The abundant Andean Emeralds were joined by several other common species: Buff-tailed Coronet, Purple-throated Woodstar, Western Emerald, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, and Booted Rackettail were rarely out of sight.  Purple-bibbed Whitetips were not uncommon, though most were female-plumaged birds, attractively spangled hummingbirds reminiscent of a giant rackettail. Males were much scarcer, but worth waiting for.

Aptly named!

Empress Brilliants were far from common, but each one that appeared created a real stir among the watchers.

This impressive bird shows any number of features that deserve commemoration in its common name, but “Empress Brilliant” is, I suppose, evocative, if not terribly informative.

Something of a rarity as high up as the Lodge, only a couple of Green-crowned Woodnymphs were in attendance while I was there (though we’d seen many of them at Milpe in the days before). In a world of gaudy birds, this one ranks among the gaudiest.

The females are very elegant, echoing the pattern of the males in subtle gray and green.

My favorites? The three species of violet-ears, especially Brown Violetear, a shy beauty slipping around in the trochilid throng, never staying long but always the source of gasps when it did show up.

This may be the best picture I took in Ecuador, or at least the one I like most.

Tandayapa Bird Lodge is ideal for getting to see many of those more colorful birds. The couple of days I had there were great for such birds as Red-billed Parrots in fast-flying flocks and tanagers in the treetops.

Blue-winged Mountain-Tanagers were among my favorites: big, bright, and conspicuous, even visiting feeders over breakfast (theirs and mine) for great views.

A common sound in the cloud forest was the hawk-like keening of Golden-headed Quetzals. We didn’t actually see many of these rather reclusive birds, but this one sat for its portrait, nicely showing off the fringed upper-tail coverts that nearly conceal the black rectrices.

And Tandayapa was a wonderful place for watching Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan, to my mind the Choco endemic: beautiful, big, and classic in its tropical beauty.

Now that’s the cloud forest: fog, epiphytes, and toucans!

Tony took a few of us around to see their resident star, a female Common Potoo brooding a chick atop a snag.

The eerie light, the awkward angle, and the abundant vegetation made it difficult to get clear pictures of this amazing sight, but that oddly placed white bump to the right beneath the adult’s belly plumage was the chick. Tony told me that both mother and child will occupy the snag until the youngster has grown large enough to displace the parent, at which point the adult will seek a new roost, leaving the old one to the fledgling.

This one was feeding on a sort of woody Eupatorium at Tandayapa Lodge.

And this one…well, let’s just say that not all leps are terribly discriminating in their source of minerals.

This was quite a common butterfly in the upper Tandayapa Valley; we took to calling it a sister.

This next one may even be a sister.

 

These were all over the roads in the cloud forest.

I felt very smug when I recognized this one as an eighty-eight; of course, there are many, many different eighty-eights, so it was sort of like recognizing a bird as, oh, a tanager. Michael suggested that this one was really an “eighty-nine,” and I’m happy to go with that.

Well, I joined Tim and Debbie, Darlene, and Nick for one of the strangest mornings of my life. We left Tandayapa Lodge in the early dark and pulled into the Paz de las Aves preserve at just past 5:30. Angel and his family were right behind us, and we set off down the well-built trails in the first glimmers of dawn.

I knew what to expect, but I had no idea what to expect. As we crept silently along the paths, occasionally Angel would erupt into shouts: “Venga, venga,” ‘Come on, come on!’ He wasn’t urging us on to greater speed; he was calling the birds. A Moustached Antpitta emerged onto the trail ahead of us, and then a Dark-backed Wood-Quail actually joined our group for a second before continuing into the woods. It was getting weird.

We stopped at the first feeding station, where grapes and bananas are carefully fastened to a line, then fed out on pulleys into the forest canopy. Toucan Barbets were singing, so we had great hopes that they might come in while we were out on the trails. We never got to see that bird (I still have never had a good look), but we found on our return that the fruit had attracted a couple of Crimson-rumped Toucanets.

Much more surprising was an Olivaceous Piha, a rare canopy-dweller I hadn’t expected to see at all, much less at close range for a good half hour while it pondered the grapes hanging on the feeders.

The unexpectedness of the sighting and the beauty of this big, thrush-like cotinga made it immediately one of my favorite birds of the whole trip.

We didn’t tarry long at the feeders, though, as Maria was waiting for us. Maria is the most famous antpitta in the world. Angel and his brother led us to a sort of grandstand in the forest, where we took our places and Angel began to whistle and call: Venga, venga! And she did. This absurd football-shaped and -colored thing bounded down the trail on long legs, then hopped up on a stump to take eviscerated worms from Angel’s hand.

He actually touched a Giant Antpitta, and we weren’t much farther away from the bird ourselves. Maria gobbled for several minutes, then bounced off into the forest to remove her makeup and rest up for the afternoon performance.

I finally managed to shut my gaping mouth a couple of hours later, but only after we’d had another close encounter with a small family of Dark-backed Wood-Quail and a beautiful look at a Yellow-breasted Antpitta.

You’ve got to go see this place. Believe me.

The plan was to visit the blind at Tandayapa for the early-morning show, then head back to the diverse wonders of Milpe, ending up at Tandayapa again to check in and get a night’s sleep.

I hadn’t managed to visit the blind on our quick visit during the conference, so it was a thrill to walk out the short path in the pre-dawn darkness. The set-up is perfect: a large, comfortable wooden blind with benches and a derelict chair, big viewing windows, and two neatly framed compost piles illuminated by a yellow light of the sort we use to light up our front sidewalk. Though it was still dark, a pair of Immaculate Antbirds was already coming in for the moths and other insects; they were beautiful birds but none too friendly, beating up on a Chestnut-capped Brushfinch that presumed to share the bounty. Russet-capped Warblers hopped around the light, snagging the smaller insects, while White-tipped Doves moved quietly through the undergrowth in the background. A magical place, and I immediately forged plans to light up our compost heap here at home (plans I had to give up once I remembered that our compost is in a big, covered plastic bin!).

One species that eluded us during our short stay in the blind was White-throated Quail-Dove; we took it as a good sign that one was walking quietly along the trail beside us when we left!

Milpe was amazing once again. A Squirrel Cuckoo met us when we stepped out of the van at the preserve; he was relatively bold and brash until he saw the camera, then started slipping squirrel-like through the leafy branches.

The hummingbird party was going full-steam, too, with White-whiskered Hermits zipping in and out and those crazy little Green Thorntails doing their insect imitations. A Purple-crowned Fairy, the only one for me of the trip, flashed past, too. Collared Trogons, a species we had somehow missed on the conference field trip, added to the color and to the noise, but neither Choco Toucan nor Pale-billed Aracari dropped in while we were there.

Back to Tandayapa, this time with a target in mind. I’d had great looks at Turquoise Jay at Guango during the week, and this species would turn out to be fairly common and fairly conspicuous during my stay at Tandayapa. Not so the other jay of the Ecuadorian cloud forest; but Nick knew a spot…. And it didn’t take long before we were enjoying great and close-up views of 4 Beautiful Jays, deep blue-black creatures wearing sky-blue crowns and shouting at the tops of their corvid lungs at us as they moved through the roadside brush.

The evening featured great birds like Andean Pygmy-Owl and Band-winged Nightjar (I was looking the other way when the Swallow-tailed Nightjar fluttered past); but for me, the whole day belonged to the jay that deserves its name.

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.

It was an accident, but a happy one: my field trips at the ABA Conference started out at relatively “easy” sites with few species (by Ecuadorian standards, that is!) and ended with the riotous diversity of the Milpe area. I’d had to listen to returning groups every evening as they bragged over supper about how many birds they’d seen and how well they’d seen them, but now, September 6, the last day of the conference (already!!), it was my turn to be delighted and overwhelmed.

Hardly had we stepped into the parking lot at the Milpe Preserve when we were assaulted by new birds from all sides. My very first bird on stumbling off the bus with the rest of The Manakins was a male Green Thorntail, perched nonchalantly at the tip of a bush, soaking in the warmth of the morning air and our admiration.

This species, another one of those tiny hummingbirds with outlandish tails, turned out to be even weirder in life than in the field guides; the little females, with their oddly pied plumage, were very bee-like, while the males’ long pointed rectrices resemble the abdomen of a dragonfly in flight.

We did our best to get into the woods, but such feeder-wonders as Green Honeycreepers and Silver-throated Tanagers slowed us down; a Broad-billed Motmot brought us from a birding crawl to a complete stop as it posed above the trail for us.

“Most-wanteds” just kept popping up as we went along Two Choco Toucans flew across the road, landing in sight for outstanding scope views. A blur of color resolved itself into a Pale-mandibled Aracari; I was so taken aback by the beauty of this creature that I didn’t even participate in the ensuing debate on the use of the cedilla in English (imagine that).

It’s funny how toucans can still take your breath away, all those years of cereal commercials notwithstanding.

So many, many birds! Impossible to choose a favorite, but here’s a strong candidate: my ‘lifer’ Snowy-throated Kingbird, an austral migrant enjoying its stay on the wintering grounds in Ecuador.