Ten-Day Birding Adventure

Today I began a ten-day trip through NW Ecuador guiding a woman from Colorado who is looking for the more obscure birds of the region. Her name is Pearl Jordan and her goal is to have 8,000 birds on her list by her 80^th birthday. She needs about 300 more species to accomplish this task and only two years to finish.

We started by going to Guango Lodge in search of some new lifers for her. It was raining all morning, which made it difficult to accomplish this task. However, we were able to add a few to her list. The first one came quickly when a Mountain Avocetbill made an early morning appearance at the feeders. We were off to a good start.

The rain continued but we did not want to give up so we made a quick trip down path leading passed the lodge. Here we encountered a Yellow-breasted Brush-Finch. Since Pearl’s list only included about 10 birds in the higher altitudes we were off to a good start.

Since it was getting late we decided to go up the Termas de Papallacta and have some lunch. While there we thought we might try our luck at one of the trails that paralleled the river. It was getting late and we figured that the birds might be making their late afternoon snack runs. The trip paid off as we saw a White-browed Spinetail and a Flammulated Treehunter along the trail. Not bad for the first day.

In all we spotted about 30 species of birds and were able to make a small dent in her list.

Tomorrow we are off to Yanacocha. Will keep you posted on our progress. I have not downloaded any photos yet but will post them when I do.