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!

Day III, and a great one. I birded the area around Antisana volcano with Marcelo and The Jacobins. Most of the day was cool and dry, with just a little rain as we were turning around to go back to Quito. And lifebird after lifebird!

Nearly all the specialties of the area turned up for us, including the dazzling Ecuadorean Hillstar, the bizarre Black-faced Ibis, and Andean Condor. A stop for Barn Owl, a rarity in Ecuador, produced wonderful views of both Bar-winged and Stout-billed Cinclodes, flocks of Andean Lapwings, and perhaps my most desired bird of the entire trip, Paramo Pipit.

Not every day you get to see a new motacillid this well!

The great surprise of the day, though, was our stop at the thatch-roofed house at Antisana reserve. This turned out to be not just a great spot for the hillstar, Andean Teal, and common terrestrial birds such as Paramo Ground-Tyrant and Plumbeous Sierra-Finch; it was also the house used by Alexander von Humboldt, the greatest scientific mind of the early 19th century, during his studies of vulcanism.

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.

Day II of the ABA Conference in Ecuador found me birding with The Tanagers under the truly expert leadership of Marcelo and Jarol. And it found me shivering like I hadn’t shivered for years, on the snowy paramo of Papallacta.

We made several stops on our way up to this magical tundra, pausing for such great birds as Carunculated Caracara and Variable Hawk.

Once up top, the wind and the snow made it painful to be out of the bus, but beauties like Tawny Antpitta and Paramo Ground-Tyrant (South America’s answer to wheatears) more than made up for the foggy cold.  

As our teeth chattered and our hands went numb, we couldn’t help smiling at the proud words on the side of our bus.