Day IV: Upper Tandayapa Valley

On the fourth day of the ABA Conference, I rose early, early to join The Lapwings on their exploration of the upper Tandayapa Valley, a fantastically beautiful (and birdy) stretch of cloud forest not far at all from Quito. I was especially looking forward to the day as a foretaste of the long weekend I would be spending at Tandayapa Lodge after the conference ended.

The views alone would be enough for most people, but we were excited to discover that those lovely trees and thickets were full of birds, too. A family of Plain-tailed Wrens played a noisy game of hide-and-seek with the guide’s iPod, finally emerging into clear view in a hole in their bamboo fastness. As we moved up and down the road through the upper valley, Slate-throated Whitestarts overlapped with Spectacled Whitestarts, Tropical Parulas with Three-striped Warblers, and even that most musical of all New World warblers, Russet-crowned Warbler, deigned to let itself be glimpsed in between snatches of melody.

Naturally, the tanager show was excellent, and I experienced more than one of those classic neotropical moments of indecision: to stay on the bird that is showing well, or to try for glimpses of its sneakier flockmates darting through the foliage? I no doubt made the wrong decision a time or two, but what can you do when your eyes land on a bird as beautiful and bizarre as a Grass-green Tanager?

Watching the sky paid off well that morning, too. With the warming of the day, a pair of Hook-billed Kites came up to soar not far over us, and a Short-tailed Hawk, long one of my favorite buteos, lifted off from the trees to start a day of hunting canopy habitats we couldn’t even see from the ground.

Our own lunch was taken at the Lodge, where there was no shortage of distractions out on the deck. I’ll no doubt have more to say about the hummingbirds, but for now will simply note that Bananaquits really like a good gulp of sugarwater too!