In just 10 days (Wednesday, September 17) I'll be one my way to ECUADOR! I am so lucky and extremely grateful to have the privilege to stay at Tandayapa Bird Lodge, just a 65 km drive northwest of Quito, on the western slope of the Andes (upper and lower subtropical zones), where I will volunteer as a birding guide for lodge guests. After about two weeks of training (mostly on my own, but also with some help from experienced local guides), I will be offering my new-gained knowledge of the area to help visitors find and enjoy the birds they seek for their trip-lists. In addition to guiding, and especially when there are few (or no) guests, I am obliged to give a hand with other chores around the lodge (from greeting guests, to replenishing hummer and fruit feeders, to helping serve meals). With spare time I will also try to help update site lists of other taxonomic groups, such as butterflies and other insects. My stay will last just under 3 months (close to the limit without needing a visa), returning about 2 weeks before Christmas. This has been a long-time dream for me, and it seems that this is an opportunity I'd be insane to pass up, while my foot is still in the door, now that I'm almost finished my formal education and will soon have pressure to find a real job (whatever that may be).
Actually I have been to Ecuador once before nine years ago, in August 2005. It was the first (and last, for the time being at least) Young Adult Birders' Conference held, in fact, in the Tandayapa Valley also. This event, sponsored by ABA and Tropical Birding, made such an impression on me, being my first time in the tropics, that it's been on my mind ever since to return one day. Partly because seeing 300 lifers in 6 days was a blur; a little too fast to learn to appreciate all the species and really learn them. So I hope 3 months will help facilitate my wish to go back and relearn all those species better, and perhaps also find some more difficult-to-see species!
Tandayapa valley lies within the so-called Choco bio-region, ranging along the Pacific coast from northwestern Ecuador, through western Colombia, to easternmost Panama (Darien), which is known for its high number of endemic species of birds (70+), that is, the largest number of restricted-range species found anywhere in South America. Some examples include the Rufous-crowned Antpitta, Berlepsch's Tinamou, Rose-faced Parrot, Hoary Puffleg, Toucan Barbet, Uniform Treehunter, Choco Toucan, Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan, Beautiful Jay, Scarlet-breasted Dacnis, Black-chinned Mountain-Tanager, Moss-backed Tanager, Orange-breasted Fruiteater, Black Solitaire, Choco Vireo, and Tanager Finch among many others. It is also supposedly the one of the wettest regions in the world, especially the Colombian part. Needless to say, therefore, I will be bringing rubber boots and a poncho!
In my opinion, among a myriad of wonderful attributes Ecuador has for nature, one distinction that really stands out is that it has more hummingbird species than any other country, 132+, in 57 different genera; almost half of the total world count! Tandayapa valley alone has at least 35 species! 16-25 seen in a single day is supposedly not that difficult, with around 10 species visiting the feeders at any one time...rackettails, emeralds, coronets, brilliants, whitetips, pufflegs, hermits, incas, violet-ears, sylphs...take your pick! And Tandayapa Bird Lodge has one of the best feeder stations in the country, where one can photograph or just stand in awe of these winged gems, tenaciously quarreling over the nectar sources. In fact, if they weren't so darn cute, Booted Rackettails could be described as a "trash bird"!
Besides bins and spotting scope, the essential packing list includes both the The Birds of Ecuador, by Robert Ridgely and Paul Greenfield, and Fieldbook of the Birds of Ecuador, by Miles McMullan and Lelis Navarrete. These are the 2 indispensable field guides in preparing for a trip to Ecuador.
The former is the classic tome, with excellent artwork and it's loaded with great descriptions and notes on habitat preferences and vocalizations. Since I will be there for an extended stay in order to really learn the birds I will bring this with me, however its dimensions render it rather cumbersome to take into the field. One way around this is to have the book ripped, and have the text and plates separately rebound, so that one can just bring the plates into the field for ID aid.
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| One of the tanager plates from Ridgely and Greenfield. Beautiful artwork and extensive, useful text are pluses for this field guide. For short stays in Ecuador, best for pre-trip study. |
An new alternative is to get one's hands on the latter book: a pocket-sized field guide just released in 2013, with over 4,000 illustrations. This is the book to bring to Ecuador if I had to choose just one, or if my stay was shorter. There are updated taxonomic changes (i.e. species splits and lumps), and even newly discovered species (such as the endangered Choco Vireo (Vireo masteri)) which are not in Ridgely and Greenfield's tome. The artwork is just as beautiful in this second guide, and another plus for this book is that birds are drawn from different angles sometimes, and in positions that they might actually be seen in the field. An example of this is shown in the figure below, taken from one of the hummingbird plates. The account for Ecuadorian Hillstar (middle left) shows the front view of the female. As in the Ridgley and Greenfield guide, regional variants (races, subspecies, etc.) are described where applicable. All things considered, if I were going to Ecuador on a short trip (1-2 weeks), this is THE book I would bring.
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| Hummingbird plate from McMullan and Navarrete, showing again beautiful artwork and convenient (and updated) range maps immediately next to each species. Best guide to take into the field. |
I have so far studied species from the most recent Tandayapa Valley checklist in taxonomic order, and am in the process of learning additional species that are possible at several day-trip sites at both higher (temperate zone) and lower (foothills and lowlands) elevations. In addition to studying from both these guides, it is important that I also attempt to become familiar with as many songs and calls as possible, particularly skulking species which are heard far more often than seen. During this auditory study, I am building a vocalization library to use very sparingly to help bring in shy birds by tape playback. I probably will use this method only for certain species and if guests insist on seeing them during their brief stay. A good discussion on the ethics of using tape playback can be found in an old posting on David Sibley's blog titled, "The Proper Use of Playback in Birding".
I am not (yet) the owner of a really good camera for bird photography (e.g. a DSLR with a 600+ mm lens), partly due to lack of dinero, and partly do to fear of letting the "gotta-get-that-perfect-shot" fever take over my experiences in the field. If I see a bird in an interesting (maybe new) pose, and want to capture it, I usually prefer a few quick, rough sketch in my notebook (with notes on the margins) to taking a series of photos to study later. On the other hand, if it is a rarity in the area, whose documentation via photo would be useful for the records committee, I try to bring a point-and-shoot with my scope in order to digiscope a decent "record shot", where the bird is at least identifiable. But I recently realized: how could I go spend several months in Ecuador, and not take some decent pics of at least some of the birds (such as the ridiculously tame hummers from the lodge's back deck)??
So I broke down and purchased a Samsung Galaxy S4 along with the corresponding adapter made by PhoneSkope. I thought it was a compromise between photo quality (i.e. better than hand-held point-and-shoot digiscoping) and overall cost. Besides, I have been in need of a smart phone for some time and it is necessary to get in touch with the outside world during my stay. Soon I will post some of my first decent pics I've shot with this setup (with my Leica APO-Televid 65) during pre-trip practice in my hometown (Cape May) over the past week or so. Since I will be toting my scope along on most (if not all) trail hikes, just in case a nice raptor or trogon is pleasantly perched for a sufficient duration to be worthwhile, it is not much more work to also carry the light PhoneSkope adapter along with the phone. I plan on posting as many images from my Ecuador trip as possible on this blog in the coming months, so please check in every week or so for some new pics!
Alright, back to a bit more studying and radar watching before sleep. Good Fall Birding everyone!
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