Ecuador: Birding Tour

This part of the blog has been hard to write.  I was so excited and with so much expectation is was probably never all going to be realised however i couldn't have expected what did happen in the end.

We booked a birding tour through an established company with lodges in most of the hotspots we wanted to vist.  From the get-go (in my opinion) they disappointed, cutting every possible corner, i won't go on but we found them very overpriced and won't use them again.

The first lodge we stayed in was Tandayapa, we had a lot of leisure time for various reasons, though helpfully one of the on site staff members was keen on birding too.

From the lodge we saw a good number of species, including Golden Tanager:

Golden-headed Quetzal:

A female Purple-throated Woodstar:

Red-headed Barbet:

A bathing Tropical Parula:

Crimson-rumped Toucanet:

We did do some walks on the property and visited another local property, before thankfully being joined by the son of the owner and one of the best bird guides we've had the pleasure to be guided by.

He took us on to a lodge at Milpe, birding the forest and grounds there, roads to-and-fro, etc., a much more active, targetted birding experience and somewhat more reflective of what we expected.

On this section we saw Summer Tanager:

Spotted barbtail:

Ornate Flycatcher:

White-whiskered Hermit:

Yellow-throated Toucan:

The trail and lodge had some very large snails:

From our room i photographed a Brown-billed Scythebill just as it captured an insect:

It wasn't only birds either, a Blue Morpho, briefly and indeed unusually sat with its wings open:

On a section of road we visited a pair of Rose-faced Parrots were building a nest:

On another route we saw Masked Water-Tyrant:

On the last day (as it turned out) of our tour, we visited a pass in the high-Andes, headed eventually to Amazonia for the first time.   The landscape was stunning:

We saw some cracking habitat specialists including Rainbow-bearded Thornbill:

Pale-naped Brushfinch:

Many-striped Canastero:

Then, frankly, was the wildlife sighting of the tour, a Spectacled Bear, feeding on plants on an open stretch of road, unexpected and quite amazing:

We went on further looking again at the landscape and taking it all in:

Unfortunately it was at this point that Helen fell and broke her wrist (sheared and compressed fracture).   We had to drive back to Quito, get her into hospital, x-rayed and then after a painful night, emergency surgery.   That was the end of the tour, no Amazonia, no Amazon, 300 species below expectations; a lot of distress and for her huge amounts of pain and discomfort.  We cannot thank our guide, our fellow traveller,  the staff at the lodge and the attendants on every KLM flight we took enough, they were all amazing.    Now what to do.....?