Fan Dancer

Ecuador: Birds of the High Andes 2 

This trip was advertised as being "intensive" and boy, did it live up to its billing.  On the 7 active days we were always up before dawn and didn't really have any downtime until after dinner in the evening, at which stage most of us raced to our beds to grab some sleep before the next early start.

On our first morning we were up at 5am and left Puembo at 6am to head off northwards, over the equator and up to the cloud forest.  For most of the trip we were above 2,500m and quite a lot of the time at 3000m although we were to get to over 4,000m later on.

Today we travelled to Tandayapa stopping on several occasions for opportunities to find new birds.  Our young Ecuadorian guide Louis is an amazing naturalist and managed to locate and identify birds that would otherwise have been lost to us in the dense and dark foliage.  Including this Antpitta. 

There are 24 different species of Antpitta - plump birds that live on the dark forest floor.  None are easy to see.  But this one is the best known - this is the Equatorial Antpitta (Grallaria saturata).  

Historically this bird was among the  11 species that were lumped into the Rufous Antpitta heading. Of those 11 species the Equatorial Antpitta is, by far, the most widely distributed being found from the Central Andes of Colombia throughout Ecuador to northern Peru.

After the Tandayappa we came downhill to Guyacapi when it started to rain to have lunch at the Café Restaurant Guyacap just above the river.  As we sat at our table eating in the open air, protected from the rain by the high terrace roof, we watched hummingbirds wizzing about, and tanagers racing in to the banana feeders.  The swordbill was taken at this stage. You wonder how it manages to preen its feathers with that bill…

Lunch finished, we tore ourselves away from the spectacle in front of us and headed down to the river where I managed to get the shot of the torrent ducks  that feature in the extras.

Eventually, after further stops, we made it to the newly opened Guyacapi Lodge, which was to be our home for the next 3 nights.  A pleasant surprise was in store for me on arriving as the Lodge manager turned out to be Jorge, (a guide that I had met on my trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos last year)and he greeted me warmly.

The lodge was lovely, and the 6 of us sat on the terrace overlooking the cloud forest as the mist rolled in, obscuring the mountains on the far side of the valley from view.  It was still raining of course, in this part of the world there are two types of weather: it is either raining or it is about to rain.

Between the two of them, Jorge and Luis sorted out the collection of my luggage and went off to collect it while I went to bed.  I offered to go with them but they insisted that I get to bed ready for the 4:15 start the next day.  I gratefully took them up on that, a fell asleep to the sound of the rain drumming on the roof.