Cocky

Ecuador: Birds of the High Andes 3



 ... continued from yesterday....


When I woke the next morning the rain had finally stopped, although it did rain for most of the night I think.  With fingers crossed I opened the door of my lodge room to find my missing suitcase waiting for me. So it was with some relief that, after my shower, I got dressed in nice clean fresh clothes, ready for my 4:30am breakfast.  


This morning we are heading up to the Refugio Paz de las Aves to see the Cock-of-the-Rock lek.  The Andean Cock-of-the Rock comes in two variants, this red one (Rupicola Peruvianus sanguinolentus)  and an orange version which is further over to the east of the Andes.


The Lek was fascinating, but blimmin' difficult to photograph.  At dawn the forest canopy wasn't letting in much light added to which the birds were often hidden in part by some part of the foliage.  Often we were looking at the birds through narrow windows formed by the foliage which made acquiring focus etc tricky.  On other days we might have had better opportunities, but you have to make the best of the conditions that are on offer when you go and this hasn't turned out too badly although I'd have liked to be closer to the bird in a perfect world.


Afterwards we headed further off up the mountain in the occasional showers, to find more subjects to photograph and there were plenty.  By the time we stopped for our second breakfast at 10:30am I'd notched up the pygmy owl (see the extra) and a toucanet amongst others.  


We returned to the lodge at Guyacil for a late lunch before more walking in very heavy rain in the mountain cloud forest during the afternoon.  I think our guide took pity on us as he returned us to the lodge by about 4:30pm and we were able to take advantage of the cover provided by the lodge's roofed open terrace to photograph some of the many species of humming bird and tanager on offer.  The highlight was however the visit of the Plate-billed Mountain Toucan - see the last extra.

As ever we sat down as a group once the sun went down at around 6pm (not that you could see it, did I mention the rain?),  to complete the checklist of the many birds we'd seen during the day.  Then dinner, and straight to bed - yes its going to be another early start tomorrow.