Like a lot of Nantucketers, birders migrate when raw winds blow and brochures beckon. For truly astounding beauty, color and diversity of species, south America is a birder’s paradise. but birding travel is a specialty of its own, requiring more than just a hotel reservation and a plane ticket.
Yes, birds are everywhere. But Ecuador is a very bird-rich and eco-tourfriendly country, with a variety of habitats ranging from lowland Amazon tributary, to cloud forest, to high-altitude grassland.
“Did you go to the Galapagos?” That’s a question non-birders always ask. The Galapagos are on many a bucket list and their wildlife is deservedly famous. The associations to Darwin and the Galapagos finches, specimens of which contributed to his development of the theory of evolution, are of course of interest.
Those islands also have a deep connection to Nantucket’s history as a stop-over for whaling vessels. Post Office Bay was a popular port of call where a box nailed to a tree provided a place to leave and receive mail from home. As a side note it’s worth remembering that six out of 15 species of the giant tortoises for which the islands were named have gone extinct thanks to human consumption and ancillary ecological destruction from invasive species.
As year-round residents of Nantucket know, tourism can have costly impacts on fragile environments, which require protection to maintain. So that’s another reason to spread our tourism dollars among other equally-interesting locations, with which Ecuador abounds.
With a group of friends, I traveled to Ecuador in April. Landing at night, our driver took us from the Quito airport to our first birding stop, a small “Bird Garden” lodge.
In the morning, among the flowering plants, bird baths and hummingbird feeders that rimmed the yard, we enjoyed great food and a selection of local birds just by sitting around the patio: Scrub Tanagers, Saffron Finches, Eared Doves and the ubiquitous Rufous-collared Sparrows. Rufoustailed and Western Emerald Hummingbirds came and went.
Venturing out into the neighborhood and visiting the local cows (one of them munching on green avocados) in a compound across the street, we saw a Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, Sparkling Violet-ear Hummingbirds and a Vermilion Flycatcher.
In the afternoon we checked out a reservoir where we saw Yellow-billed Pintails – a South American version of our more familiar Northern Pintails – and Andean Coot, likewise a different version of a water bird we often see in the winter.
Then we set off in a rental car to our next destination, going up through the Paramo, a terrain of stark, cloud-drenched grasslands. We looked down into steep gorges with streams and waterfalls. After about an hour of wiggling like fish through the curves of the road, we found our next lodge.
We were early enough to explore a little, going down to the bottom of the gorge where a Torrent Duck had just been seen. We slipped down the steep, muddy trail and peered through our binoculars, finding the bird in a jumble of boulders that made a sort of island in the middle of the stream. It was a familiar duck shape, but in tones of gray, perfect camouflage for the white water rushing over the rocks.
The next day we hiked through nearby fields to a waterfall, seeing oropendolas and caciques. At the hummingbird feeders we saw many Chestnut-breasted Coronets, Woodstars and a few Long-tailed Sylphs, tiny hummingbirds trailing about 10 inches of iridescent neon-blue tail.
Three Masked Flower-piercers also came for the sugar-water. At our next stop we found a Squirrel Cuckoo. Also stunning were three Inca Jays, bright indigo blue with yellow-white punk haircuts and lighter markings around the face. They looked as inquisitive and exotic as anyone could wish, and like they could be just as big, if not bigger, troublemakers as any jay at home.
The next part of our trip took us to the lowlands. In the town of Coca, we met up with the boat that was to take us down the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon. Local guides met us and ferried us by outboard to the next lodge, run by an indigenous community.
Provided with boots and ponchos, we had a river cruise for a couple of hours, moving from rain to sun to rain again, admiring the jungle on both sides and the array of colorful river traffic. The last leg was by canoe, paddled by two of our guides. We saw a Pygmy Kingfisher perched on a branch next to us, and several Hoatzins. They were a species I particularly wanted to see. Ancient, truly prehistoric-looking birds, they are in a class by themselves. Turkey-sized nocturnal leaf-eaters, their digestive system is more akin to that of ruminants like sheep than to other birds.
They live on wetland edges, roosting and nesting on branches over water, sleeping during the day. Clumsy fliers at best, the young have hooks on their wings, with which they climb back to the nest if they happen to fall in the drink. Their voices, though communal, are most unmusical, sounding perhaps like cows trying to bark – if cows could bark – through a stuffy nose.
After dinner we were taken for another short paddle around the lagoon. It was dark by then. A lovely tropical sunset had broken through the clouds after the rain, and the sky was clear. We saw enormous, football-sized fishing bats, fruit bats and the orange eyes of caimans, shining in the flashlights.
We were cautioned not to swim, not only for the local crocodilians, but because our microbes don’t match the local biome. But as a side benefit, the water was too alkaline to support mosquitoes, and despite the swamp, it was a mostly bug-free area.
We got up before dawn the next morning, and found tropical birding at its prodigious best. From a viewing platform perched in the top of a ceiba tree, 140 feet above the ground, we saw over 70 species in a couple of hours. With our telescope we had good looks at a Slate-colored Hawk, three Many-banded Aracari and five White-banded Toucans. A Black-tailed Trogon perched below us in the tree. Countless Tanagers and Cotingas came and went. We watched a troop of red howler monkeys waking up for the day. Later, we saw giant amazon otters pushing their luck in the Cayman-infested lagoon.
We finished our tour on the west slope of the Andes in the Mindo area, where we saw Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. They are most improbable
birds. Bright red plush with tiny bills and a bulbous head, they look like fuzzy stuffed toys invented by a dyspeptic chicken farmer in a nightmare. At a lek the males tussled and took turns pushing each other off the branches. We also saw a Sword-billed Hummingbird, as well as Crested and Mountain Guans.
We wrapped up with a brief visit to the Intinan Museum, on the site where French astronomer Charles Marie de La Condamine completed measurements to determine the circumference of the Earth in 1739.
Hospitable and endlessly fascinating, we only scratched the surface. Ecuador is well worth a revisit. ///
Virginia Andrews writes the weekly “Island Bird Sightings” column for The Inquirer and Mirror, Nantucket’s newspaper since 1821, and is a regular contributor to Nantucket Today.
