The town of Mindo, just two hours north of Quito, nestles in the lap of pristine tracts of misty cloud forest.
It is famous amongst birder watchers as one of the best places in the world to see multiple feathered species. Of the 1500 species in Ecuador (itself a staggering number, especially considering the diminutive size of the country), close to a third reside around Mindo. That's basically 5% of the world's birds in just a 100 square miles. A veritable wet dream for twitchers.
And I very nearly missed it!!
Mindo is hidden away in only a small, obscure paragraph in our Lonely Planet "travel bible" and we totally overlooked it. Instead, we raced off from quito to the relatively "birdless" highlands and it was only on the jungle tour that I heard about "the promised land" from some fellow travellors who were waxing lyrical about the "locust swarms" of hummingbirds they had seen there. So we changed our plans (to head south) after Galapagos, and routed our flights back to Quito.
I am so glad we did. In the 3 days we were there, I saw 78 species (soundly breaking my previous record of 72 in Chitwan, Nepal) and catapulted
my life list up to 930. Both Ally and I were entranced by the beauty and tranquility of the forests and the amazing colourful creatures (both butterflies and birds) that we saw.
If Hummingbirds are the jewels of Mindo, then it is veritably dripping in them. We saw 17 of the staggering 40 species found in the area. They hover around the flowers and sugar water feeders in humming swarms, flashing every brilliant, irradescent colour imaginable. We were captivated and I almost had to pinch myself to believe it. They are extremely curious. Every so often, a hummingbird would fly over and hover just inches from our heads (like a pesky bee) to find out if we happended to be a tasty flower.
If you think we humans are the only ones to hold breakfast seminars, think again. Here we have a high powered humingbird "round-table" conference. There was much bickering and politics and gulping of sugar water but eventually, it seemed, consensus was reached.
Julio was our guide for two days and she is was absolutely fabulous. The only female birding guide in Mindo, she is a veritable livewire of energy and was determined to show us every "Mindo special" conceivable in the short time we had. She was also a walking encyclopaedia on the birds and could identify by both sight (no matter how glimpsing) and sound. I can't recommend her enough.
Apart from the hummingbirds, there were 5 big birding highlights.
First was the Antpittas. These are extremely shy birds that skulk around the forest floor and you never see them - only hear them. Imagine my delight when we managed to get a photo of one!
Then there was the Toucan barbet, a lovely bird that I really wanted to see - and did - sitting in a branch below its nest.
Third was the gorgeous Quetzel - emerald green and ruby red.
Fourth and fifth were the cock of the rock and manakins - described by Ally below.
We also saw an amazing 11 species of woodpeckers (including woodcreepers) and 4 species of my favourite bird in the world, the colourful toucan. And then there was plenty more like this blue green tanager.
And the dashing little "Mask of Zorro Swallow" Well, Ally's name for it anyway Much more romantic than its latin name: Notiochelidon flavipes
Ah, needless to say I was in heaven (hence my big smile here, despite being in a very rickety cable car thing, 110 metres above the forest canopy!). I dream of visiting Ecuador - and Mindo - again one day. Julio has promised me Choco Toucan when I do!
Excerpt from Ally’s dairy
Our next trip was to Mindo, 2.5 hours Northeast from Quito to see birds. Mindo is one of the best birding spots in the world and G wanted to see the Cock-of the rock bird to add to his life list and goal of 1000 bids seen in the wild.
On our first day it was very wet but G had a walk and took photos of birds around the village and then we went to a house that had many orchids and sugar feeders. Literally humming around the feeders were many species of hummingbirds.
To me they sounded like huge bumble bees. In fact, such is my conditioning from childhood that when I heard one I ducked and jumped out they way. Amazing these irrational fears we have!
The birds were so beautiful and varied not only in size but also in colour. In Mindo alone there are over 40 of the 120 hummingbird species in Ecuador. G was entranced we spent two hours watching them. It was a cloudy day so we did not get to see the really brilliant colours until the next day. It was a real treat when we did see them.
Cock of the Rocks
The lady, Julia, at our hostel was a bird guide so we set up for her to take us to see the Cock-of-the-Rock. After getting up at 4:15 am, yawn, driving for an hour, bumpy, walking down a valley, slippery, and past some Americans, very annoying - we arrived at a little leaved enclosure with an awful racket around us. It took us a while to realize that this was the Cock-of-the-Rock dating scene. It made for very entertaining viewing.
One male would sit on a branch at the top of a bush, fluff out his tale feathers, flap his red wings, leaning forward, open his beak and squawk the most awful abuse at the other male below him getting louder while beating his wings frantically – working himself into a real passion. The male below would then fluff his tale, flap his wings, crane his neck up and reply with a torrent of obscenities that I am sure would make a prison inmate blush. This would go on and on, bush to bush, male to male. You could always tell where the female was as this is where the screamed abuse was loudest. There was shy chap which seemed rather bewildered by all this and would fly between two branches, every so often cocking his head from side to side as if to say that is no way to woe a lady. Needless to say that is who I would have gone for.
The dating session only lasts half and hour in the morning from 6 am -6:30 am which is not surprising considering the energy that is put into their show.
The place where we saw the Cock-of-the-Rock is actually a farm. The government are putting a lots of emphasizes on tourism (the school walls are even painted with bird pictures) as a way of encouraging the local population to look after their natural environment. And by doing so they can make money out of ecologically minded tourists for generations. But looking at the shear volumes of litter all over South America the governments have a long struggle ahead of them.
Dancing Manakins
That afternoon we went to another bird sanctuary and watched little red manakin birds dance. They were so sweet dipping their heads forward, lifting their tails, moving their wings diagonally up while giving out a whistle. I’ll have to see if this dance works for the G man! Unfortunately the light was too poor for photos.
Butterflies
The next day G got up at 5:30 am and I slept. Well, I am on holiday after all which is drawing to close at a gallop. After a wonderful lie in I took myself off to the butterfly farm. They have 25 of the 200 species of butterflies in the area. The lady, Rosie, gave me a guided tour. She showed me the eggs which they tale off the leaves, then the hugs caterpillars that they turn into after 3 months (bigger and ticker than a man finger). I had to get over my gut instinct not too touch them but they were very soft and squidgy. After, they have eaten their full they turn into a pupa which are cleverly disguised as leaves or twigs or drops of sparkly water. I watched them hatching from the pupas and it was a miracle to me that brought tears to my eyes. The whole cycle, so perfect and complex.
I sat in the enclosure with the many different colour wings going about their business of feeding and mating for the next generation. I also observed that butterflies have the same sense of direction that men have, i.e. no sense!
I put some watermelon juice on my finger tips and went in search of one to feed. I found one with raggedy wings and it drank the juice greedily. On their legs they have a tiny hook which it attached to my finger and the proboscis probed all over my finger tips sucking up every last bit of sweet juice. I hope I left a very satisfied butterfly for what seemed like its last hours.
Raw Pizza
The night before went to a new place for a pizza where they were obviously nervous and very anxious to please. We were the only customers. Our pizza arrived and the base was not cooked all the way through. After deliberating we asked them to cook it some more. We got it back after 5 minutes and it was no better. We ate all the topping but we thought they would be devastated to see all the base left and our Spanish was not really good enough to explain. So G hit on a plan. He wrapped up the dough and filled his fleece pockets. Then we went in search of the village mongrels who were delighted with their tasty treat. I just hope we didn’t end up giving them a tummy ache. The next day I went back to swap books they had in their exchange and they asked me (politely but pointedly) if we had taken any books way with us last night as they had seen what looked like us putting them in our pockets. So we leant a valuable lesson!!
After a very successful birding trip G´s life list is in the 900´s so not many to go until he reaches his goal.- we are wondering how to celebrate once he reaches it.
List of new birds seen around Mindo
- Booted racket-tail
- white-necked jacobin
- Purple-throated woodstar
- Green-crowned woodnymph
- Black-throated brilliant
- Rufous-tailed hummingbird
- Brown violetear
- Green thorntail
- Blue-grey tanager
- blue and white swallow
- Palm tanager
- Tricoloured brush-finch
- Variable seed eater
- Blackwinged saltator
- Dusky bush-tanager
- Lemon-rumped tanager
- Flame-faced tanager
- Golden tanager
- Orange-bellied euphonia
- White-capped dipper
- Mountain wren
- Southern roughwinged swallow
- Masked tityra
- Dusky-capped flycatcher
- Black phoebe
- Scale-crested pygmy tyrant
- Ornate flycatcher
- Bay wren
- Strongbilled woodcreeper
- Smoky-brown woodpecker
- Scarletbacked woodpecker
- Guayaquil woodpecker
- Golden-headed quetzal
- Chestnut-mandibled toucan
- Crimson-rumped toucanet
- Masked trogon
- White-whiskered hermit
- Ruddy pigeon
- Whitetipped dove
- Swallow-tailed kite
- Velvet purple coronet
- Plate billed mountain toucan
- Yellow-breasted antpitta
- Great antpitta
- Andean cock of the rock
- Fawn breasted brilliant
- Violet-tailed sylph
- White-bellied woodstar
- Buff-tailed coronet
- Sparkling violetear
- Purple-bibbed white tip
- Toucan barbet
- Pale mandibled aracri
- Slate throated whitestart
- cinnamon becard
- Club-winged manakin
- Three-striped warbler
- Wedge-billed woodcreeper
- Spotted woodcreeper
- Golden-winged manakin
- Bronze-winged parrot
- Rusty-margined flycatcher
- Spotted barbtail (woodcreeper)
- Scarlet-backed woodpecker
- yellow-billed elaenia
- Red-faced spinetail
- Yellow-bellied seedeater
- Torrent tyrannulet
- Black-cheeked woodpecker
- Social flycatcher
- Common tody-flycatcher
- Sickle-winged guan
- Yellow-throated bush tanager
- Powerful woodpecker
- Golden olive woodpecker
- Buff-fronted foliage gleaner
- Grey rumped swift
- Lineated foliage-gleaner
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