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TAS Southern Ecuador Birding Trip Report
Posted by Brian Rapoza
about 7 years ago
4 Comments
Six birders joined me for the TAS tour of southern Ecuador from July 15-31. We stayed at seven different bird lodges and visited two national parks (Podocarpus and El Cajas) as well as several Jocotoco Foundation bird refuges. By tour's end, we saw or heard 564 species of birds (509 seen by at least one participant), including over twenty raptors, nine rails, fifteen pigeons and doves, almost sixty hummingbirds, thirteen woodpeckers, eleven parrots, almost thirty antbirds, ten antpittas (seven seen well), thirty-five ovenbirds and woodcreepers, seventy-five flycatchers, seventeen wrens and seventy tanagers!
To view a complete trip report, click on the link below.
Comments
564? Yikes--that's incredible! Great pictures in your report, too
As usual, a wonderful and comprehensive report. Any idea how many miles you drove?
Participants who collected GPS waypoints may have some idea as to how many miles we actually drove. Ecuador is a small country (about the size of Colorado) and we only covered the four provinces south of Guayaquil. It wasn't so much distance, but just how long it takes to get from one birding location to another. Curvy mountain roads, many of which were under construction, getting stuck behind slow-moving vehicles, speed bumps in every village . . . all conspired to make it seem like we would never get there. Once we finally got there, though, we saw tons of birds, so it was all worth the wait.
I think the main loop was about 650 miles. With side trips, we were probably between 1000 and 1500 miles.
I thought we made pretty good time, at least compared to the last time I was in southern Ecuador. The roads had been improved since I was there in 2008.
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