BIRDING ECUADOR: EAST SLOPE OF ANDES
Cabañas San Isidro and Wildsumaco Lodge
2011
Thursday 6 January to Saturday 15 January
Guided by Gary Rosenberg
Price: $2600
$100 can be deducted from the total price if taken in combination with the Ecuador: La Selva.
Short ten day tour concentrating on two comfortable lodges on the eastern slope of the Andes of Ecuador. Excellent hummingbird watching. Fabulous diversity of tanagers. Roadside birding and well-maintained forest trails. Includes one night at Guango Lodge, three nights at Cabañas San Isidro, and three nights at exciting Wildsumaco Lodge. Fun introduction to Andean birding.
The eastern Andes of Ecuador are spectacular in terms of both scenery and birding. The capital city of Quito is surrounded by volcanoes, some towering high above tree line with permanent snow-capped peaks. At the higher elevations on the slopes of these stunning mountains, the diversity of birdlife is impressive. Within a few hours of Quito are a series of comfortable, small birding lodges, situated in very productive birding locations, providing a perfect opportunity to sample the incredible diversity found on the east slope of the Andes. Our short tour will strategically visit these three lodges, beginning first at the high-elevation Guango Lodge located just below Papallacta Pass, then continuing to the middle-elevation Cabañas San Isidro, nestled in the wonderful Huacamayos, and finally descending to lower elevation in the foothills to the new Wildsumaco Lodge, which is rapidly becoming famous for an amazing set of formerly very difficult to see species. These three destinations will create a pleasurable transect from rich Paramo down to the edge of Amazonia, and we are likely to see more than 300 species during the week, including an amazing array of hummingbirds and tanagers.
The Paramo grasslands and rocky environments support numerous exciting birds, from Ecuadorian Hillstars and Carunculated Caracaras, to Stout-billed Cinclodes and Paramo Pipit. Patches of high elevation Polylepus forest are home to specialties such as Giant Conebill and the scarce Black-backed Bush-Tanager. We’ll visit the stunningly scenic Antisana Reserve where we’ll search the skies for soaring Andean Condors, and scope a high-elevation lake for Silvery Grebe and Yellow-billed Pintails. The grassland will be alive with caracaras and Andean Gulls, and we’ll hope for views of the locally scarce Black-faced Ibis. Continuing east from Antisana, one climbs up to above tree line in, and at Papallacta Pass, where the highway crosses over to the Amazonian slope. The high elevation birding here is very productive, and we’ll search for incredible birds such as Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, before dropping onto the east slope and continuing down to our high Andean lodge, Guango Lodge, where we will be bombarded by our first bout of hummingbird watching. Seeing specialties such as the incomprehensible Sword-billed Hummingbird will be a highlight of the trip.
Our next destination will be a lovely mountain lodge know as Cabañas San Isidro. The setting here is wonderful, nestled in the Huacamayos, a spur of the eastern Andes, with gorgeous vistas across the canopy of lush subtropical cloud forest. Here we will walk on nice maintained forest trails, and along roads that pass through relatively untouched forest. Large mixed species flocks of tanagers and flycatchers will be the order of the day, but we’ll also look for spectacular birds such as Torrent Duck, Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, which have a small lek on the property, Black-billed Mountain-Toucan, Black-chested Fruiteater, and both White-bellied and Chestnut-crowned Antpittas (Which both come in to worms on the trail!). One of the nicest aspects of San Isidro is how wonderful the management and service is, not to mention the nearly gourmet food!
Anyone who has birded in the Andes might recognize that the least accessible habitat is the foothill forest at about 1000 m elevation. The opening of a wonderful new lodge in the Andean Foothills called Wildsumaco, on the slopes of the Sumaco Volcano allows us, finally, to visit this incredibly rich environment, that is home to a huge number of rare and local birds. Just a few of the many specialties we’ll look for here include Napo Saberwing, Black-throated Brilliant, Chestnut-crowned Gnateater, Blue-rumped Manakin, Gray-tailed Piha, Fiery-throated and Scarlet-breasted Fruiteaters, Yellow-throated Spadebill, Red-billed Tyrannulet, and a plethora of cool-looking tanagers!
In all, this short tour is an excellent introduction into the incredible diversity found in the Andes.
For those interested in a longer tour, this tour can be combined with our Ecuador La Selva Lodge tour.
