Birding in the Cloud Forest of Ecuador

It seems amazing that it has taken me this long to start writing the 2nd part of my blog on birding in Ecuador but it has taken me this long to transcribe all the birds I saw into my database and then note down all the individual observations. South American birds seem to have the longest names and as usual there is a lack of consensus as to which birds belong in what families. The birding in Ecuador was only three days but in that time I managed to break all my records. The total number of individual birds for the trip was 158. 118 of those I saw in those three days in mainland Ecuador and 35 in the Galapagos themselves with the remainder in Guayaquil and at airports. My previous record for a trip was in Uganda and Rwanda with 136 but this was in Africa where birds are so much easier to see and over a longer period. I also had my biggest day of new birds which was 61 birds, my previous record being 35 also from the Uganda trip.

We were met at Quito airport by Gabriel who turned out to be our driver and guide for the next three days and to my delight he was a bird expert. The best birding is always when it is just you and the guide where you're free to stop wherever you like and take as long as you want. Lindsey of course doesn't always like this but I have to say she was a real trooper over these three days never complaining about the hours of birding. Quito is the highest capital city in the world at 2,800 meters and I definitely felt a little short of breath. We were going west of Quito and actually although we had to climb even higher initially, our eventual destination was lower than Quito.

On our way we stopped several times to see what birds we could find and I actually recorded 20 new species just on the way. Of course, its always easy on the first day when every species is new. When I am on a trip like this I only count the new birds of that day and not the total number of bird species. The terrain was quite open and the birding was quite good allowing me this good shot of an American Kestrel. I also saw Gabriel use his bird calling device for the first time. This was simply an ipod with just all the bird calls on it hooked up to quite a powerful hand held speaker. During the trip he used this a lot and although it worked rarely in bringing the birds, occasionally the effect was dramatic.

The distance wasn't far but the roads weren't good and what with stopping for birds it took us a good three hours to get there. The reserve is called Macuipucuna and the lodge was an eco lodge typical of the ones we use through Discovery Steppes Travel. At the lodge they had lots of hummingbird feeders set up and I was thrilled that we were literally surrounded by hummingbirds the whole time. The main species was the White-necked Jacobin which our guide was really happy about so I think they can't be too common elsewhere but there were other species too. The Purple-throated Woodstar was particularly pretty.

After lunch we went birding where the birding highlight was the golden-headed quetzal, that high scoring scrabble bird, but actually the wildlife highlights were seeing the rare Tyra and an Agouti both mammals. We got back and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to photograph hummingbirds. Next to the frigate birds in the Galapagos, I took more shots of hummingbirds than anything else. Without really knowing what you're doing it's really hard to take decent shots and the few I have were all just flukes but it was fun trying.

The next day was my biggest ever day for new species at 61. Our first walk was at 6:30 in the morning where the highlight was having a female Cock-of-the-rock fly right at us for a few seconds and in the after-breakfast walk I got an ok shot of a Scale-crested Pygmy Tyrant (you see what I mean about the names). After lunch we drove to a different reserve in the Mindo Forest where I think our guide was more used to going and immediately started to see different birds probably as we were at higher altitude. According to our guide, Ecuador is joint 3rd with Brazil in terms of number of species with Columbia, surprisingly to me, having the highest diversity. Ecuador has the Andes going right through it as well as coast line so really has every kind of terrain possible hence the high of number of different species. On the way back from Mindo we stopped at this house built by a hippie, vegan, American couple. They hold the record for the most hummingbird species in one place (over 20 I think). True to form we saw 9 different species including my favourite, the Booted Racket-tail. A whole day of birding and Lindsey didn't even want to divorce me!

During these 2 days Lindsey was always saying that she wanted to see a Toucan.

We had seen a smaller species, the Toucanet and the extremely pretty Toucan Barbet but, despite Gabriel's best efforts, we had yet to see a proper Toucan. While eating lunch before leaving the lodge one of the lodge guides all of a sudden grabbed us and ran over to where a Pale-mandibilled Aracari, a Toucan in all but name, was sitting in a tree right next to the lodge. It was then joined by two others who casually began eating some fruit within easy view. To top it off, we stopped again at Mindo on our way back to Quito and finally saw the Plate-billed Mountain Toucan, a triumph!

Birding in the Galapagos

We have just come back from our holiday in the Galapagos and then a cloud forest in Ecuador. Birding in the Galapagos is astonishing from many view points. The most startling thing I found in the beginning was the fact that even the small birds were totally unafraid and even when we saw them in the few towns that exist in the Galapagos. Although I expected the larger birds to be unafraid it was really odd to have the small finches and beautiful yellow warbler right next to you at any one time. From a photography point of view, it was also stunning as the birds will sit there, often motionless in perfect sunlight. I took over three thousand photographs as I went and that is after the daily deletions I was making. Thank God for digital cameras.

There actually aren't that many species of birds in the Galapagos which isn't that surprising considering that they had to get almost 1,000 km from mainland Ecuador and that's only if they were coming from there. There are 58 species of bird of which 28 are endemic. I can't say that I saw a great many of this list but I can say that almost without exception, every single bird species I did see I was able to take a definitive photo of at some point during the trip. I was using my 300mm lens which was mainly excellent for the birds despite the fact that they were often so close. I had wanted to buy a 400mm lens before the trip but Lindsey wouldn't let me. There were three other avid photographers in our group and two of them were using Cannon cameras. They both had a better body than I had with the 40D and were both using an 18-270 Tamron lens which appeared to be just the thing for the holiday. That way you could take great photos no matter how close the animals were without having to change your lens. Having said that I appreciated having that little bit extra zoom. I am starting to look much more critically both at my own photos but also at professional photography and am surprised to start seeing the flaws in the professional pictures. It seems that the quality of cameras and lenses that an amateur has access to are such that the gap between the technical quality of amateur and professional photographs is quite small and the skill lies more in the creativity and probably manipulation of the photos afterwards. I think the other photographers were taking the shots in RAW format whereas I was simply using the Large/Fine setting. If you look at my shot of the Galapagos flycatcher and imagine seeing that shot in a magazine would you really think the quality was poor? I think not. Having said that, I consider this shot probably one of my best ever photographs.

I originally bought the camera in order to take pictures in low light knowing that I would not be able to use flash to take pictures of the gorillas in Rwanda. In the Galapagos I had the opposite problem of not really knowing how to take pictures in strong sunlight. Stupidly I didn't even have a lens shade so I am sure that would have helped. The problem was exacerbated with the frigate birds. Frigate birds (both the magnificent and the great) are very large, mainly black birds which simply float in the air tantalisingly in front of your camera lens. The problem is that if they are above you even a little bit then what you end up with is basically a silhouette with a tiny bit of colour (usually the red of the deflated neck sack) just showing if you look close up. I think I took more photographs of frigate birds flying than of anything else. I would guess at least 500 and in the end did get the definitive shot complete with inflated airsack. In the Galapagos patience really does pay off, eventiually you will almost certainly get the definitive picture. The only exceptions to that were the galapagos penguin which we we only saw on one day and the flamingos which were too far away.

Probably the best day for birding and photography was the day we went to the island called Espanola. This is where the blue-footed boobies were nesting right on the path which not only was great for photography and for watching them do their courtship dances but also because they were flying in right over our heads to land on the path. The path takes you up to some cliffs where you also see masked or nasca boobies and swallow tailed gulls. Espanola also has an endemic species of mockingbird. We had heard stories of how the mockingbirds will drink from an open waterbottle. We didn't see this but they did follow you around everywhere obviously expecting something. When we got up to the cliffs we saw nesting waved albatrosses which was definitely one of the highlights for me. The chicks were the size of a large chicken and the adults more turkey sized. The wind was billowing the cliffs allowing the birds to glide along slowly through the air. Watching and photographing the albatrosses doing this was fantastic but the real treat here was probably the red-billed tropicbirds with their long white tails. My shot is not bad but on close inspection is not quite in focus. As if that wasn't good enough as we returned to the beach a galapagos hawk flew in and posed perfectly for about 5 minutes. I would say I was about 5ft from it. After seeing the albatrosses on Espanola I was lucky enough to see albatrosses on the water a number of times during the trip. This has to be one of the rarest sites and most rewarding for a birder.

There are 13 species of Darwin finch. There are a few which are easily identifiable due either to size or obvious beak shape but there are a number of intermediate finches which are pretty tricky. Whenever I could I would photgraph the finches and then when we got back onto the boat I would play the finch game which involvedtrying to identify the finches by their beak shape. The three that I was sure of were the large ground finch, the small tree finch and the cactus finch. Unfortunately we didn't see the woodpecker finch which uses a stick to ferret out grubs in trees thus taking up the woodpeckers natural evolutionary niche.

If you want to take great photos and be up close and personal to birds then the Galapagos is the place. Our last part of the trip we spent three days in a cloud-forest near Quito. That was the place for seeing diversity but more of that on my next post.

New Birds in Devon and Regent's Park

OK, I need to catch up on my blogging. Three new birds in Lee this time and one in Regent's Park. Lindsey and I went for a walk on the coastal path to Ilfracombe on the 2nd May bank holiday and had a great view of a pair of linnets. Fortunately, I had the binoculars with me but sadly not the camera. The next day, when Lindsey went for a run, I went up with my camera this time to see if I could get a shot of them. No linnets this time but two other birds that I managed to photograph but could not immediately identify. One of them was identifiable pretty easily once I had a look at the book and the internet, this was the female northern wheatear. The other one though was much harder, even though the photo was good. I was pretty sure it was a meadow pipit and now I have had this confirmed by Tony Duckett, the wildlife warden of Regent's Park. Tony's blog talked of a whitethroat feeding at a nest site in plain view. I immediately went to see if I could see it and happened to bump into Tony who told me exactly where it was. When I went to the site I saw it immediately, a triumph!

In other news, we have had two baby wrens bouncing around our garden of late and being fed by the adult birds. They have now bounced into other gardens so we're not entirely sure if they made it or not. We first noticed them on the ground on the 10th July.

Baby Birds

Not too much to report of late. I went to Devon and saw a whimbrel at Crow Point in Braunton as well as my first swallows of the year. I set up a large niger seed feeder in Devon hoping to eventually attract bullfinches. I expected the birds to take a few days to discover the seed but to my pleasant surprise I had siskins feeding from it on the first day! That's Devon for you.

I thought I saw some house martins in Regent's Park but now reading the park blog I see that swifts have also been seen which makes me wonder. I still need to get these birds clear in my head. One small triumph was when I was walking through Regent's Park the other day and distinctly heard a chiffchaff, looked round and then saw it. Once you know the song you realise that it's actually quite a common bird even though the first time I ever recorded actually seeing one was last year.

This morning I woke up and saw a baby robin in the garden. I have lots of robins so hope that this is a baby from one of the pairs regularly fighting it out in my garden. This evening, I was watching the great tits going in and out of the bird box and thought I saw a baby coming to the opening in between feeds. Having the binoculars to hand I was then treated to witnessing for the first time three great tits leaving the box. Two I saw clearly with the bins, with the second one sneaking out without me seeing him clearly. There is at least one more in the box which also approached the opening but has not come out. My other bird box is empty which makes me wonder whether two boxes this close are too many.

The niger seed is going down at increasing speed which is probably the result of three goldfinches regularly feeding together at the moment. I wonder if they feed regurgitated niger seed to their young?

Good Birding Weekend

Lindsey is in New York this weekend (and if the volcano in Iceland doesn't stop, she may never get back) which means I can go birding at leisure. On Saturday morning I went to the Barnes Wetland Centre and was treated to a good sighting of a sparrow hawk, my first green sandpiper and my first sand martins which were flying in and out of a bank that the wetlands centre have set up for sand martins. There were also a number of redshanks there which were great to see.

In the evening I went to my parents and witnessed their largest haul of mandarins so far this year at 12. There were 3 pairs and the rest males with one of them ringed. Having spoken to a local ringer during the week, Phil Belman, I was pleased to notice the ring and have also photographed a robin in my garden with a sky blue and probably illegal ring.

On Sunday morning, I went on a planned bird walk with Tony Duckett, the wildlife warden of Regent's Park and a group of other birders. With Tony knowing the bird song he was easily able to pick out a blackcap which we then saw and also a brief glimpse of a sedge warbler. On the walk we also saw a goldcrest, 2 sparrow hawks flying quite high and a chiffchaff.

This takes me to 85 UK birds for the year and 91 for the all time list.

More new birds from Regent's Park

A further note of frustration on being away was that while I was away, a ring ouzel had been spotted in Regent's Park and actually hung around for a couple of days. I went to look for it when I got back but to no avail. However, in the area where the ring ouzel was supposed to be I did see 2 chif chafs for the first time this year. I was very pleased with this as I have only ever seen a handful of chif chafs ever. Then I walked over to my normal area that I walk past in the morning and saw another unusual bird. This was just like the chif chafs I had just seen but to me definitely looked a bit different and if anything a bit greener. I had seen from the Regent's Park bird blog that a willow warbler had been spotted so knew that they were around. I said to myself that if the description of the willow warbler said anything about being a bit green that this must be a willow warbler. Sure, enough the RSPB site describes them as having grey-green backs. The real way to tell the difference between them is the song and in fact the next day I did hear the same bird singing and noted a slight trailing off and lowering of the notes in the song towards the end which conforms with what Collins' Bird Guide says about their song; "somewhat descending verse". The advent of the digital age is of great benefit to birding. When I got to my desk at work, I immediately looked up a willow warbler and could play their song with no problem and then compare it with the chif chaf's as opposed to looking up the phonetic description of the song which to my understanding is incomprehensible.

Yesterday, on my usual walk I then spotted a redstart, again, my first ever. At first I thought it might be a stonechat having seen many of these before but then on closer inspection, especially with the flitting tail, it had to be a redstart. That makes 88 all time UK birds and 81 for the year. 100 is beckoning on both counts. That's got to be achievable.

Diving and Birding

I have been away diving in the Red Sea in Egypt in Sharm El Sheik. From a birding point of view the holiday was a bit frustrating despite being a great holiday in general. Egypt is one of those corridors from Africa to Europe and Asia that migrating birds use. These are usually the soaring birds like raptors and storks who need the air currents present over land but not the sea. However, even knowing that, it is very difficult to figure out where to go or what to do without having some insider info, and this all in the context of a diving holiday where you are diving three times a day. Half way through the holiday one of our diving guides turned out to be a zoologist who actually studies raptor migration, Francesco Germi. Once we got talking he then offered to take me to a spot where raptors roost after crossing over the Red Sea. Unfortunately, he had to work on the day we had planned so we couldn't make the trip, maybe next time.

One time we rose from the depths and Francesco enthusiastically pointed out an Osprey, Booby and some terns resting on a buoy come lighthouse. Although I could see the birds he was referring to, it was not a good enough view for me to count any of them, so I haven't. My first true Osprey will have to wait.

Whenever I land in a country I always look out the window from the airplane and then the general area to note the first bird I see in the new country. Usually, the bird is something fairly ordinary like a crow or a pigeon and true to form the first bird I saw this time was a feral pigeon or rock dove. The second bird was more interesting being a pied wagtail but after that it was all fairly run-of-the-mill for the area. Laughing dove (really quite pretty), carrion crow, house sparrow, and the local gull, the white-browed gull. I saw some kind of quail, also apparently on migration and various glimpses of raptors and some heron like birds but nothing I could positively identify.

Then there is the diving. If you have a listing mentality, diving can be very frustrating. Imagine being in an aviary with a hundred really colourful interesting birds that you've never seen before and you have a guide with you only no one can speak. For about 15 of the birds the guide has hand signals to identify them but the others are just lost in a haze of colour. I am wondering about creating a database of fish but I'm not sure I'm quite there yet.