A long first day!

 October 12, 2021

Our first full day in Ecuador was a long one.  The Quito lodge ( more on this when we stay there again later in the trip, as we haven’t really seen it in daylight yet) is at the top of a steep hill south of the main part of Quito, so approximately 10,000 feet and it was nippy in our cabin!  This part of Ecuador is like the old joke about West Virginia “ if you flattened it out it would be enormous”.  We began with breakfast at 5:30 and then drove for several hours to our first birding location... down the hill, through Quito and then downhill some more as we went further north. As we neared the outskirts of Quito, we saw and passed the equator monument. The rest of our morning would be spent in the Northern Hemisphere. The area around Quito is very dry; just north of Quito the landscape changes to green deciduous forest and corn fields; and a bit later we were in the cloud forest. We drove uphill from the main highway for a couple of miles on a single track dirt road — at the top, in the middle of nowhere was a bird sanctuary operated as a family business. We spent several hours there.  While there we got to see a very rare endemic species, whatever,  we also saw 15 species of hummingbirds, one with an enormous tail.  A wide variety of Tanagers were present.

 We retraced our path to the highway (stopping several times for bird sightings) and continued north to Milpe, often cited as one of the best birding locations in Ecuador.  Tonight’s lodge (3,000 feet) is at the edge of a deep valley with a rushing river at the bottom.  We are in the rain forest but at a high enough altitude that it is not hot, just humid. The mist comes and goes as it will, with the result that the valley in front of the lodge appears and disappears. Our room as well as the dining area (we eat outdoors) overlook the valley.  We are the only guests here, and it is very quiet. We took several birding walks near the lodge, and a night walk after dinner. Amongst all the birding walks we did today and tonight, we’ve seen 84 species so far, most of them new to us. The night walk also yielded frogs, spiders, large snails and interesting insects.  The food has been very good and plentiful,  the portions are of a reasonable size, but there are a lot of courses.  The amount of physical activity we did today certainly did not sufficiently justify the four course lunch.

Pictured below:  Toucan Barbet, Booted Racquet-tail, Gladiator Frog