Dear all,
I’m glad to show you the Ecuador Gallery, where you’ll find a big amount of hummingbird photos as well as of other birds and animals we were able to photograph while we were there.
Near 1600 bird species can be seen at Ecuador. We only visited a small portion of the country and despite of the fact we saw so many birds, we were far away from the total figure.
The itinerary we did included:
Mindo, where we visited different places and stayed at different hotels: Yellow House, San Tadeo, Refugio Paz de las Aves and Las Cotingas, among others.
From this area it’s important to highlight the big amount of hummingbirds we were able to see, the antpittas and the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock that we saw and photographed at two places: at El Refugio Paz de las Aves and at Las Cotingas.
The area at the East of Papallacta Pass, where we also stayed at two places to visit a different biotope: Guango and San Isidro lodges.
Both places had a big number of hummingbird feeders and, due to that, we were able to photograph with no problem the species that surrounded them. In Guango Lodge we were able to enjoy the Sword-billed Hummingbird”, a hummingbird which bill is as big or even bigger than its body.
In San Isidro we were able to photograph their “jewel”, the San Isidro Owl (Strix sp.), which is being researched to determine if it is or not a subespecies of the “Black-banded Owl (Strix huhula).
Then we moved a bit backwards (we were forced to modify a bit the original route we would like to do to accommodate it to the availability of the 2 lodges above), till Bellavista (near Mindo), were we stayed at the Tandayapa Bird Lodge, where there are different kind of feeders so the different birds visit them and they can be easily be photographied.
Last but not least, we went to the Cuyabeno Reserve, where we stayed at Caiman Lodge.
We saw some primates, the amazon dolphin and an important number of birds there.
Luis, our guide, demonstrated he was a wise indigenous man and an amazing expert in the area.
See you soon!
