PIB has great trips to various habitat zones in Ecuador. And there’s a book you want to take with you. It’s the first-ever, one volume nature guide for anyone headed to Ecuador’s wondrous mountains and rain forest and arid western slopes:
Wildlife of Ecuador:
A Photographic Field Guide to Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, and Amphibians
Andrés Vásquez Noboa. Photography by Pablo Cervantes Daza. Princeton Press. 2017. $29.95.
I wish I’d had a book like this when I was in Ecuador…or even Panama where I got far too close to a pit viper without recognizing it. The bird section is fine but the real value is in all those other critters: face-to-face shots with snakes. It’s the head that matters…look for the heat-sensing pits. You may want to keep your birding guide nearby or back at the ecolodge because only breeding plumage shots are given for most avian species.
Now I know there are two species of agouti in Ecuador and I saw the black in Coca. Not sure even my bird guide knew there were two, certainly didn’t tell us.
Superbly clear range maps. Both English and Latin indices.
My favorite Ecuadoran bird is at the top of page 140…the Collared Inca.
ECUADOR GALLERY FROM MY VISITS:
Yellow-tufted Woodpecker:
Great Ani:
Hoatzin at Sani Lodge:
Squirrel monkey:
Swallow-tailed Kite over Napo River in Amazon Basin:
Archive for the ‘Ecuador’ Category
GET YOURSELF TO ECUADOR
July 21, 2017CHAMPION FLIERS?
July 4, 2016Here are some pictures I took of frigatebirds around the Galapagos a few years back. It was a trip organized by Partnership for International Birding. Haven’t been there? GO! Enjoy these champion flyers:
BIRDING WESTERN ECUADOR?
July 4, 2016Here is a great reason to go birding in western Ecuador. This is the endemic White-tailed Jay:
And now the Princeton University Press has issued a photographic guide to the birds of Western Ecuador. Living here in the Pacific Northwest I first notice the birds that aren’t found in this part of the Neotropics. No scoters, no alcids. But then you settle in to thumb through the book and you notice 8 raptors named “kite,” over 20 members of the dove/pigeon family, three pages of tinamous and guans (think big pheasants in the forest). Toucans, barbets (my favorite gang of tropical thugs), hummingbirds for page after page, Tanagers, endless tyrant flycatchers, antwrens and antvireos and antbirds, Finally near the back of the book you get to the euphonias, dressed like a junior high marching band.
This is a Thick-billed Euphonia.
The book includes range maps for each species showing its range across Ecuador. The book does NOT include the Galapagos. If you go after that White-tailed Jay, take this book along. Partnership for International Birding offers a panoply of birding trips to Ecuador. Check ’em out.
Birds of Western Ecuador:
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GALAPAGOS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
November 24, 2014The latest Audubon magazine has three pieces on the future of the Galapagos’ unique habitat and birdlife…in the face of climate change. You can click here to read those articles.
If you want to see the Galapagos as they are now, PIB has a variety of trips to both the islands and to the rich birding locales on the Ecuadoran mainland. You can click here to read about the Ecuador/Galapagos trips we offer.
Some photos from a recent PIB trip to the islands.
The birds, from top to bottom: Lava Gull, Lava Heron, Wilson’s Plover. Blue-footed Booby, Brown Pelican with his outboard motor, Vermilion Flycatcher. Elliot’s Storm-Petrels.
And a couple of endemics:
Make that three endemics” Dove, Mockingbird and Penguin. The latter loves to swim around with snorklers, even slow-moving hominids with plastic faces on.
A SWEET SIGHT: THE PANAMANIAN HONEYCREEPERS
February 24, 2013The tanagers of Latin America are abundant, come in numerous colors and species and are varied in habits and habitat. One small branch of the family tree bears the honeycreepers. Behold:
These are male Red-legged Honeycreepers, but what you notice is the rich blues of their shiny plumage. They are about the size of a White-crowned Sparrow.
The drab bird i nthe back is a female of the species, much easier for herr to hide when sitting on a nest. He’s always obvious to possible predators as well as the females who must value show in their mates.
This is the male Green Honeycreeper.
NEOTROPICAL BIRD GUIDE ONLINE
January 31, 2013Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab is putting together a comprehensive list and description of Neotropical birds online. Here is the link. I am about to get my first look at Panama’s avians so this site has been fun to explore. I’m on one of our PIB trips with a great local guide.
This Neotropical site works very much like the Birds of North America Online which I find to be a valuable resaource when I am writing about our native birds here in the U.S. The Noetropical site already has 4000 species, more than 4 times the total on the older BNA site. Such is the species diversity of Central and South America plus the Caribean Islands. We regularly get four breeding species of tanager in North America, further south there are many dozens. Even more flycatchers in Latin America than any other family, nearly 400 species.
ONE MORE REASON TO VISIT ECUADOR: OILBIRDS
January 24, 2013
The Oilbird is a sparsely present and unique bird in South America. It is one bird you can see on PIB’s Ecuador trips that tour the Quito area. I saw this fascinating bird in a deep chasm on a private farm that welcomed the PIB tour group. The birds are nocturnal so they were up on the shaded ledges sleeping during the day.
The Oilbird is the only bird in the world that can use echolocation to navigate. It lets them come and go in lightless caves where they roost and nest.
Though closely related to the Nightjar family, the Oilbird has given up esating insects in favor of fruit. Though it evolved first in North America during a hot period in the climate, the Oilbird now has been pushed into the tropical areas of Latin America from Trinidad to Bolivia and east to Guyana.
If you look at the range map for Oilbird in Nigel Cleere’s NIGHTJARS OF THE WORLD you will notice a series of less than fifty dots scattered about northwestern South America. There are few places with adequate caves and a year-round supply of fruit.
Like many fruit-eating birds from waxwings to tanagers to parrots, the Oilbird is gregarious. It roosts, nests and feeds in groups.
So different is the Oilbird from even its closest related species it is not only in its own genus, but in its own taxonomic family, Steatornithidae.
If you want to add this amazing and unqiue bird to your lifelist, check out our Ecuador tours.
References: A NEOTROPICAL COMPANION by John Kricher. Princeton University Press.
NIGHTJARS OF THE WORLD by Nigel Cleere. Princeton University Press.
OILBIRD PHOTO COURTESY OF LELIS NAVARRETE, LEAD GUIDE FOR MANY PIB TOURS IN ECUADOR.
MANNIKIN COURTSHIP
April 27, 2012The National Geographic has just published new images and information on the remarkable courtship ritual of the Club-winged Mannikin. A little bird with a big performance. This one of the many wonderful birds you can see if you book an Ecuador birding trip through Partnership for International Birding. One of our clients just returned from a week-long birding trip with over forty species of hummingbird, and just as many tanagers. Come along, and see for yourself.
Take a look at this little gem:
A Booted Rackettail, one of the Andean hummers you should see on our Ecuador trip.
2012 IS THE YEAR YOU GET THE BIRDS!
September 13, 2011Partnershipfor International Birding now has 80 trips scheduled for 2012 with a score more in the works. Check out our website for the list. We can take you to almost every birdable cranny of the planet. And you’ll be in small groups, not with a busload.
AFRICA: We now have trips to Gambia, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Ghana, Uganda. There are many birds you’ll never see if you don’t get to Africa.
This four-foot high, pedestrian pelican is the Shoebill. He lives in papyrus swamps around Lake Victoria in Uganda. Once we’d seen this guy at eye-level from our small canoe the other hundreds of birds, the numerous antelope species, the elephants, the warthogs digging up the lawn…those were all a bonus. Shoebill is the single best reason to bird Uganda. He won’t show up as a vagrant at Cape May.
ASIA: India, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia.
In all our overseas trips we use only the best local guides. We stay in local eco-lodges. And we plan these trips with your lifelist in mind. And we can get you to six continents and then get you to the birds you want to see.
This colorful character is the Masked Trogon female. She liked hunting outside our breakfast hall at one Ecaudoran lodge.
LATIN AMERICA; Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina,
Guyana. And our Ecuador trips can include a few days in the amazing world of Darwin’s Galapagos.
OCEANA: New Zealand and Australia, where the endemics are pandemic. Don’t you want a couple Kiwis and a Kookabura on your life list?
We can put together custom trips for your small group of birding friends so you get the time to find your target birds.
NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE. Of course we also provide great trips in the U.S. From Lark Bunting to Hermit Warbler. From Sprague’s Pipit to Cassin’s Auklet, we have the trip you need to fill out your lifelist. North Dakota, Colorado, Pacific Northwest for winter specialties from the Arctic, Northern California, Tennessee in spring. If you hanker after some of Europe’s goodies, we can plan your trip for Great-crested Grebe, Black and Red Kite, Hoopoe or Wallcreeper. From Spain to the U.K. Or from Turkey to France, we have your ideal bird trip to the Old World. Below: a Common Shelduck at the Camargue in southern France.
Then a Pied Wagtail playing the ancient field at Stonehenge.
GALAPAGOS FOUR-LEGGERS
November 9, 2010
There were lizards. There were sealions.
There were lizards ON sealions.
Yeah, I know, grasshopper=six legs. This guy was colorful, named “painted locust.”
Of course, there were those hefty terrapin-types. Four verrrry big tree trunk legs.
Buff-colored land iguana, a species endangered by loss of habitat and imported predators. Below the charcoal-colored marine iguana, abundant in years when the ocean currents bring upwelling and plenty of food.
Winner of the onshore leg count:
Partnership for International Birding 