9 February 2023

Here’s a first look back at my WINGS trip to Mindo and the Northwest Andes. I guarantee I’ll write more about Ecuador in the days ahead.

First a big thank you to WINGS Birding Tours, our superb group leader Jon Feenstra, skilled driver Edwin (who was also a great bird finder), and fellow participants Bob, Mary, Peter, Gail, Jeff, David and Kay. We all had a great time and became friends. It was hard to leave.

Even though I’d seen some of Ecuador’s birds in Costa Rica and Panama I came away with 206 Life Birds!

I was hard to pick only a few Best Birds.

Best Hummingbird: I saw 31 species of hummingbirds on the trip so it was hard to choose and Best one, however … The crowned woodnymphs (Thalurania colombica) I’d seen in Panama had purple crowns but in the Mindo area they are quite impressive with emerald green hoods and purple chests, shown at top. You have to see this bird move its body to appreciate that it usually looks dull and dark, then catches the light to reveal its stunning green head and brilliant purple chest. The best views were at Alambi Reserve where this video was filmed in 2018.

Best Tanager of the 40 species of tanagers I saw in Ecuador, my Best one was a three-way tie: Black-capped (Tangara heinei) and beryl spangled tanagers (Tangara nigroviridis) are similar but different …

… and the stunning blue-necked tanager (Tangara cyanicollis) glowed in the forest with a neon blue head and neck.

Best Big Birds were the swallow-tailed kites (Elanoides forficatus) that live in Ecuador year round. Though not a Life Bird they were exhilarating to watch and there were lots of them. This image is a plate from the Crossley ID Guide.

Unexpected Lifer: Water birds are few and far between in the Andes but Jon knew where to find them. On the way back to Puembo Birding Garden we stopped by the side of the road near Quito Airport and scoped the drainage pond. Ta dah! The gull of the mountains: Andean gull (Chroicocephalus serranus).

If you’re interested in a trip to Ecuador’s Mindo and Northwest Andes I highly recommend WINGS Birding Tours and Jon Feenstra.

p.s. A surprising discovery: There are no crows in Ecuador but there are many free-ranging dogs. Dogs lounged in the middle of village streets and on the pavement of quiet streets in Quito. Without crows to do it the free ranging dogs were the ones to break into garbage bags on garbage day. To prevent this people in the countryside placed their garbage bags on waist high platforms and in Quito on the median of busy streets but the dogs crossed in front of traffic to get at the garbage. Dogs partially filled the crow niche.

Perhaps dogs make it a dangerous place for cats. In 8 days we saw only two cats.

p.s. Looking back at the hummingbirds I’d say that the velvet-purple coronet (Boissonneaua jardini) is a contender for first place.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons and Flickr via Creative Commons license; click on the captions to see the originals, video embedded from @andeanbirding on YouTube)

6 February 2023, on the plane heading home

Today I’m on a “red eye” flight from Quito to the U.S. If all goes well I’ll be home tonight after 15 hours of pre-flight waiting, flying, layovers, and ground transportation.

It will take a lot longer for the Blackburnian warblers we saw in Ecuador to reach their breeding grounds in North America.

I wonder when they’ll start flying north.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons and by Steve Gosser)

5 February 2023, WINGS in Ecuador: Day 8, last full day, birding on our way to Puembo

Today we leave Séptimo Paraíso Lodge, birding on our way to Puembo and the airport. Tonight I leave Ecuador on a red-eye flight for home.

Refugio Paz de las Aves was one of the highlights of our trip. Their video below is a good summary of the wonders saw in Mindo and the Northwest Andes.

2 February 2023, WINGS in Ecuador: Day 5, birding in Mindo and the NW Andes

Male animals have many different ways of courting females, from individual solicitation to showing off as a group. Their rituals are closely tied to the females’ preferences. For Andean cock-of-the-rock, the females want to see all the guys in one place — in a lek — displaying and competing with each other. Witnessing an Andean cock-of-the-cock lek is one of the highlights of our trip.

As a member of the Cotinga family, the Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruviana) is very sexually dimorphic. The males are stunning red, black and white with a large red crest from crown to beak.

The males throw a loud and boisterous party at the lek, hoping that the much less colorful females will show up. While we humans focus our attention on the beauty and behavior of the males, a lot is happening behind the scenes.

See and hear the males at the lek in these two videos.

p.s. Today is Groundhog Day back home in Pennsylvania where the northern hemisphere has reached the celestial midpoint between winter and spring. On the equator, days and nights are the same length all year long. The winter and summer solstices have no meaning in Ecuador.

Day and night lengths vary a lot from the Arctic to the Equator, illustrated below by yearlong day/night lengths for three locations: Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) Alaska, Pittsburgh and Mindo, Ecuador. These Day/Night graphs are screenshots from timeanddate.com.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals. Day/night graphs from timeanddate.com; video from William Shaughnessy and American Bird Conservancy on YouTube)

1 February 2023, WINGS in Ecuador: Day 4, birding in Mindo and the NW Andes

Antpittas (family Grallariidae) are forest birds of Central and South America that specialize in eating ants. Though they nest in trees, they spend most of their time on the ground where their brown-rust plumage provides excellent camouflage. They are usually heard, not seen.

The typical antpitta is often described as a “ball on sticks” because most of them are small, plump and nearly tailless with long legs.

The giant antpitta (Grallaria gigantea) is far from typical. He’s the length of an American robin but weighs four times as much. He’s same weight as a pileated woodpecker and triple the weight of other antpittas in his area. Wikipedia explains:

G. gigantea is, as its name suggests, a huge antpitta. Length ranges from 24 to 28 centimetres (9.4 to 11.0 in) and weight is up to 300 grams (10.6 oz), which makes it easily the heaviest of all tracheophone suboscine birds. Its nearest rival, the chestnut-throated huet-huet [native to Chile], is not known to exceed 185 grams (6.5 oz).

— Wikipedia: Giant antpitta

Usually a giant antpitta is never seen but you know he’s out there when you hear a sound like an eastern screech-owl that rises at the end. (Do you hear the rain in this audio clip?)

We expect to see him at Refugio Paz de las Aves because bird whisperer Angel Paz can call them into view to snack on earthworms.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, audio from Xeno Canto; click on the media links to se the originals)

31 Jan 2023, WINGS in Ecuador: Day 3, birding in Mindo and the NW Andes

Now that we’re based at Séptimo Paraíso Lodge in the Mindo Valley we expect to see this iconic bird several times in the next five days.

Bright and colorful, the toucan barbet (Semnornis ramphastinus) is about the size of a starling though heftier. He uses his short fat beak to eat fruit, squeeze nectar from flowers, and dig nest holes in trees.

Toucan barbets are very social, living year round in a family group of six+ birds that claim 30 – 40 acres of mountain forest. The group consists of the breeding pair plus their offspring from prior years who help raise the young during the February-to-May (or as late as October) breeding season.

The group starts the day with a duet to tell the neighbors: “Good morning! We are here! This territory belongs to us! We will fight you if you come here!” Other groups will sneak onto their land if they think the owners are far away.

Watch them eat, preen and “sing” in this video.

video from Edison Ocaña on YouTube

p.s. Seen at Reserva Amagusa on 4 Feb 2023.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons, video from Edison Ocaña on YouTube, online resources: Birds of the World: Toucan barbet)