Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Ecuador Trip Report (Long)
From: hspencer@otago.ac.nz
Date: 7 Apr 92 10:06:57 +1300
Organization: University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

                          ECUADOR TRIP REPORT
        
	At the end of last year (1991) my wife, Abby, and I took a trip to 
Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.  Although the primary reason for the  trip
was not birding, we did fit in a little, seeing our first South  American birds
in fact.  Let me start with a few preliminaries.  First  there is no field
guide to the birds of Ecuador, and the best to use is  Hilty and Brown's "Birds
of Colombia."  This is a magistral book, a  delight to own, even if you're not
going anywhere near South America.  An  extremely useful adjunct is  the handy
locational checklist for Ecuador  ("Aves del Ecuador" by F. Ortiz, P. Greenwood
and J. C. Matheus).  We  bought our copy in the Libri Mundi bookshop in Quito
for about US$8.  This  book gives the altitudinal ranges for the species as far
as they are  known, which is very useful in eliminating possible species from
your  identification.  The distributions can be poorly known, however: we saw a 
pair of wattled guan on the western slopes of the Andes, outside the range 
given in both these books.  Another useful item (apart from binoculars, of 
course) is an altimeter: many if not all the species have ranges  corresponding
to altitudinal ranges.
        
	Second, Ecuador is very cheap, with the exception of getting to the 
Galapagos.  This is true even with New Zealand dollars!  We stayed in the 
Hotel Nueve de Octubre in Quito, in a room with a private bathroom and  phone
for US$10 per night.  It wasn't the Ritz, but it was clean, with no  unpleasant
smells (memories of Cairo come to mind), and the people who ran  it were very
helpful and friendly.  (In fact, almost everyone we met was  friendly and
helpful, making travelling in Ecuador a real pleasure.)  We  left luggage there
on our trips to Mindo (for birding, see below) and  Otavalo (marketplace with
few birds) for no cost with no trouble.  A top  hotel is more like US$80 per
night for a double.  Rob Rachowiecki's  "Lonely Planet Guide to Ecuador and the
Galapagos" is excellent for all  manner of things concerning the budget
traveller, although the level of  petty crime has apparently worsened since the
book was written.  (Do not  wear a pack on your back in a crowd: there are
pickpockets with sharp  knives who might slit the pack and remove what they can
find.  The problem  seems worst in Old Quito, where we had a nasty fright but
no loss.)   Everything else in the book was accurate as to price and quality.
        
	Third, not so good news: interesting birds are not everywhere.  We 
went for a walk in the countryside around Otavalo (north of Quito) to a  nearby
lake through some agricultural land and small settlements.  We saw  only 18
species in two hours, and we'd seen all but 4 other places.  The  18 even
included such delights as cattle egret, great egret and rock  dove!  Things are
only likely to get worse, however: we were told that  Ecuador is losing a
greater proportion of its rain forest every year than  even Brazil.  Now, I
realize that this has something to do with the  relatively small size of
Ecuador, but it's nothing to crow about even so.   The upshot of this is that
you have to go to the right places.  And even  though Ecuador is "small" it is
a big country and getting places takes  time.  We didn't go to the Amazon
jungle, and we were very glad we didn't  after a friend of ours did and told us
how long it took to get anywhere.   If you only have three days to go to the
Amazon jungle forget it.  We were  shown "jungle" near Banos (south of Quito)
which had almost no birds (I  saw three, only one identifiable).
        
	The good news is that in even two days from Quito you can see enough 
birds to make your mind twirl.  We hired a guide (Henk W. Kasteleijn, P.O.  Box
17-21-0640 Suc. Eloy Alfaro, Quito, phone 543-318) whom we contacted  through
the local ornithological organization CECIA.  CECIA is no longer  at the
address given in "Aves del Ecuador."  They are now at 2030 Avenida  Shyriz and
La Tierra, phone 244-734.  Like most Ecuadorians, they were  most helpful. 
Henk was an exceptional guide.  He speaks (at least)  English, Spanish, Dutch
and German, and arranged everything for us for an overnight trip to Mindo. 
Apart from Mindo having great birds, it is worth  supporting what could be the
answer to the apparent conflicts of  conservation and third-world poverty.  The
people of Mindo still own most  of the land in the catchment of the Rio Mindo
above the village, and much  of it is still forested.  They have decided not to
log it, but instead to  create a reserve, protecting both their river and the
wildlife which they  hope will attract ecotourism.  Such an undertaking is hard
work.  For  example, the whole village cultural attitude to birds had to change
from  one of shooting them to one of looking at them.  They have built an open-
air house for birders (and others), and they supply the food, cook and 
(second) guide.  And indeed, Mindo astonishes the surrounding villages  with
it's relative wealth, coming mainly from ecodollars.
        
	Henk supplied the four-wheel drive jeep, and food for the first day's 
lunch, as well as expert bird-finding and identification for US$100 per  day. 
Now to someone with New Zealand dollars, that was a fortune, but it  really was
money well spent.  Without Henk we would have got lost (the  maps do not show
all the roads actually there, and then compensate by  showing a good number
that aren't, like the one from Mindo to the coast,  for example), we would have
seen fewer birds (see my comment on Otavalo),  and we would have identified
even fewer.  I am a birder who prefers to  know why the buff-tailed coronet we
are looking at is not a velvet-purple  coronet, even to the point of missing
another species.  Henk was able to  say why as you were looking at the bird in
question.  If you think this is  being spoon-fed, wait til you see the size of
Hilty and Brown!  Besides,  it means that when you see the next one, you know
what to look for (and  can pick out that it isn't a buff-tailed coronet).  So
we had two days:  one to get to Mindo stopping along the way, and another with
most of the  day in Mindo, returning to Quito.  We left at 5 a.m., were birding
by 7  a.m., and only stopped on the second day when it became dark.  Here is
our  list; Henk saw several more species.  We were able to see birds easily in 
part because of the semi-open character of the places we were: little was 
virgin forest.
        
        fasciated tiger-heron               white-tailed tyrannulet
        turkey vulture                      torrent tyrannulet
        swallow-tailed kite                 streak-necked flycatcher
        double-toothed kite                 black phoebe
        American kestrel                    blue-and-white swallow
        wattled guan                        southern rough-winged swallow
        band-tailed pigeon                  white-capped dipper
        red-billed parrot                   house wren
        smooth-billed ani                   Swainson's thrush
        squirrel cuckoo                     tropical gnatcatcher
        white-collared swift                brown-capped vireo
        chestnut-collared swift             giant cowbird
        white-whiskered hermit              scrub blackbird
        green violetear                     tropical parula
        sparkling violetear                 blackburnian warbler
        rufous-tailed hummingbird           three-striped warbler
        speckled hummingbird                slate-throated redstart
        purple-bibbed whitetip              white-sided flower-piercer
        buff-tailed coronet                 swallow-tanager
        gorgeted sunangel                   orange-billed euphonia
        booted racket-tail                  rufous-throated tanager
        violet-tailed sylph                 golden tanager
        masked trogon                       flame-faced tanager
        crimson-rumped toucanet             metallic-green tanager
        ?pale-mandibled aracari (please see my request below)
        plate-billed mountain-toucan        golden-naped tanager
        crimson-mantled woodpecker          beryl-spangled tanager
        smoky-brown woodpecker              black-capped tanager
        olivaceous woodcreeper              blue-winged mountain-tanager
        strong-billed woodcreeper           palm tanager
        spotted woodcreeper                 blue-capped tanager
        spot-crowned woodcreeper            blue-gray tanager
        red-faced spinetail                 lemon-rumped tanager
        lineated foliage-gleaner            dusky-bellied bush-tanager
        black-and-white becard              yellow-throated bush-tanager
        cinnamon becard                     southern yellow grosbeak
        masked tityra                       rose-breasted grosbeak
        tropical kingbird                   yellow-faced grassquit
        greater pewee                       white-winged brush-finch
        rusty-margined flycatcher           rufous-collared sparrow
        flavescent flycatcher               yellow-billed seedeater
        
	I won't comment on each bird(!), but I was delighted with the 16 
species of tanagers and allies and the 10 of hummingbirds.  I had limited 
experience with either group.  We also saw two quetzal, but were unable to 
determine which species (they come in pairs of cryptic species), and  several
more unidentified flycatcher species.  The pair of ?pale-mandibled  aracari are
a best-guess identification.  They looked like the stripe- billed in Hilty and
Brown, but with a pale lower bill.  The ranges of the  two species are given as
the same in Ortiz et al., although our altitude  (1600 m.) is a little high for
either.  The pair of wattled guan were  calling (that's how we found them), a
piercingly loud noise, and, as I  mentioned above, make an apparent extension
to the known range.  The Mindo  locals did not know them.
        
	The second place I would recommend is a mere day trip from Quito: 
Cotopaxi National Park.  Only the higher slopes of the Volcan Cotopaxi  have
snow, but even lower down you can see that you are in alpine  country.  The
trees disappear as you climb and are replaced by stunted  herbs and grasses,
the paramo, before this in turn fades away.  We made a  frustratingly short
visit (one hour) to a small shallow lake in the park,  the Laguna de
Limpiopungo, at 3830 m.  A word of warning: at this height  you easily become
rather breathless or experience headaches and other  altitude sickness
symptoms, especially if you've recently been at low  altitudes.  Don't expect
to enjoy your stay if you've flown in from Miami  or the Galapagos the day
before!  The Laguna is at the edge of an  extensive flat area of paramo which,
I suspect, floods easily, greatly  expanding the lake's area.  I don't know the
greatest depth, but I would  be surprised if it were more than 5 m.  You could
walk around it in half  an hour.  The shallow lake makes an attractive habitat
for migrating  waders.  Here is our list:
        
        carunculated caracara               American golden plover
        ?variable hawk                      semipalmated plover
        speckled teal                       greater yellowlegs
        yellow-billed pintail               pectoral sandpiper
        American coot (see comment)         Andean gull
        Andean lapwing                      great thrush
        
	Not a long list, but it includes several high-country specialists.  
The caracara excited even the non-birders in our party.  We saw no  passerines
(except for the ubiquitous thrush) simply because of the lack  of time, but
most of them are specialists too.  The other interesting  feature is the record
of semipalmated plover from the Andes: Hilty and  Brown only mentions in
passing that this species occurs "inland in  Bolivia."  Similarly, the American
golden plover is another apparently new  record for the Ecuadorian Andes.  We
could not differentiate between the American coot and the other form (some say
species) in the Andes, the slaty coot.
        
	From the balcony of the Hotel Neuve de Octubre you could see into a 
small garden with some large trees.  My list is short, but there were a  couple
of species we saw nowhere else:
        
        American kestrel                    fawn-breasted tanager
        eared dove                          Blue-and-yellow tanager
        sparkling violetear (very common)   southern yellow grosbeak
        black-tailed trainbearer (astounding)
        great thrush                        rufous-collared sparrow (v. common)
        cinereous conebill
        
	We had an overnight trip to Banos, south of Quito.  Banos itself 
seemed devoid of birds, but we stopped along the way in Sasquisili and  Ambato,
adding (i.e., not a full list):
        
        giant hummingbird (good name)       cf. plumbeous sierra-finch (see note)
        vermillion flycatcher               hooded siskin
        shiny cowbird
        
	My second identification request concerns what I have called cf. 
plumbeous sierra-finch.  This is a high-altitude species, and we were in  the
inter-Andean valley, lower than Quito.  We saw the same species near  Otavalo. 
It is a small drab gray bird, fairly common in cultivated  fields.  Ortiz et
al. list the ash-breasted sierra finch and the band-tailed sierra-finch from
the inter-Andean valley.  Does anyone know  anything about these species?  My
last identification problem comes from  Otavalo again: a small gray finch with
a bright yellow bill, and I would  have gone for the slate-coloured seedeater,
except for the altitude (about  2580 m. versus Ortiz et al. < 1200 m., 2000 m.
in Colombia from Hilty and  Brown).  Gray Seedeater is a possibility but again 
the altitude is wrong  (< 2300 m. in Hilty and Brown), and it is unrecorded from
Ecuador.
        
	Please email your identification responses to me, since I do not see 
many of the postings to rec.birds.  (I suspect this is because they have  North
American distribution code attached either by default or by the  individual
posters.  Don't forget that many non-Americans still like to  read about
American birds!)  I will post the results.
        
	If anyone wants more details, please contact me via email.  I will 
report on the Galapagos later (hopefully next week).
        
Hamish Spencer, 
Dept. of Zoology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Internet: hspencer@otago.ac.nz