Los Bancos: Mirador Rio Blanco

After Milpe I was ready for just about anything; but the feeders at the Mirador Rio Blanco were a shock all the same. This small restaurant has a very pleasant dining room with large windows and a fine deck overlooking (as the name suggests) the Rio Blanco (as the name suggests!). There are also small, neat ”tourist cabin” rooms in the courtyard, and I think next time I’m in Ecuador I will try to stay a night or a month there.

The feeders were, simply put, incredible. Green Thorntails and half a dozen other hummingbird species were perching on birders’ fingers in their frenzy (the hummingbirds’ frenzy, though we birders were getting pretty out of control by then too!). Tanager flocks dropped in to lay waste to the fruit feeders.

And when we arrived, we heard, and quickly dismissed, the rumor that a White-throated Quail-Dove was feeding on grain beneath one of the trays. It was no rumor: the wily and elusive quail-dove fed quietly on the edge of the vegetation, three feet under the picture window, the entire time we were there! And three or four Pallid Doves, reputed to be equally reclusive, were in sight almost constantly as they toddled up and down a bare path out the front door.

A spectacular place worth visiting if you ever get a chance–one of the really wonderful surprises of a wonderful week.