Our 2008 bird and nature photo tour to Ecuador combines a visit to famed Mindo Valley on the west slope of the Andes with a 3-night stay at Napo Wildlife Center in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We'll have excellent opportunities to photograph extraordinary tropical birds and other animals during the tour.
WESTERN ANDES
Our tour begins with a visit to wonderful Bellavista Lodge located in a privately owned reserve above the Tandayapa Valley in the western Andes. This lodge was recently profiled on NBC's Today Show and offers superb opportunities for photographing hummingbirds at the many feeders as well as some special cloud forest birds from the veranda of the lodge. Hummingbirds that come to the feeders include Green-crowned Woodnymph, Fawn-breasted Brilliant, Empress Brilliant, Buff-tailed Coronet, Gorgeted Sunangel, Booted Racket-tail, and Violet-tailed Sylph. Other birds of special photographic interest include two colorful endemic species found only in the western Andes, namely Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan and Toucan Barbet. We'll have nearly 2 days to photograph birds from the vantage points offered at Bellavista.
After leaving Bellavista we'll continue on to beautiful Septimo Paraiso Lodge near Mindo. There, we'll have excellent opportunities to photograph as many as a dozen species of hummingbirds such as the beautiful Violet-tailed Sylph, Collared Inca, Andean Emerald, Fawn-breasted Brilliant, and Empress Brilliant around lodge feeders. We'll spend part of one day downslope at a restaurant in Los Banos where feeders draw in a variety of hummingbirds as well as colorful tanagers, flowerpiercers, and other fruit-eating birds.
Certainly a highlight of our stay in the Mindo Valley will be an unforgettable visit to Finca Angel Paz. Our host is a local farmer who has preserved the rainforest on his land so he can make his living through ecotourism. Here we will view and photograph the extraordinary and brightly colored Andean Cock-of-the-Rock displaying on a communal display ground in the rainforest. These birds do not form pair bonds and rely on gaudy shows of color and elaborate displays to attract mates to their display perches. Our host has also developed an uncanny ability to lure secretive antpittas out onto a trail deep in the rainforest where they can be readily photographed. We'll have the rare opportunity to photograph Giant Antpitta, Yellow-breasted Antpitta, and Moustached Antpitta, all endangered and highly localized denizens of the rainforest understory that are normally very difficult to see or photograph. Everyone must remain very quiet at this time so as not to disturb the birds coming out onto the trail.
ECUADORIAN AMAZON
After returning to Quito, we'll fly to the town of Coca on the Napo River in the eastern lowlands of Ecuador. From there we'll be taken by powerboat 2 hours up the Napo River and then transfer to dugout canoes, where our guides will paddle up a tributary of the river to our lodge at Napo Wildlife Center. This segment of our tour is not at all strenuous, and although we'll have the sense of being far from civilization, we'll be enjoying very comfortable accommodations and excellent meals at our lodge.
Napo Wildlife Center is almost beyond superlatives. During our stay at this amazing place, we'll visit an extraordinary parrot clay lick where hundreds of parrots congregate to gather mineral salts from an eroded hillside in the forest. This is a superb place to photograph Dusky-crowned Parakeets, Scarlet-shouldered Parrotlets, Blue-headed Parrots, Mealy Amazons, and Yellow-crowned Parrots. We'll also visit a second clay lick where Cobalt-winged Parakeets, Orange-eared Parrots, and sometimes Scarlet Macaws congregate.
On the way to our lodge and during our stay we'll have numerous opportunities to see and photograph secretive herons such as possibly the rare Agami Heron and the very secretive Zigzag Heron. We'll have opportunities to photograph much more common birds such as Hoatzins and Black-capped Donacobius from our boats, as well as a variety of other birds and perhaps endangered Giant Otters which sometimes appear in the nearby rivers. We'll also make photographs from an observation tower at the lodge, where it's possible to photograph Yellow-rumped Caciques nesting in a nearby colony tree.
