots of pacific howler monkeys in the distance. And then deep booming echoed out from a patch of forest adjacent to the pasture we were standing in. Marcello ran down the pasture to try to get a better look. We waited. It started to get brighter out, and the booming stopped. A man rode past on a mule, metal milk cans to either side, off to milk the cows. Marcello gestured. We raced down the pockmarked field, and saw perched on a high snag above the canopy a most bizarre and wondrous bird: the long-wattled umbrellabird. He was the source of the earlier booming, and now, spent with his efforts, he preened in the open, his absurd wattle dangling, his proud crest flopping over his head, his shiny black plumage just beginning to capture the early morning rays of the shimmering Andean sun. And then he took off, and we were left with the bellowing of cows, and the heat and humidity of the tropical foothills.

long-wattled umbrellabird!

We left the pasture that bordered the umbrellabird’s scant forest domain and, accompanied by the grandson of the landowner, went to visit grandfather, who was busy hurrying a mule around a mill to squeeze the juice out of fresh cut sugar canes. The sweet broth was poured into mugs and Emily and I downed a full mug of the tangy fruity syrup each--the Ecuadorians had two mugs apiece. Then we went to the house of our guide, Luis, down in the town of Junio 23 (named after the date the town decided that their town needed a name). There we were served two empanadas con queso each, with cafe to wash it down. The umbrellabirds of Junio 23 had only been “discovered” 11 months ago, and Luis had been training to become a guide--he had just recently bought his first scope. For now his family and their neighbors see a future in saving and showcasing their umbrellabirds, instead of clearing yet more land, and the umbrellabird’s chances here seem much improved.

Marcello making sugar cane juice

After the incredible umbrellabird morning, it was time to try for another Choco specialty: the club-winged manakin. We drove up into the forest surrounding Mindo and soon heard the buzzy harmonica tones of lekking males, right by the road. It took some doing, but Marcello coaxed them into dancing by whistling their song, and Emily and I watched through the scope as they produced their song by rapidly buzzing their wings, like enormous crickets. Near the manakins we saw our first quetzals, some stunning toucans, and a host of mixed flocks. Finally, after such a full morning, it was time for a long siesta.

golden-headed quetzal calling

club-winged manakin

Rain was crashing down and we waited it out at the hostal, watching the storm from hammocks strung up on an upstairs balcony. A hummingbird feeder hanging from the roof attracted white-necked jacobin’s and andean emeralds, undeterred by the downpour. Eventually the storm let up and we headed out to stuff ourselves with fried plaintains. The evening ended with us chatting with Marcello: he gave us a CD of Puerto Rican pop songs that we had been listening to on our road trips, and we bid our farewells. Mindo was wonderful--I highly recommend looking up Marcello and his wife Norma if you are ever nearby, they are wonderful hosts and Marcello is both a delightful companion and a knowledgable guide of the area--but it was time to move on. The next day would see us across the Andes.

the good life

Refuge Paz de los Aves - August 2, 2010

Monday was a special day, for it was Refuge Paz de los Aves day. Leaving before dawn without breakfast, we headed up elevation through a typically rutted stream-fording road until we reached a turnoff taken up mostly by a bus full of old white people in clean clothes. We had arrived. There were about 12 elderly birders (three of whom bizarrely were Boalties it turned out later) and a few other groups waiting. Soon a stocky and nimble Ecuadorian man wearing track pants and a ski cap appeared out of the darkness; Angel Paz himself had arrived, and we were off. The trail was steep, and the old people were slow. But the forest was deeply beautiful.


It was raining gently and every leaf was glistening green, every surface festooned with plants of infinite variety. The soft tapping sounds of a probing strong-billed woodcreeper could be heard nearby. As the sun rose thin shafts penetrated the canopy and revealed the sparkling lines of spider webs covered with dew.

Our first stop was a cock-of-the-rock lek, where thirty yards or so down a steep drop-off a troop of manic birds, with glowing orange and burgundy plumage, whirled and clucked and pranced and posed amidst a shrieking tangle of vines and ferns. Our view was largely obstructed by the old people, who, as clients of one Jorge of the “Magic Birding Circuit,” seemed to take their clues from their notoriously surly and narcissistic birding guide and hogged all of the spots with good views.

Briskly at dawn the lekking birds quieted, and we headed onwards deeper into the canyon. We reached the bottom of a ravine, where a small creek slipped through a fern covered bed of small stones. Unknown bird songs floated through the air. We gathered around and waited.

“Maria!” falsettoed Angel Paz. “Maria! Venga, venga venga!” Silence. We waited some more. “Willypena, venga!” More silence. Angel disappeared down the trail along the river. We could hear him whistling, pleading.

Then, with a great bounding strides out of the dark understory, she appeared, ricochetting off the mossy rocks along the river like a tiny kangaroo, like a miraculous long-legged potato. Angel put out some worms and Maria, the world’s most famous giant antpitta, flew across the stream, stuffed her face, and stood there stoic, beautiful, inscrutable. Angel Paz took a photograph of her with my camera - apologies for the old people hogging the cock-of-the-rock lek perhaps?

Maria, here photographed by Angel Paz

 After Maria left, it was Willypena’s turn. Willypena--formerly Willy until Angel Paz noticed her on a nest--sprang out from the undergrowth, posing for all to admire her yellow breast and tawny brown back. Then the show continued. We moved back upslope to the fruit-feeders. The regulars refused to show, but we saw a sickle-winged guan and a resplendently colored toucan barbet nonetheless. We waited a while and the tour group finally left us in peace.

a distant toucan barbet

Moving along the trail Angel’s brother called forth our last antpitta of the day, a beautiful moustached antpitta named Susan. Nearby we summoned a darting and bobbing rufous-breasted antthrush, who gathered up an enormous quantity of worms to take back to her brood. Nearing the top of the ridge, we admired violet-tailed sylphs, empress brilliants, velvet-purple coronets and booted rackettails at the refuge’s hummingbird feeders. And then, to top it off, we stuffed our own faces with ravishing homemade bolones and empanadas. Filled with birds and breakfast, we left Refuge Paz in a state of birding bliss.

orange-breasted fruiteater

Our next stop for the day was a nearby pasture, where we tracked down a crimson-rumped toucanet and the elusive Choco endemic orange-breasted fruiteater. Then it was back to Mindo for a siesta. Emily napped while I tried to find a sunbittern to no avail (but was rewarded for the effort nonetheless by a beautifully camouflaged common potoo). After a few hours hammocking, interneting and dining, we were ready for one more expedition.

can you spot the potoo?

common potoo

We headed back out at 6:30, joined by two Danes who had just arrived at the hostal (a father and son pair). First we went to a spot near Mindo where in the shine of our flashights we ogled the spectacular spectral dance of the lyre-tailed nightjar. In the darkness of twilight all one could make out was the glowing eyes of the birds reflected in the flashlight, and then with a woosh the nightjar would take off into the sky, and its extravagantly long tail could be made out against the starry sky as it fluttered and curled about like a flamenco dancer reincarnated as a tiny dragon.

Next we headed to Satchamia Lodge, where for a small fee the guide for the lodge showed us a beautiful black-and-white owl, perched next to a bright moth covered light illuminating the parking lot. Finally, back at the hostal we tucked ourselves in for a short but deep sleep. The next day would be another early start, and our last day in Mindo.

T.S. Roberts Bird Sanctuary

A few weeks ago Emily and I moved to Minnesota. The home we ended up leasing is half of a duplex, situated a few blocks west of Lake Harriet in a neighborhood known as Linden Hills. Our neighborhood is adorable, with many tree-lined streets (including a satisfying number of the name-sake linden, or basswood, trees), teeming multitudes of children and dogs, and our own little downtown with a few cafes, some eateries, an overpriced hardware store, and a co-op (which will soon move a bit farther away, but still within easy walking distance). But perhaps the greatest amenity around is our proximity to Lake Harriet, less than ten minutes walk to the East, and in particular a 13 acre patch of forest to the north of the lake known as the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird Sanctuary. I’ve been there now five or so times since moving in, and each time I go I grow fonder of the place.

T.S. Roberts Bird Sanctuary was carved out of Lyndale Park (much of which was donated to the city in 1890 by William King, an important Nineteenth C benefactor of the Minneapolis Parks system who farmed much of the area around Lake Harriet), which wraps around much of the North half of Lake Harriet (the lake itself was also donated by Mr. King). In 1936, at the request of the Minnesota Audubon Society and park superintendent Christian Bossen (whose ashes are scattered along the main path through the sanctuary), it was officially designated a bird sanctuary, and has been kept in a more or less natural condition to this day. The sanctuary is comprised of secondary forest to the North surrounding a few shallow wetlands that perch along the South fringe closer to the lake. North of the sanctuary lies a large cemetery, and there is a broken down barbed wire fence ringing the whole place. The main trail through the sanctuary is strung across the North edge, alongside a ditch which boasts a number of large plains cottonwood trees reaching out into the cemetery. The swampy lowlands support cattail marshes and silver maple groves, and on the slight hills there are a few old oaks--some that clearly predate the sanctuary--along with hordes of sugar maples. In places the maple saplings create dense thickets, and in other places there is few if any undergrowth. The old hydrological connections that must have connected these wetlands to the Lake have long been severed, and most of the understory seems dominated by invasive vegetation. However, there is a burgeoning movement to rid the sanctuary of nonnative invaders and try to restore a semblance of more natural ecological relationships, providing habitat for more native plants and wildlife.

The sanctuary is most captivating, however, not so much for the plants as for the birds. Although this migration season has seemed a bit thin in relation to historical standards, the sanctuary has still paid host to a merry gang of warblers, vireos, flycatchers and hawks making their way down South as the season turns. There is one small hill in particular, where an old Audubon sign has been nearly swallowed up by the tree it was nailed to, that seems to most attract the passerines as they gambol about. There, around mid-morning, the sun strikes the eastern face of the canopy, and a small mixed flock has pretty regularly shown up to hunt through the warming foliage for unlucky invertebrates.

Most of the birds I’ve seen are Nashville warblers--perky little blue and yellow chaps that have the endearing habit of staying close to the ground searching for bugs and thus providing great looks--but there have also been healthy amounts of creeping black-and-white warblers and nervous American redstarts. There have been others, too, such as ovenbirds, a black-throated green warbler, a few Wilson’s warblers, an early yellow-rumped warbler, a number of Tennessee warblers and even some black-throated blue warblers, along with some blue-headed and yellow-throated vireos. Both broad-winged and cooper’s hawks have flushed near the trail, and the local birds, the cardinals, blue-jays, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, and pairs of hairy and downy woodpeckers, normally make a strong showing.

Other animals are here as well. Gray squirrels are common, stuffing their faces with mushrooms and acorns, and chipmunks scurry through the undergrowth. Little mole tunnels frequently criss-cross the path. And there are deer as well. During my first birding visit, I was shepherded along the path by a particularly inquisitive young buck, who followed my every move from an uncomfortable distance of ten yards away.

puffball growing in the swamp

As the season progresses, I’m curious to see how the bird composition will change. Already the warblers are tapering off, and perhaps the thrushes will be there waiting for me during my next visit. Lake Harriet itself has been pretty devoid of waterfowl so far, but I’m hoping that a loon or two might show up there on their way South as the weather turns cold and the lakes up North start icing up. Eventually our lake too will freeze over, but who knows, maybe in winter there will be Northern finches amongst the few pines I’ve noticed along the East edge of the sanctuary. In any respect, it is wonderful to be able to live in a city, with all its conveniences and lively humming of humanity, while still being able to walk about amongst the trees and swamps, and bid the migrants farewell and good luck. May we meet there again this spring.

The Foothills - August 1, 2010

On Sunday, August 1 we awoke again in the pre-dawn stillness. Heading off fortified after another filling Norma breakfast, we zoomed off down elevation, to the foothill remnant contained within the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation’s Rio Silanche reserve. Our driver for the last two days had departed due to a death in the family, so now we had a new driver, Felix, who proved to be a similarly impressive navigator of horridly rutted dirt roads as well as a sharp spotter of birds. We arrived at Rio Silanche a little past dawn, and made our way quickly to a metal tower reaching up into the canopy. It was cloudy and drizzling, and all was quiet.

view from Rio Silanche's tower

We waited thirty minutes in the damp dimness without seeing much of anything. First some leaves shuddered. Then came the high sisps of passerines chattering to themselves. Then the deluge began. Over the next half an hour thirty bird species comprising a massive mixed flock whirled around the tower. Just when you had gotten a good look at a blue-whiskered tanager your attention would be drawn to an orange-fronted barbet, then an aracari would fly by, a flycatcher would flutter out into the open, more tanager species would zip across the clearing, and on and on. With each new appearance we would frantically try to get our binoculars on the bird, following it as it ducked and weaved through the leaves. A glimpse of a blue wing, an olive nape, then a peek at rusty undertail coverts, and so forth, until finally if you were lucky you had spied enough pieces of the bird to nail an identification. And then the bird would vanish, and a flash out of the corner of your eye would lead you to the next puzzle.

After the flock had vanished we waited for its reappearance. It took thirty minutes but many of the birds came back to near the tower. The reserve is now a very small patch within rapidly clear-cut forest, and the birds have nowhere else to go. But the list of birds that remain reads like a beautiful poem of Andean diversity. The species we saw in that explosion of canopy birds, in order of appearance: black crowned tityra, rufous-winged tanager rose-faced parrot, scarlet-rumped cacique pale-mandibled aracari, green honeycreeper, yellow-tufted dancis, lemon-rumped tanager, palm tanager, buff-throated saltator, masked tityra, bay-headed tanager, gray and gold tanager, guira tanager, white-shouldered tanager, cinnamon becard, brown-capped tyranulet, scale-crested pymgy tyrant, blue-whiskered tanager, dot-winged ant wren, red-eyed vireo, streaked flycatcher, orange-fronted barbet, choco trogon, slaty-capped shrike vireo, tropical gnatcatcher, tawny-crested tanager, slate-throated gnatcatcher, strea-headed woodcreeper, and western slaty-antshrike.

orange-fronted barbet

Elated and spent with the tower’s canopy flocks, we crawled down the three story tower and explored the forest. With much skill and diligence Marcelo managed to coax out a furtive antthrush calling from behind a thick tangle of vines. Then Marcelo whistled in a pair of fruitcrows. Felix spotted a gray hawk, and Emily spotted a leafcutter ant highway. By mid-morning we had seen over 50 species of birds, and finally headed back to the car.

bromeliad strung across the trail at Rio Silanche

Our next stop was a restaurant in the town of Los Bancos, where we sat right next to a window opposite a feeder filled with plantains. As we ate our disappointing lunch we watched aracaris and tanagers sneak in and take their fill. While we ate Marcelo got in a  half of soccer at the local stadium, and Emily heroically attempted to converse with a very patient Felix in Spanish.

fruit feeder at Mirador Los Bancos

Our last stop of the day was the tail-end of a road cut through what once was primary subtropical forest during the laying of the oil-pipeline to the coast. The easy access of the road led to widespread clearcutting of the surrounding forest, and now little is left. After admiring a laughing falcon perched in one of the remaining trees, we got out next to a marshy swath of reeds and grasses. Marcelo then began a dialogue with a very furtive, but very feisty, little white-throated crake (a species of rail). After much conversing, the crake finally had had enough, and burst forth through the grasses, sputtering insults and darting to and fro. Finally the crake, satisfied that we had been handled properly, slid back into the grasses, mumbling angrily to himself.

With all of us exhausted, we headed back to Mindo. Emily and I grabbed some arroz y menestra at the same local bistro as the previous night and, full of starch, collapsed before 9 PM.

The Oilbirds of Chontal - July 31, 2010

After a long bumpy ride over some pretty horrendous roads, we stopped at a farm to grab a guide to lead us to our final destination. Our guide hopped on a motorbike and we sped away trying to keep up, eventually stopping where a cool clear stream exited from a deep fern covered gorge. We entered the gorge slowly, walking on a narrow ledge beside the stream. It was dark, and the air smelled rich, almost rancid. Suddenly, right above me, I was aware of a group of glistening black eyes staring down at me from a shallow pocket in the cave wall. Oilbirds.

the oilbird gorge

Oilbirds are remarkable animals: essentially avian fruit bats, they use echolocation to navigate their dark gorge and cave roosts, head out only in darkness and pluck ripe palm fruits in nightly raids out over the forest to bring home to their plump, oily-fleshed young. There are only a handful of accessible caves where they can be seen in close proximity--here near Chontal was one of them, managed by a family of farmers who controlled access to the roost.

A few oilbirds alighted as we pushed deeper into their lair, fluttering demonically in shafts of sun filtering down through the ferns and palms thirty feet above. Unearthly growls, moans and screams echoed about the cave until the birds finally settled down, cozying up in pairs in cupped nests that looked to be made of their own feces. Half-digested palm nuts covered the floor of the gorge.

the oilbird roost

The oilbirds were magnificently beautiful, with subtle browns and crisp whites, harsh beaks and soft long whiskers. They shifted uncomfortably as we watched, and I felt bad about disturbing them. They looked like a council of wizards, spirits from some distance time, who had long looked out from this gorge witness to the slashing of their forest, the clearing of earth for pasture, the gouging of the cliff not two hundred yards from their gorge in order to lay a new highway, and through all this the birds came back to their lair night after night, feasting on the rich fruits of palms. Finally, we left them in peace, and made the long drive back to Mindo. That night, while it gently rained, we feasted on a meal of delicious charred corn, chicken, and platanos bought from a patient lady in a blue apron grilling underneath an overhang on the side of the road.

The Upper Subtropics - July 31, 2010

Saturday morning we awoke at our usual 4:30 AM and were warmly greeted by Marcelo’s wife Norma, who prepared for us a breakfast of eggs, bread spread with butter and jam, fresh pineapple, coffee (nescafe, as is the custom), and a large glass of fresh-juiced blackberries. Ecuador is a land of delicious juices, and this particular glass was no exception. Enough blackberries go into one glass of this juice as to make it nearly financially impossible to replicate in the states, but it was truly delicious, and all my fears of intestinal miscreants soon vanished as I chugged down the tart pulpy goodness. Then we were off to Bellavista, a cloud forest reserve we had passed through the previous day--and were treated to a flock of mountain-toucans. This morning we were going to go back and see what else we could find.

The forest was mostly quiet, but brief spurts of flocks provided our first looks at many of the beautiful tanager species of the subtropics. Plate-billed mountain toucans and a busy flock of red-billed parrots rattled around in the canopy. A pair of streaked little birds investigating every bromeliad for treats turned out to be streaked tuftedcheeks, members of a new Neotropical family for me: the furnariids (or ovenbirds).

red-billed parrot

As the morning grew late, we headed to a kink in the road, where our driver parked and we got out and followed Marcello through a patch of grass, down some muddy steps that surprisingly and abruptly ended at a small gate. We range a metal bell and entered--we had reached the mountain retreat of Mississippian ex-pat Tony Nunnery and his German wife Barbara. Tony greeted us by asking where we were from. We answered California, to which he seemed displeased and replied, “but you are from the Northeast originally, no?” Close enough. This was a hobby of his, it turned out. We were here on account of a different hobby of his: maintaining dozens of brimming hummingbird feeders, as well as meticulously cultivating and restoring his land in order to provide for both himself and for as much native wildlife as he can cram in, including spectacled bears and pumas.

Tony Nunnery's vision of paradise

We whiled away hours watching the happenings at the feeders while he served us tea and cookies and held court on birds, conservation, forest restoration, and theology. I briefly played his Yamaha Upright and found it remarkably in tune. His house was hand-built from mahogany, ceiba and eucalyptus, and although the origin of those beams gave me pause, the house was beautiful, and it seemed a compelling vision of paradise.

crimson-mantled woodpecker

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the sparkling crimson-mantled woodpeckers, violet-ears, green-tailed trainbearers, and booted rackettails and headed out of the subtropics to some pastureland a few hours away over the long rutted road to Chontal. We were heading to La Cueva de Los Toyos, and we didn’t want to be late.

Old Nono-Mindo Road - July 30, 2010

After leaving Yanacocha, we continued our way Northwest, descending the Andean slopes towards the Pacific. Our route was mostly along an old dirt road that followed a small river cutting through the mountains. With each hundred meter (everything is metric in Ecuador, as in really the entire rest of the world besides the USA) drop in elevation there was a noticeable increase in temperature, and the flora and fauna changed accordingly. At various points Marcelo would notice something perched besides the road, and we'd stop the car and quickly run out to get a look. Almost instantaneously Marcelo would have his crisp scope set up on the bird, and Emily and I would take turns ogling.
Our first major discovery was a beautiful red-crested cotinga, found not too far from Yanacocha reserve in a small patch of woodland surrounded by extensive recently deforested pasture. Lower down we ran into a female masked trogon, stoically perched right next to the road. Soon after we found an active slaty-backed chat-tyrant, a striking maroon and black flycatcher that favors the lush vegetation bordering cloud-forest streams. And so on and so forth we wound our way down the Andes.

masked trogon, female

By late afternoon we had descended over a thousand meters, and were driving through a large patch of pristine subtropical forest owned partly by the Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve. A light rain had begun, and Emily and I were almost incoherently tired from all the traveling and lack of sleep. But when a high pitched croaking sound seeped in through the crack windows, and our driver quickly stopped the car, I instantly went on high alert. I had only learned a few bird sounds before coming to Ecuador, but this was one of them. The plate-billed mountain-toucan. Plate-billed mountain-toucans are found only in a thin strip of cloud forest along the Northwestern Andean slopes in Ecuador and adjacent Colombia. The major field guide for Ecuador, Birds of Ecuador, chose these near-endemic toucans as their cover bird, and the beauty of that cover beckoned to me all summer long as I touted around the Field Guide memorizing what birds I could. And now, there they were, in the flesh.
We jumped out of the car and raced down the road, heading towards the weird creaky yelps echoing across the canopy. And then there they were, a few dozen meters away, searching the trees for fruit and calling back and forth--a troop of six or so mountain-toucans coming our way. For the next twenty minutes we jogged up and down the road trying to get good angles through the dense lineup of trees, but eventually the toucans settled nearly directly overhead, and we simply stood and stared. It is hard to explain how beautiful these birds look in the wild, and the pictures Marcelo took through his scope with my little camera, although surprisingly good given the circumstances (nearly all the bird pictures from the first part of our trip were expertly digiscoped by Marcelo), do not begin to do them justice. But they are stunning, and we were stunned. Finally, soaring off with their strange massive bills leading the way, they left us with the rain and silence, and we finished our descent to Mindo. Somewhat reeling from culture-shock, Emily and I grabbed surprisingly delicious brick-oven pizza from the tiny downtown, and, earplugs in place, settled in to our comfortable hostel room for the night. Tomorrow would be another 4 AM wake-up call. Our trip had just begun.

plate-billed mountain-toucan

Yanacocha - July 30, 2010

Our hired guide Marcelo Arias picked us up from our Quito hotel in the predawn gloom, and we winded our way up Northwest, ascending the Volcano Pichincha. Our first stop that day was the private Yanacocha reserve, run by the Ecuadorian conservation group Fundaction Jocotoco. Yanacocha contains almost 1,000 hectares of threatened high elevation polylepis forest, and is likely the only home left for the vanishingly rare black-breasted puffleg (a species of hummingbird). As we were visiting the reserve in late July, our chances of seeing a black-breasted puffleg were pretty much nil, but a host of other high-elevation cloud forest inhabitants awaited us.

As we drove up from Quito, we could see the lights of the city twinkle below, wreathed in fog. We drove past suburban shacks and small plots of cleared land, and turned onto a narrow rutted dirt road, avoiding small dogs and old Quechan women who had already started their day. Within an hour, the cleared land was swallowed up by densely forested slopes. We were at the reserve.

Yanacocha Reserve: the slopes of the Volcano Pichincha

We parked the car at the gate and gathered our gear. The air was thin, as we were at well over 10,000 feet, but while in North America such an elevation would be covered in rock, ice, and tiny creeping alpine plants, here we were surrounded by lush and vigorous tropical foliage. Tree branches were blanketed in ferns, liverworts, bromeliads and orchids. Dense clumps of bamboo clogged gullies, and people-sized leaves hovered over the path. Not twenty four hours removed from our departure point of Minneapolis, Minnesota, we were finally in the tropics.

yellow orchid amidst the epiphytic chaos

And then there were birds; wonderful, novel, marvelous neotropical birds. A tawny antpitta hopped across the entrance road, reappearing to peer at Marcelo, who was whistling his song. An occellated tapaculo was tracked down deep in his bamboo thicket lair, where after twenty minutes of waiting Marcelo was able to point out this remarkably inconspicuous but stunning bird. The tapaculo scratched and kicked in the litter, whistling away, oblivious to our presence as we admired the bright stars on his inky back and the deep burnished chestnut of his head and rump. Scarlet breasted and blue-winged mountain-tanagers flocked through the canopy, hummingbirds--preposterous sword-billeds, great-winged saphires, golden-breasted pufflegs and more--savagely attacked the feeders and each other, and Andean Guans lurked about amongst the branches. We strolled only a mile or so into the preserve and then, winded from the elevation, turned back to the car as the sun rose and the birds quieted. Already we had seen and heard dozens of new birds, hundreds of strange new plants, and our day had just begun. Awaiting us was the long drive down to our destination for the night and home for the next few days, the town of Mindo.

Ecuadorian Odyssey

I've just returned from Ecuador, the tiny country nestled in between Peru and Colombia on the Northwest flank of South America. It is a mind-blowingly diverse country, and one that deserves far more than just the two weeks I spent in it. But within those two weeks I encountered much of what makes the Neotropics so special. Over the days to come, I will hopefully share some of those moments here.