Jeffrey A. Gordon

The morning of March 10, 2009 was my first in Ecuador and I was in a distinctly unusual and not entirely comfortable situation. In 5 short days, I would commence co-leading a 2 1/2 week birding tour around a country with one of the most complex avifaunas in the world, yet I’d never been there before. How on earth was I going to get ready to do that?

The answer, of course, is that I was CO-leading the trip, in this case with Forrest Rowland, who lived in Ecuador for more than 4 years and has an exceptionally thorough knowledge of the country and its birds. So it would fall to me just to keep my head above water, ornithologically, while performing all the myriad support functions of a second leader.

Still, I was anxious to use the time I had before the tour to learn as much as I could about the country and its natural history. And 5 days is a blessedly long chunk of time, really. So I had arranged with our ground operator, Carmen Bustamente of BirdEcuador, to get out early and start seeing things. Principally, I was going to be based at Cabañas San Isidro, which is owned by Carmen and her husband, Mitch Lysinger. 

But the rather dry valley of Quito is separated from the cloud covered slopes where San Isidro lies by the massive eastern wall of the Andes. We’d have to go over that to get to our destination. Along the way, I’d visit a singular place and search for one of South America’s more storied birds.

Leaving Quito, a large, mostly modern city, it was clear that there was something rather unusual about this day: it was clear. We had glorious views back toward Pichincha, a volcano that rises to 15,696 feet/4,784 m.

As we left the congested urban area, we had an even more spectacular volcano sighting: the entirely snow-covered cone of Cotopaxi, which tops out at 19,347 ft/5,897 m.

I was enjoying the scenery, but I was itching to get out and see some birds. Finally, after an hour or so, my driver, Milton, pulled off down a short dirt road at the behest of my guide, Ernesto. It was odd and a little embarrassing to have two people assigned to taking care of just me that morning, but it was certainly luxurious.

We spent a few frantic (for me) minutes looking for birds in a brushy ravine. We glimpsed a couple of nice things, but others slipped frustratingly away. Finally, we spied a hummingbird off in the middle distance–a Black-tailed Trainbearer. Watching it swoop and dive, its absurdly long tail flexing behind it, I felt I had finally, truly arrived in Ecuador.

But Ernesto had other ideas than watching this rather common scrub bird. We drove onward and upward, leaving the highway and heading into ever more rugged country. Our pristine blue sky began to be interrupted by clouds, but we still counted ourselves blessed. Our primary birding destination, Papallacta Pass, is well-known for relentlessly foul weather.

As the altitude increased, the vegetation became shorter and well, weirder. The birdlife got a little weird, too. This bird might look like some kind of large-billed female grackle, but it’s really a Stout-billed Cinclodes (sin-CLO-days).

Here’s a White-chinned Thistletail, perched atop a low shrub that looked to me like it might well be some sort of heather.

These first two birds are members of the Furnariidae, an exclusively neotropical family of perching birds. Note that these are often and unhelpfully referred to as, “ovenbirds,” inevitably leading North Americans to confuse them with the quite unrelated species of warbler called Ovenbird. Furnariids, like antbirds, have radiated into a bizarre variety of forms and niches. So much so that looking at the Furnariid plates in the field guides is like listening to a loosely-organized mix tape. Most of them are brown–that often seems to be about the only link.

Flycatchers have also adapted to this harsh environment (Papallacta Pass, which by now was just a little bit below us, is somewhere around 14,000 feet). The Páramo Ground-Tyrant is named for the vegetation found here.

Below, a Brown-backed Chat-tyrant–another flycatcher–crowns a patch of páramo vegetation. Actually, probably sub-páramo, as true páramo is more dominated by bunch grasses and much of the vegetation here is at least partly bushy.

And as cool as the birds are, it’s that vegetation, plus the alpine scenery, that leave the biggest impression. In fact, I can think of a number of people (Liz, Mom, Julie, for starters) whose heads would pretty much explode on a nice sunny day up here–the plants are exceptionally wonderful.

Giant clubmosses, pincushion plants, on and on and on…it is crazy stuff!

Finally, I could see our ultimate destination for the morning, a patch of radio antennas that crowns a rocky peak.

 

Now, remember, I’d had just one night’s sleep at any altitude before coming up here. And while I couldn’t say that I was at all sick from the thin thin air, I wasn’t 100% well, either. There was the shortness of breath (mildly unpleasant) coupled with the feeling of having downed a strong martini (mildly pleasant). But the unique sensation I felt was a sort of pressure behind my eyeballs, like they might just pop out of my skull. This sounds awful, I know, but it wasn’t all bad. Different, for sure.

Ernesto, more accustomed to the lack of oxygen, went off to look for the true glamour bird of this spot–the Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe. Seedsnipes are shorebirds that have adapted to a niche not that different from ptarmigan in the Northern Hemisphere; i.e., they eat high-altitude produce. While Ernesto began his search, I feigned interest in something or other and tried to regain my breath and contain my eyeballs.

A thankfully short distance down the trail, Ernesto flushed a pair of seedsnipes, which went winging out of sight around the ridge, calling loudly as they went. Very, very luckily, they landed in the view of the guard stationed at the radio towers, who is used to breathless binocular-clad people coming up here to see these birds and he pointed us in the right direction.

At first our views were thrilling, but faroff. We could see the pair slowly making their way along the shoulder of a ridge, blending fantastically with the environment. His work done, Ernesto repaired to our van and I tried to get closer to the seedsnipes, moving in the most careful, non-carnivorous manner I could.

My efforts were repaid. I was able to view and enjoy the seedsnipes at a much more satisfying distance and still not flush them. Their plumage was simply exquisite. And remember, these are shorebirds! How incredibly cool.

What amazing birds! What an amazing place! What were my next four hours in Ecuador going to be like?

Tags: ecuador, flycatchers, furnariids, papallactapass, quito, seedsnipes

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