Ecuador, a quick round-up of links

Just some useful info for anyone who wants to travel there...

We stayed at the following, all of which I would recommend for their service and their friendliness (and in no particular order):

Black Sheep Inn
Mindo Gardens Lodge
Hosteria Mandala
Auberge Inn hostal
El Sol hostal, Cayambe

The Lonely Planet was pretty poor; maybe worth getting a different guidebook if possible. Other guides used: Ridgley & Tudor's A Field Guide to the birds of Ecuador [opens an Amazon link] (we only took vol. I out into the field, as that was plenty to be carrying.). We also took the Travellers Wildlife Guides: Ecuador [another Amazon link; sorry] by Pearson & Beletsky, which we found to be very jungle-oriented and pretty much useless for our purposes. Nice enough book though.

Finally, and very definitely not least was Danny, who guided us for the morning around Mindo: his company is Mindo Birding.

Ecuador, part III

Finally, the day came when we had to depart the Black Sheep Inn. We awoke to the alarm at the painfully early hour of 3.30 a.m., gathered our bags and stumped up the hill into Chugchilán for the early bus out. Five minutes before the scheduled departure time - 4 a.m. - the bus driver's tousled head appeared from the front seats of the bus, and the busboy yawned his way out of the back door and loaded our bags. A bleary collection of locals descended on the bus and we were off with a merry fanfare from the horn: bet the local residents love that alarm call!

We twisted and turned our way south, past Quilotoa, until we were dropped off, shivering, in a frosty Zumbahua, where we squeezed our way onto a bus bound for Quevedo. This rumbled steadily down the Western Andes, the temperature rising as we descended. The four hour journey was enlivened by a brief stop to change a wheel in the middle of nowhere, then eventually we were left in Quevedo. We then changed onto another bus, taking us four hours further west, to Portoviejo, another for an hour longer, which took us to Jipijapa, then a final bus for yet another hour, to the coastal town of Puerto Lopez... The scenery changed dramatically as we travelled, from the high grassy paramo down through cloudforest and through successively more agricultural landscapes until we reached the lowlands, which are dominated by vast monotonous banana and palm plantations. The last couple of hours took us through some very dry seasonal coastal forest, some of which is protected by Machalilla National Park, then over onto the coast.

By the time we arrived in Puerto Lopez, we were shattered - we walked up to the Hosteria Mandala, at the north end of town, with barely enough energy to glance at the Magnificent Frigatebirds and Brown Pelicans that thronged the air and sea, then flopped gratefully into bed.

174  Groove-billed Ani  Crotophaga sulcirostris
175  Ecuadorian Ground-Dove  Columbina buckleyi
176  Franklin's Gull  Larus pipixcan
177  Great Egret  Ardea alba
178  Brown Pelican  Pelecanus occidentalis
179  Magnificent Frigatebird  Fregata magnificens
180  Pacific Hornero  Furnarius leucopus
181  Grey-breasted Martin  Progne chalybea

Franklin's Gulls, Elegant and Royal Terns

Magnificent Frigatebird

We spent the 18th of November around Puerto Lopez - we wandered into town to organize a permit to get into the National Park, found ourselves a boat tour to take us to Isla de la Plata, did a little shopping (ouch!) and found the spectacularly cute in the form of an Amazilia Hummingbird, which had decided to nest on top of a telephone cable leading into the local fire station: the sight of mum feeding a cluster of little red bills was revoltingly cute.

Amazilia Hummingbird nest

We then wandered up the beach, to admire the frigatebirds, pelicans and assorted gulls and ternsas the fishermen unloaded their catch. The way it works is this: the beach is deserted, bar a few loafing Franklin's and Laughing Gulls, a generously sprinkling of Sanderling and a scatter of Royal, Elegant, Common and Sandwich Terns. The odd frigatebird swirls around in the air above...

Unloading: the baseline - Brown Pelicans frolic in the waves. Bit like Puff the magic dragon, really.

Unloading: baseline - Royal Terns pretend to be thinking of nothing in particular.

Unloading: the baseline. Franklin's Gulls, Elegant, Sandwich and Royal Terns loafing on the beach

A fishing boat arrives and runs up the beach, stern first - this is the cue for the gulls to go up:

Unloading: phase one - fishermen getting ready to run the gauntlet...

Unloading: phase two - wahey! Up go the gulls, and in come the frigates...

Unloading: phase three - running the gauntlet.

A lorry backs down the beach, where it stops - about 30 metres from the water. Two men trot down to the boat with empty boxes, into which the fishermen shovel fish from the boat. The men then trot up and down the beach with the boxes on their shoulders, emptying them into the lorry. After maybe one or two boxes, the frigatebirds cotton on and all hell breaks loose: the air fills with frigates in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock; whilst pelicans sneakily harass the men from ground level, the frigates swoop in and attempt to snatch something from the top of the box - any successful strike is followed by a frantic escape attempt, as any bird with food is the immediate focus of a dozen others. The whole display is spectacularly rivetting!

Eventually, Na tore me away and we walked up to the north end of the beach, crabs scuttling into their holes as we walked. A Yellow-crowned Night-heron on the beach was a pleasant surprise; then we crossed the sand bar to find a small lagoon stuffed to the gills with herons and waders.

Sally Lightfoot crab

On our way back we flushed a Lesser Nighthawk off a single egg, laid directly onto the sand.

Lesser Nighthawk egg

Lesser Nighthawk nest (foreground)

We finally made it back to the Mandala, where we finally had time to look at the remarkable artwork scattered around the place and admire some of the garden wildlife, including rather surprisingly, a couple of large Iguanas!

The dolphin pole at the Hosteria Mandala - at the bottom is the skeleton of a Common Dolphin, which stranded on the beach some years ago and inspired this piece of work.

Iguana

182  Green Kingfisher  Chloroceryle americana
183  Pacific Parrotlet  Forpus coelestis
184  Amazilia Hummingbird  Amazilia amazilia
185  Peruvian Pygmy Owl  Phalaenopsis peruanum
186  Lesser Nighthawk  Chordeiles acutipennis
187  Croaking Ground Dove  Columbina cruziana
188  Whimbrel  Numenius phaeopus
189  Spotted Sandpiper  Actitis macularius
190  Sanderling  Calidris alba
191  Western Sandpiper  Calidris mauri
192  Wilson's Phalarope  Phalaropus tricolor
193  Black-necked Stilt  Himantopus mexicanus
194  Laughing Gull  Larus atricilla
195  Royal Tern  Sterna maxima
196  Elegant Tern  Sterna elegans
197  Sandwich Tern  Sterna sandvicensis
198  Common Tern  Sterna hirundo
199  Osprey  Pandion haliaetus
200  Blue-footed Booby  Sula nebouxii
201  Little Blue Heron  Egretta caerulea
202  Cocoi Heron  Ardea cocoi
203  Striated Heron  Butorides striata
204  Yellow-crowned Night-Heron  Nyctanassa violacea
205  Peruvian Pelican  Pelecanus thagus
206  Southern Beardless-Tyrannulet  Camptostoma obsoletum
207  Tumbes Tyrannulet  Phaeomyias murina
208  Pied Water-Tyrant  Fluvicola pica

209  Superciliated Wren  Thryothorus superciliaris
210  Tropical Gnatcatcher  Polioptila plumbea
211  Parrot-billed Seedeater  Sporophila peruviana
212  Scrub Blackbird  Dives warszewiczi
Green Iguana  Iguana iguana
Gecko sp 

On the 19th, we were picked up at 8.30 in the morning and taken down to the far end of the beach, where we assembled with a motley group of other tourists and waded out to a boat for a guided tour of the Isla de la Plata. The island lies about 40km off the coast and is a part of the Machalilla National Park. It's billed as the 'poor man's Galapagos', though it seems as though most birders aren't that poor these days! We pottered out of the bay, the captain tinkering with the two outboards as we went, then pelted across the water to the island when he'd got them tuned to his satisfaction. The journey was reasonably dull, though a Wedge-rumped Storm-petrel or two and a couple of close Sabine's Gulls enlivened things briefly. Eventually we drew to a halt in a small bay, with a Green Turtle nosing and loafing around the other boats anchored nearby. We disembarked and milled around for a while, whilst the guides got their act together and a welcoming party of Long-tailed Mockingbirds and Collared Warbling-finches flitted from bush to bush, anticipating crumbs.

Long-tailed Mockingbird

Collared Warbling-finch

We split into two groups, one with the Spanish-speakers and one with the rest of us, and set off up the hill. Passing a dead Barn Owl, we stumped up to the ridge where the two trails diverge and the guide put us to the vote as to which way to head - along the ridge to the frigatebird colony, with Blue-footed and Red-footed Booby colonies to entertain us, or right, up the hill, past Blue-footed and Nazca Booby colonies to the possibility of Waved Albatross and Southern Sea-lion, though these were described as '50-50 chance at best'. All but one of us chose right, so right we went. We started out through a dispersed colony of Blue-footed Booby, about which the guide was able to pass on a variety of bits of information, including sexing them (iris size and call), their feeding habits and their nesting behaviour, their display and their courtship.

Blue-footed Booby

We then walked into a colony of Nazca Booby, a species only relatively recently recognised as different to Masked Booby, with which it was previously lumped. These are smart white-and-black Gannet relatives, with a taste for yellow lipstick.

Nazca Booby

By this time, however, our guide was losing interest and wanted to get back to the boats - the pace picked up, and we fairly yomped into the apparently deserted albatross colony, to be greeted with some consternation by a three-quarters grown downy chick and complete indifference by a superb brooding adult. She (or he, perhaps) sat tucked under a thorny bush, complacently preening...

Waved Albatross

We carried on at the same pace, briefly scanning the sea-lion beaches (nothing, but a fine view of a Manta Ray swimming just under the water's surface from the clifftop) and stopping for a couple of rather desultory lectures about some of the local flora, then careered down the hill to the boats, where we sat and waited for 20 minutes whilst they weighed anchor and came in to meet us. We then re-embarked and trolled round the island a little, so the swimmers could snorkel with what looked like some great fish, whilst the non-swimmer (me!) watched the tropicbirds and frigatebirds and finally managed to pick out a couple of Red-footed Booby heading in and out from the cliffs.

Isla de la Plata

213  Sabine's Gull  Xema sabini

214  Red-backed Hawk  Buteo polyosoma
215  Peregrine Falcon  Falco peregrinus
216  Red-billed Tropicbird  Phaethon aethereus
217  Nazca Booby  Sula granti
218  Red-footed Booby  Sula sula
219  Sooty Shearwater  Puffinus griseus
220  Waved Albatross  Phoebastria irrorata
221  Wedge-rumped Storm Petrel  Oceanodroma tethys
222  Collared Warbling-Finch  Poospiza hispaniolensis
Green Turtle  Chelonia mydas
Manta Ray 

We woke on the 20th to find that an unexpected visitor had taken up residence under our gable and that a rather smart toad was wandering up the path towards our cabin.

Toad sp.

Northern Ghost Bat. This smart bat stayed under our gable for several days, not even complaining about the fact that I took a handful of photos of it.

We headed into Puerto Lopez to hire some bikes from a shop in town, then headed on towards Agua Blanca. We were slightly unimpressed to learn that it would cost us another 5 dollars each for the privilege of passing the gate towards the village, even though we weren't interested in going to the village, just in birding our way up the riverbed. We wandered up the riverbed trail, slowly, admiring yet another community of new birds - besides the familiar Blue-grey Tanagers, we found such species as Blue-crowned Motmot, Streaked Saltator and a surprise in the form of a Pale-browed Tinamou. Lizards hurtled everywhere, many of them Stenocercus iridescens - something without a common name.

Stenocercus iridescens

Pale-browed Tinamou

These rather spectacular butterflies were common around the trail.

We continued up to Los Frailes, a local beach, hampered somewhat by the fact that Na's bike managed to break somewhat catastrophically: the gearing system on the rear wheel effectively exploded! We limped on to the beach, Na swam and I read, and generally chilled out before returning in somewhat ignominious fashion in the back of a motor-trike...

Puerto Lopez:
223  White-tipped Dove  Leptotila verreauxi
224  Tawny-crowned Pygmy-Tyrant  Euscarthmus meloryphus
225  Barn Swallow  Hirundo rustica

Agua Blanca:
226  Pale-browed Tinamou  Crypturellus transfasciatus
227  Orange-fronted Barbet  Capito squamatus
228  Blue-crowned Motmot  Momotus momota
229  Plain-capped Starthroat  Heliomaster constantii
230  Crane Hawk  Geranospiza caerulescens
231  Dusky-capped Flycatcher  Myiarchus tuberculifer
232  Collared Antshrike  Sakesphorus bernardi
233  Plain Antvireo  Dysithamnus mentalis
234  Necklaced Spinetail  Synallaxis stictothorax
235  Streak-headed Woodcreeper  Lepidocolaptes souleyetii
236  Streaked Saltator  Saltator striatipectus
237  Acadian Flycatcher  Empidonax virescens
238  House Sparrow  Passer domesticus
Northern Ghost Bat  Diclidurus albus
toad sp 

We went back to bus travel on the 21st, taking a local bus down to the Rio Ayampe, another site described in the rather useful "Where to watch birds in South America". This was a very good move. We saw virtually no-one and had the whole area to ourselves, totalling some 70 species of bird on the way. The river is one which the local council have contemplated damming for a hydro-electric power scheme. An interesting idea, but not the most inspired bit of thinking I've come across...

Monarch

239  Blue-winged Teal  Anas discors

240  Black-cheeked Woodpecker  Melanerpes pucherani
241  Ecuadorian Trogon  Trogon melanurus
242  Ringed Kingfisher  Megaceryle torquatus
243  Red-masked Parakeet  Aratinga erythrogenys
244  Baron's Hermit  Phaethornis superciliosus
245  Pallid Dove  Leptotila pallida
246  Wattled Jacana  Jacana jacana
247  Harris's Hawk  Parabuteo unicinctus
248  Pied-billed Grebe  Podilymbus podiceps
249  Yellow Tyrannulet  Capsiempis flaveola
250  Pacific Elaenia  Myiopagis subplacens
251  Smoke-coloured Pewee  Contopus fumigatus
252  Tumbes Pewee   Contopus cinereus
253  Vermilion Flycatcher  Pyrocephalus rubinus
254  Streaked Xenops  Xenops rutilans
255  Scrub Antpitta  Grallaria watkinsi
256  Rufous-browed Peppershrike  Cyclarhis gujanensis
257  Fasciated Wren  Campylorhynchus fasciatus
258  Speckle-breasted Wren  Thryothorus sclateri
259  Hepatic Tanager  Piranga flava
260  Green Honeycreeper  Chlorophanes spiza
261  Crimson Finch-Tanager  Rhodospingus cruentus
262  Blue-black Grassquit  Volatinia jacarina
263  Variable Seedeater  Sporophila corvina
264  Yellow-rumped Cacique  Cacicus cela
265  Yellow-tailed Oriole  Icterus mesomelas
Guayaquil Squirrel  Sciurus stramineus
Rat sp.

We spent our final day in Puerto Lopez on a rather lazy note - we visited the fascinating garden of a couple on the edge of town - an ecologist and archaeologist who have been working in the country for many years and have a wealth of information about the local plants - especially their uses in food and medicine - the local wildlife and the archaeology of the area. We finished off with a wander back up the beach to the scrub at the north end, where we didn't see a great deal more of interest, but enjoyed a bit of an explore through the saltmarsh and scrub.

Unloading: redux. Just the same on a sunny day, but brighter.

Blue-grey Tanager

Epiphytes: in the absence of trees, power lines and phone lines make a great substitute!

Female Vermilion Flycatcher

Yellow-crowned Night-heron

Pacific Hornero

Croaking Ground-dove

266  Collared Plover  Charadrius collaris

267  Pacific Dove  Zenaida meloda
268  Semipalmated Plover  Charadrius semipalmatus
269  Kelp Gull  Larus dominicanus

The 23rd was a bit of a wash-out in many respects: we spent the entire daylight hours (almost) travelling back to Quito on the day bus. There were few birds to be seen and when we got into the western slope of the Andes, it started to belt with rain, so the remainder of our journey was completed in increasing gloom. We booked ourselves into the Auberge Inn, in central Quito, had a pizza and slept...

270  Swallow-tailed Kite  Elanoides forficatus

271  Peruvian Meadowlark  Sturnella bellicosa

The 24th wasn't much better in terms of birding - a day spent travelling to Otovalo so that some Christmas shopping could be done. We did get out to a small lake just outside the town, where we could admire the mountains and watch Slate-coloured Coot, Yellow-billed Pintail and a Greater Yellowlegs, as well as listening to the local Moorhens cackling in the rushes, but aside from that it was pretty much business as usual. The next day was a trip to the Quito vivarium and the botanical gardens, which entailed a lot of walking and some very informative botanising, whilst keeping an eye on Swainson's Thrushes and Summer Tanagers.

272  Yellow-billed Pintail  Anas georgica
273  Common Moorhen  Gallinula chloropus
274  Slate-coloured Coot  Fulica ardesiaca
275  Greater Yellowlegs  Tringa melanoleuca
276  Ash-breasted Sierra-Finch  Phrygilus plebejus

277  Summer Tanager  Piranga rubra

We took a last day out - a bus from Quitumbe towards Papallacta, a village just into the Amazon watershed. We managed to cause great confusion with the driver, by asking to be dropped at the top of the pass over the mountains, but drop us he did, and off we set. The cloud swirled dramatically around us, and we were able to admire the bogs and mires looking very Devon-like, albeit at a high enough altitude to leave us fairly breathless.

I know this could be Dartmoor, but it's some atmospheric paramo on the top of the Eastern Andes, above Papallacta.

As with the paramo in general, the plantlife was breathtaking as well. We wandered up a dirt track for a while, admiring a multitude of flowers, yet another species of hummingbird - Blue-mantled Thornbill - and a very smart stripy bird with an even more funky name: Many-striped Canastero. Brown-bellied Swallows swooped around us, earnestly gathering nest material and diving into their earthbank nest holes.

Bog-rosemary lookalike

We discovered that the new road offers few birding opportunities, but made up for it somewhat by working our way up the old road for a while, until we ran into a flock of Black-backed Bush-tanagers, which carried with it a couple of Rufous-naped Brush-finches, a handful of glowing Spectacled Redstarts and - best of all - a pair of Giant Conebills.

Black-backed Bush-tanager

Despite the poor quality of the image, it's one of the birds I've most wanted to see: Giant Conebill. Neither this photo nor it's picture in the field guide do it justice.

We rounded off with a couple of Tawny Antpittas and then a couple of Scarlet-bellied Mountain-tanagers on the road towards Papallacta. Finally admitting defeat through tiredness, we settled down by the road to flag down the next bus back to Quito...

Tawny Antpitta - out of focus and cropped, but it's antpitta #5 for the trip. Not too bad, in our view!

Moth of some description... It's a bit battered, as it was expiring on the roadside following an attack with a blunt instrument (a lorry).

278  Blue-mantled Thornbill  Chalcostigma stanleyi

279  Mountain Avocetbill  Opisthoprora euryptera
280  Many-striped Canastero  Asthenes flammulata
281  Tawny Antpitta  Grallaria quitensis
282  Pale-naped Brush-Finch  Atlapetes pallidinucha
283  Giant Conebill  Oreomanes fraseri
284  Scarlet-bellied Mountain-Tanager  Anisognathus igniventris
285  Black-backed Bush-Tanager  Urothraupis stolzmanni

Sign-off view: our favourite Ecuadorian habitat...

Ecuador - part II

We left Cayambe at the appropriately birder-type hour of 5.30 a.m., walking up through town to find the bus to Quito. We didn't have to search hard: one coming down the road hooted us, and the busboy leaned out to tell us how dangerous it was to walk the deserted streets with our rucksacks at this time of day, and would we like a lift to the terminal? Stage one began... and two hours later ended, painlessly, in Quito. We then boarded a taxi across town to the new terminal Quitumbe, south of the city. This took longer than anticipated, mainly due to a spectacularly long traffic-jam in one of the tunnels along the highway - conditions in the tunnel well described by the workers wearing full-face gas masks whilst they shovelled dirt.

We made it into the bus station - a very swish building indeed - found the correct desk for buses to Latacunga, and within half an hour, were hurtling south, away from Quito. This surprised us somewhat, but we discovered that the local buses have an enviable ability to time their connections so that buses in arrive about 10 minutes before buses out. Coming from a country where the bus out invariably leaves 10 minutes before the bus in arrives, this was quite a shock. Another couple of hours later we arrived at Latacunga, where we boarded the northern route bus for Chugchilán. This took us a leg-cramping four hours in the end, generally with a variety of people or produce propped against us - at one stop some 40-50 schoolchildren crammed themselves on board, gradually dissipating in dribs and drabs. The heavens opened about three quarters of the way to Chugchilán; mercifully we worked our way through it after an hour - the combination of an overladen bus, hairpin bends, slick cobbles and uncertain brakes on the approaching lorries made us both slightly nervous...

Finally, weary, sweaty and desperately in need of a walk, we arrived at the Black Sheep Inn, to be enthusiastically welcomed by the young couple currently volunteering there. A couple of pints of coca tea and a shower revived us, and we immediately headed up the ridge behind the hostal for a short walk. Black-tailed Trainbearers - a spectacular hummingbird with tail-streamers about three times the length of their bodies - crackled and zipped in the bushes all around, Band-tailed Pigeons flocked the trees and a distant Short-eared Owl floated gently across the grasses. The cloud hanging low in the valley made for a spectacularly atmospheric walk as well.

View north from the ridge behind the Black Sheep Inn

139  Black-tailed Trainbearer  Lesbia victoriae
140  Short-eared Owl  Asio flammeus

On the 14th, we set out on one of the many walks described on the local map, which had been handed to us when we arrived. The canyon loop, as it is described, takes you downhill from the hostal, to the bottom of the canyon, then gradually upstream along the river, then a tributary of the this river, and finally up the local tracks and back to Chugchilán... Yesterday's cloud had entirely vapourised, leaving a fresh, sun-drenched day in which to enjoy the flowers and the wildlife. A pre-breakfast cup of coffee on the yoga terrace (!) gave us a chance to get to grips with a handful of new species: a Sword-billed Hummingbird briefly dropped in to the Eucalyptus, before being harrassed by the local Black-tailed Trainbearers; another hummingbird with the delightful name of Tyrian Metaltail fed enthusiastically at Eucalyptus flowers, along with Black Flowerpiercer and Cinereous Conebills; Hooded Siskins bounded overhead, 'poo-eet'ing just like our own species of siskin...

Salvia species

We set off soon after breakfast, finding small flocks of Plain-coloured and Band-tailed Seedeaters bursting up out of the grasses at the roadside. Bright blue-flowered sages - Salvia spp - clustered the verges, mimicking the colours of the sky.

 Bridge in the canyon

Eventually we wound up at the river, where we stopped for lunch. We were interested to see that the nice modern bridge had been eroded away on one bank, so the simple response of the locals was to rip off a set of hand-rails and lay some boards over them to make a safe route on: enterprising and pragmatic, I thought... Further along, as we huffed and puffed up the tributary, we eventually found a shady spot to escape some of the sun's heat, lurk, do some birding and generally chill out - a White-crested Elaenia shuffled through the branches above us, whilst Streak-throated Bush-tyrants launched themselves high into the air, cinnamon wings glowing, and Brown-backed Chat-tyrants tried to convince us that they were related to Whinchats.

The canyon below the Black Sheep Inn

Moth species, Black Sheep Inn

141  Mountain Velvetbreast  Lafresnaya lafresnayi
142  Sword-billed Hummingbird  Ensifera ensifera
143  Tyrian Metaltail  Metallura tyrianthina
144  Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle  Geranoaetus melanoleucus
145  White-crested Elaenia  Elaenia albiceps
146  Tufted Tit-Tyrant  Anairetes parulus
147  Brown-backed Chat-Tyrant  Ochthoeca fumicolor
148  Streak-throated Bush-Tyrant  Myiotheretes striaticollis
149  Mountain Wren  Troglodytes solstitialis
150  Blue-and-white Swallow  Notiochelidon cyanoleuca
151  Hooded Siskin  Carduelis magellanica
152  Rufous-naped Brush-Finch  Atlapetes rufinucha
153  Cinereous Conebill  Conirostrum cinereum
154  Band-tailed Seedeater  Catamenia analis
155  Plain-coloured Seedeater  Catamenia inornata
156  Black Flowerpiercer  Diglossa humeralis
 
The 15th was spent on what is billed as 'one of the four most beautiful walks in Ecuador' (Lonely Planet claim, but given the rest of the book's content, I wouldn't rely on it), from lake Quilotoa back to Chugchilán. A minor hitch - for the Black Sheep personnel - was that the guide they usually arrange wasn't answering his phone, but we were certain we could make it alone.

Male Great Thrush

 Na, at the regular pre-breakfast stop on the yoga terrace

A pickup took us up to the crater lake - about 4,000m up, so high enough to make exercise a wee bit more effort. We spent a little time admiring the green lake and the phenomenal view, which included both peaks of Volcán Iliniza and the distant peak of Volcán Cotopaxi.

Lupin flowering on the slopes of Quilotoa, with the crater lake behind

Volcán Iliniza: the two peaks are similar heights, yet the northern peak remains resolutely snow-free. Rain-shadow effect?

Eventually we headed down off the rim of the crater, dropping rapidly along the edge of potato fields and winding down into gradually flatter land. We strolled through a small village and came to the edge of the canyon which lay between us and home. The track then dropped down the Ecuadorian version of our Devon lanes - steep, narrow and generally with only room for one at a time. We waited at passing places whilst gaggles of children came rushing home up the slope, heading back from the Chugchilán market. Each group would initially pause in surprise that a couple of gringos were coming down the track, then walk past with a chorus of 'Hola, Hola, Hola', with the occasional 'Hello' - invariably followed by a crescendo of giggles.

Na descends the canyon

Male Golden-bellied (Southern Yellow) Grosbeak

157  Blue-and-yellow Tanager  Thraupis bonariensis
158  Shining Sunbeam  Aglaeactis cupripennis
159  Spot-billed Ground-Tyrant  Muscisaxicola maculirostris

The 16th - our last full day at the Black Sheep - was passed with another long walk, up to the remnant cloudforest above the hostal. A relatively short, but steady climb up over the ridge of paramo took us to an interesting habitat where shrubby paramo graded gradually into cloudforest, albeit somewhat degraded and invaded by local farmers. The cloud began to descend, appropriately, as we did. We stopped off in a patch of scrub that was reminiscent of Mediterranean maquis, apart from hosting Great Thrush, Glossy and Masked Flowerpiercers and abundant Tyrian Metaltails.

We worked our way round to the cloudforest, where we struck a good patch of birds by virtue of sitting down and having some food: a flock of mixed warblers, tanagers and associated hangers-on came through the trees immediately in front of us, perhaps the most beautiful of which was a couple of Pearled Treerunners - look them up: they're stunning. A couple of Andean Guans provided some extra entertainment, lumbering through the branches above us, and another hummingbird with a spectacular name - a Sapphire-vented Puffleg - fed energetically from the flowers in the canopy. Eventually though, the cloud defeated us - we trailed back to the hostal in increasingly wet and chilly conditions; finally dropping below the cloud and mizzle close to the Black Sheep - a Long-tailed Weasel bounded across the road in front of us near the end of the trail.

On the way to bed, Na told me that there was a small mammal in the toilet block - like a mouse, but with a black and white face. When I made it there, I discovered something rather larger than I expected: an opossum about the size of a young rabbit, lurking behind the waste bin. He/she/it was encouraged out of the building with the aid of the basket...

Common Opossum

160  Andean Guan  Penelope montagnii
161  Great Sapphirewing  Pterophanes cyanopterus
162  Sapphire-vented Puffleg  Eriocnemis luciani
163  White-throated Tyrannulet  Mecocerculus leucophrys
164  Pearled Treerunner  Margarornis squamiger
165  Streaked Tuftedcheek  Pseudocolaptes boissonneautii
166  Sedge Wren  Cistothorus platensis
167  Paramo Pipit  Anthus bogotensis
168  Spectacled Redstart  Myioborus melanocephalus
169  Black-chested Mountain-Tanager  Buthraupis eximia
170  Buff-breasted Mountain-Tanager  Dubusia taeniata
171  Band-tailed Sierra-Finch  Phrygilus alaudinus
172  Glossy Flowerpiercer  Diglossa lafresnayii
173  Masked Flowerpiercer  Diglossopis cyaneus
Opossum  Didelphis marsupialis

Long-tailed Weasel Mustela frenata