Guango Lodge Hummingbirds

On the way back from Papallacte to Quito, we stopped for lunch at Guango Lodge, one of those hummingbird paradises you run across everywhere in the Andes. Lunch, I’m afraid, was neglected in favor of the feeders, which were mobbed. It was here that we saw our first Speckled Hummingbirds and Mountain Velvetbreasts of the week. Proving that opposites attract, Sword-billed Hummingbirds shared the feeders with stumpy little Mountain Avocetbills, while neatly tuxedoed Collared Incas were everywhere.

 

The abundant Buff-tailed Coronets were joined by their ruddy cousins, Chestnut-breasted Coronets; this is easily one of the most attractive, and one of the most oddly colored, hummingbirds anywhere.

Perhaps the commonest of them all was Tourmaline Sunangel, the males elegantly dark with small red stars on their throats; females (some of them, at least) are very nattily patterned with well defined white throats, so different from the males that I had to remind myself again and again that they were the same species.

Long-tailed Sylphs were common here too.

And through all this trochilid madness darted large numbers of White-bellied Woodstars, tiny hummingbirds that take bee-mimicry to an extreme: not only do they look like bumblebees with their white patches and bands, but they sound like them as they buzz around among the larger species.