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.