Birding A City Park in Quito, Ecuador

Our First Day in Ecuador (see the bottom of the page for links to previous posts)
We started our journey to Ecuador on a sour note.  We booked the early (5 AM) flight from Chicago to Miami because they never get delayed due to prior connections.  We got delayed an hour by a seatbelt that wouldn’t work!  Missed our connection so we had to wait 7 hours in the Miami Airport for the next flight and finally arrived at our Quito hotel after 1 AM.  Our Welcome Meeting was held at 6:30 AM so we didn’t get a lot of sleep.

At the Welcome Meeting we did the customary introductions and learned more about our guide for the next 10 days, Tony.  Tony was born in Ecuador and has been a tour guide for many years (immediately after our tour ended he met his next group in the Galapagos Islands to lead a non-birding tour).  I perked up at the fact that Tony was a professional photographer and I made it a point to discuss various camera techniques during the trip with him.  Here’s a picture of Tony next to one of his photographs which was displayed in a restaurant we had lunch in.

Here’s a picture of the group later on in the trip.  Tony is behind the scope on the right, I’m in the floppy white hat in the middle, with Karen peering over my shoulder, and our driver Moises seated on the left.

After the meeting we gathered our birding equipment and boarded our passenger bus that would be our transportation for the next 10 days.  Our driver Moises didn’t speak a lick of English but was always helpful and was a safe driver.  We set off for Parque Guápulo, a city park in downtown Quito (Quito is 45 miles long).

As soon as we got off the bus I had my first Lifer of the trip, a Cinereous Conebill (not a GreaBirdPic but had to share my first trip Lifer).

We stood on a bluff at the entrance of the park and looked down and saw many different species flitting around.  By the time we left the park two hours later I had observed thirteen Lifers!  Up until that point in time, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many Lifers in such a short period (however this was regularly repeated at each new stop)!  The second Lifer I saw was a Great Thrush and we saw this bird many times during our trip.  It was hard to miss!

Warblers have always fascinated me so I was thrilled to see this Black-crested Warbler hopping in and out of the scrub below us.  It stayed hidden most of the time but with patience I finally got a shot of it out in the open.

As we wandered through the park just about every bird we saw was a Lifer!  Take a look at the size of the bill on this Golden Grosbeak!

A Streak-throated Bush-Tyrant was a showy bird and cooperated nicely for a portrait.

The number of hummingbirds in Ecuador is amazing.  At least 132 species of hummingbirds have been observed there and each one is spectacular (in comparison I’ve seen three species in Illinois and two of them were way out of their range).  I’ll be sharing many more of my hummingbird pictures as I work through the trip.  These two Lifers were seen in the park:  a Sparkling Violetear and a Black-tailed Trainbearer.  Look how long that tail is on the Trainbearer!

Although not a Lifer, another bird we saw in the park and many other locations was the Slate-throated Redstart.

As you recall from my first post, this tour was offered through Road Scholar.  We thoroughly enjoyed our previous four non-birding trips with Road Scholar because they expose you to the culture and customs of the country – beyond site-seeing.  After leaving the park we drove to downtown Quito and walked around the busy streets and toured one of the many Catholic churches in the city, Church of the Society of Jesus.  We viewed a mass from an upper level – note the ornate walls and ceiling.

Upon leaving the church we walked a short way to the Café Plaza Grande for lunch, which we had been to during our Galapagos and Machu Pichu tour.  Although I was expecting it, all the other members of the group were surprised when a purple-robed Cucuruchos delivered our desert.

After lunch our education about Ecuador continued at the house of Professor Juan Manuel Carrion.  I don’t think I’ve ever met such an impressive individual before.  He was a prominent ornithologist, naturalist, the author of numerous books, a musician that played several different instruments for us, and an accomplished artist.  Below he discusses the Andean Condor and the habitat it lives in.

As a naturalist his hero is Charles Darwin whose research on natural selection focused the world’s attention on the Galapagos Islands, which are part of Ecuador.  Here I am posing with a life-sized statue of Darwin on Prof. Carrion’s porch.

That wraps up Day 1 of our Ecuador Bird Tour.  We were up early the next day to begin our journey to the Sachatamia Lodge in Mindo, where we explored the region for the next four days and racked up another 40 Lifers!

Links to previous posts:
How to prepare for and get the most from your bird tour

Our Ecuador Birding Trip – Preliminary Data

Our Bird Tour In Ecuador – Overview

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