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 ‘guan’ Category
GET YOURSELF TO ECUADOR
July 21, 2017BIRDING 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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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.
Birding Sani Lodge
October 2, 2010Birding Sani Lodge will be the highlight any birder’s trip to Ecuador. Reached only by river canoe, it is far from cars, power lines, city lights and plate glass windows. The birds seem to appreciate this nearly pristine habitat. And the birders on our PIB/Neblina organized trip certainly appreciated the birds. Here are some I managed to capture by camera: 
This is a Long-billed Woodcreeper who moved about the area near the dining hall. And displayed ther beak for which he was aptly named.
While we’re talking big beaks, take a look at this big beaker.
The White-throated Toucan. In our brief stay at Sani we got to see five members of the Toucan tribe. Here’s my best shot of a Many-banded Aracari seen from the Sani Canopy Tower, one hundred feet up.
And thirdly, an Ivory-billed Aracari. Also shot from eye level atop the canopy. I show these pics, not because they are much good, but they do prove that I wasn’t dreaming. The birds really were there, in profusion.
And there were a quartet of Trogons as well. Here’s my only medicore shot, but any birder knows these guys are serious lookers, and rarely easy to spy. But our guides were top-notch, always a key to good Neotropical birding for us Norte Americanos.
My Blue-crowned Trogon up high.
It’s the right time to plan your 2011 birding trip to Ecuador with Partnership For International Birding and Neblina Forest Tours.
Partnership for International Birding 