Mindo - Birding with Marcello Arias

2012.04.18-19

We agreed to go birding again with Marcello as we liked his quiet authoritative manner. He knew what he was doing and he had the patience to ensure that his clients saw what he saw.
This is us in action ...

 Here are some of the birds which we saw, but obviously it was not always possible to take photos of all of the 47+ birds we managed to see during our stay at Mindo.
A beautiful Swallow Tailed Kite.

 A Turkey Vulture

  A Rufous Motmot (photo taken through scope!) 

 The Rufous Motmot picture above (beautifully cropped)!

 A Black-winged Saltator.

The Masked Trogon (male/macho) - from a distance.

And through the scope - what a difference it makes!

The Crimson-rumped Toucanet - its green colour blends in perfectly with the leaves making it quite difficult to see!

And in a garden near our hotel (Las Tangeras) we had a royal view of humming birds and tanagers being fed.

Lemon-rumped Tanagers (male = black with yellow at wing tips; female = yellow birds with white beak).
Blue-gray Tanager (obvious?!)

 Bananaquit 

 And many more - a veritable feast of birds!

It is impossible to do justice to the birding which we did - so we'll have to go back once we've mastered our cameras better.
However, some of the other pleasures of Mindo are the orchids and other beautiful cloud forest species.

Mindo - Andean Cock-of-the-Rock

2012.04.14-21

Mindo is a rural parish about 90km to the west of Quito. It is a budding eco-tourism attraction as it lies close to the Mindo-Nambillo Protected Forest - a reserve for birds and butterflies. 
Although we had arrived in the minute one-horse town of Mindo quite late the previous evening, we were up at the crack of dawn, to go to a special birding site. This is what our early morning walk looked like - dark enough to use headlights! As we were in a cloud forest, it was wet enough to wear rain trousers.

Wait for me!!! A narrow bridge over a rushing stream.

Our guide, Marcello Arias, and the owner of the farm (whom we had to pay USD$5 each to enter his property) smile for me in the dark.

The special bird we were stalking was the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. This is a special site because the male Cock-of-the-Rock has a “lek” here. This brightly coloured bird is extremely elusive, but when the males get together at their “lek”, they are so focussed on attracting their drab brown partners that they’re not very aware of birders. Females appear very seldom, but the ritual “lek” is held at each sunrise. We could hear the birds calling to each other long before we reached the bird hide where we managed to get a glimpse of two birds flitting through the bush - how exciting! 
The first photo is what we actually saw and the next two photos are enlarged versions. Certainly not prize winning photos, but proof that we saw the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock special bird - a mega tick!!

The plants in the cloud forest were magnificent – the perpetual damp encourages vigorous growth. On our way down the mountain, it was light enough to take some good photos of some the bromeliads and of the  surrounding.

Pepe (the owner of Ecuagenera) who arranged the tour for us, has a wonderful sense of humour and easily gives his winning smile!

Our guide, Marcello Arias, really knew what he was doing. Here he is focused on calling a bird - a serious business!

We were pleased to get back to our hotel Las Tangaras for breakfast!! It was very well named as we saw many tanagers on our birding trip in the afternoon.

Our afternoon was spent in the Mindo Forest Reserve birding.
See the next post at http://mi60mindobirds.blogspot.com/2012/04/mindo-birding-with-marcello-arias.html

to follow our other birding expeditions.

If you want to see the rest of our whole tour in Ecuador, then you can follow this link:

http://mi60ecuadortrip.blogspot.com/

Ecuador - Quito to Mindo

2012.04.17 

Quito

Getting from Cuzco to Lima (Peru) entailed getting up early, transferring from one flight to another and (inevitably) waiting at the airports for our time of departure to our final destination: Quito in Ecuador. Such is the nature of travelling. Sarel and Peter probably used the time to talk about orchids - the focus of their tour. 

Our flights were during the day, so during take off and landing we could see the patchwork country below, some of the coast line and the cities below as they came into focus during our landing.

 Lima (Peru) lies on the sea.

Just look what happened to my half empty water bottle in the aeroplane!













Hello Quito (Ecuador)! After two and a half hours in the air, we were pleased that the end of the flight was in sight. Just look at the magnificent Andes in the background. Quito is the highest capital city in the world at 2850m above sea level.
 Closer and closer to the city that was declared a World Heritage Site in 1978.

 And finally, a look at our aeroplane from the safety of the airport. 

 Quito is renowned for its roses as this arrangement in the airport showed.

Our bus was waiting patiently for us, but it drove over a traffic cone - but, thanks to Mrad, the damage was rectified and we could continue on our way.

 This interesting statue graced the entrance of the airport.

We crossed the equator near Quito. Quito is the world's capital city which is closest to the equator. The statue with the ball shows where we crossed the equator - but a much better interaction with the equator was still to come.

 One of towns which we passed en route to Mindo.

As you can see it was getting darker and darker as our bus wended its way through many mountain passes, dark green forests and beautifully tended fields.

 
 
Fortunately, Mindo (B) was merely +-90km away from Quito (A), but as you see on the map, innumerable bends made it slow travelling.

The tasty trout supper replenished body and soul and the group wandered back to the hotel in high spirit!

The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to track down the elusive "Andean Cock-of-the-Rock" (which incidentally is the Peruvian national bird). Oh well, even in Ecuador, it's a mega tick!

To follow our birding, click on this link:
http://mi60mindobirds.blogspot.com/2012/07/mindo-andean-cock-of-rock.html
If you'd rather just see some of the beautiful orchids and plants of the Mindo area, then click on this link:

The following link will take you through the next section of our whole trip in Ecuador:
http://mi60ecuadortrip.blogspot.com/