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.