Day 4--Podocarpus NP, Cajanuma Entrance

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013
Day trip to Podocarpus NP. Disregarding the Galapagos, this is Ecuador's most prized national park, containing the highest plant and bird diversity of any protected area in the world. It was recently declared a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. We birded roads and trails in this temperate rainforest, climbing to 9500'
2nd night Hostal Aguilera, Loja

Iris and I were up at 4:30, dressed for rain, wearing our headlamps, and carrying our flashlights. Then, off to the Cajanuma entrance to Podocarpus NP in the pouring rain to see the Band-winged Nightjar before light. (Are we birders nuts, or what?) At the park entrance we all piled off the bus in the rain and slogged up the muddy, dirt road, scanning the just lightening sky--Rose Ann and Willy with their bright spotlights at the ready.

The BNJ came with a flash, lit very briefly in a tree, and then took off. We had but a fleeting glimpse, not nearly as good as the Internet photo I include here.

A couple with their milking equipment walked up the road in the dark also, ready for roadside milking at dawn.

Too dark to get a photo of the milking couple at the entrance; this is one of Margaret's photos from another morning

Shortly after entering the park we stopped at a spot where one could see the valley through the trees. It was so stunning that I took several  photos (below). The clouds and mist kept shifting and the sun would occasionally light a slope or mountain peak. It's a good thing that I was not using a film camera. I would have used several rolls of film.

After this, we drove farther into the park, getting off and on the bus to bird roadside intervals. There were many washouts. At one point we had to get off the bus to walk to the other side of a very bad washout. Edgar managed to skin the bus past it. It was on a curve and he had to pull in his mirror and hold his breath to get around it. He then left us to walk and immediately drove the bus to the Ranger Station at the top, turned around, and came back down to the downhill side of the washout so that any potential further washout wouldn't trap his bus . . . and us. We spent the rest of the morning afoot, birding the foggy wet road.

It was very foggy and misting rain or actually raining most of the time, but we had learned by this time that one did not get off the bus without one's umbrella and boots. Even the sunniest days could surprise with a sudden downpour.

My boots bottom right

Despite the weather and washouts, I was fascinated by the many waterfalls, exotic flowers, flowering bushes, mosses, lichens, and a couple of large beetles found along the road. 

Unopened tree fern leaves; photo by Sally Marone



Top left photo is of a begonia and the right one opposite it is of raindrops on new bamboo leaves; bottom interesting lichen

I loved the ferns that were everywhere. The top right is a fern whose leaves are pink when young, and the bottom fern was huge, the size of a small tree; in fact it was a fern that grew like a tree and waved its ferny palm-like leaves at about 15 feet



The top right photo is of the red-flowered bush that drew the hummingbirds; in fact, all of these red flowers . . . and Iris's and my red raincoats drew the hummingbirds

At one point we stopped at the edge of the road near a waterfall and identified hummingbirds in the shrubs on the downslope. They need to fuel up no matter what the weather and were feeding on tall shrubs with hanging red flowers. We identified Rainbow Starfrontlet, Glowing Puffleg, and Tyrian Metaltail among others. I love the pufflegs with their white, feather-covered legs. They look to me like they are wearing 70s style Jane Fonda, fur-topped boots. The hummingbirds came repeatedly to one bush that Willy named the "successful bush."

[L] Tyrian Metaltail, Dustin huntington; [M] Rainbow Starfrontlet, Glenn Bartley; [R] Glowing Puffleg 

Hotelier Ricardo, bringing our lunches to the ranger's station at the top, found us here. He kindly ferried us up to park HQ with the lunches. At park HQ, we took turns in the washhouse and then ate and birded from a shelter as it was raining pretty steadily. We actually saw quite a few birds from this protected vantage point: Black-mandibled Toucan, Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, and the Pearled Treerunner being the most distinctive.

Black-mandibled Toucan, Internet photo: Flickr

Crimson-mantled Woodpecker; Internet photo

Pearled Treerunner; Internet photo: Dustin Brinkhuizen

Lunch was tasty and filling: We had a big bowl of chicken salad-tortellini-veggies, plus cookies and cold drinks. After lunch, we birded up the trail behind the ranger's station, and Rose Ann managed to call into view two shy antpittas and a wee tapaculo: The Chestnut-crowned Antpitta and the Chestnut naped Antpitta, and the tiny, recently described Chusquea (Loja) Tapaculo.

Chestnut-crowned Antpitta; Internet photo: Jim Watt

Chestnut-naped Antpitta; Internet photo: Diego Calderon

Chusquea Tapaculo; Internet photo: Margaret Sloan

After lunch, Ricardo kindly ferried us back down to the waterfall/roadside hummingbird bushes. We checked for spectacled bears at locations where they'd previously been sighted, but with no luck. These bears are quite small and spend a good deal of their time in trees eating bromeliads and other flora. Willy had done his dissertation research on them.

Spectacled Bear; National Geographic image

We birded our way slowly back to the bus along the road. My feet were sore--I'd forgotten to put my insoles into my boots--and the downhill walking shoved my toes/socks to the toe of the boots. I happily boarded the bus. Once on the bus, I took the photo below of an interesting fruity seedpod I'd picked up. Willy told me its name, but alas, I've forgotten it.


I placed the seedpod  on a leaf to photograph it. It looks like a delicious spiky fruit.
I bet the monkeys and spectacled bears like it.

Returning to our room in Loja, Iris and I took pre-dinner showers and changed into dry clothes. Our wash had been returned and the clothes were wonderfully dry and had even been folded. Over the course of our tour, we saw many clotheslines filled with "drying" clothes. Willy told us that it sometimes takes 3 or 4 days for line-dried clothes to dry in ths wet, humid area.

A photo of me taken by Margaret when I wasn't aware of it

We completed our bird lists and ate dinner at 6 pm: Quinoa soup, broiled tilapia, potatoes, salad, and tiramisu for dessert. A wonderful ending to a tiring but exciting day.

Day 5--Old Loja-Zamora Road

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2013
We were to bird Upper Podocarpus/Cajanuma in the morning but ended up birding the Old Loja-Zamora Road and getting to Zamora and the Copalinga Lodge so late that we had time only for a little of birding from the dining room before dark
Night at Copalinga Lodge, Zamora

Up early  and on the bus a little earlier than yesterday, ready to again try for the Band-winged Nightjar. This time we nailed it and got a good look as well at a Great Horned Owl. Then we drove to the place Edgar had stopped yesterday before the slide, left the bus there, and checked out the mixed flocks attracted to the hummingbird bushes before turning back.

Today we were to check out the south end of Podocarpus Park, entering from Cajanuma, and then spend the night at Copalinga Lodge near Zamora. However, there had been a massive landslide, requiring dynamite to move a boulder the size of a house that had landed on the road. Road crews had already been working on it for several days. Fortunately, we came to  a standstill not 500 feet from an entrance to the old, single-lane, muddy Loja-Zamora Road. So we piled off the bus, left Edgar waiting in a long line of vehicles, and hiked to the old road.

Field Guides birders taking advantage of every moment to spot a species, in this case a Chiguanco Thrush; Iris in blue shirt

One of the first species we saw was a pair of Torrent Ducks on the Sabanilla River, which ran along the old L-Z road. They were wonderful birds and became one of my trip favorites. We spent considerable time watching them dive into the rushing water and swim downstream. They have very stiff tail feathers that they use as rudders. Almost all that is seen after they dive are their heads as they are swept with the current, and then they pop up on a rock. The male posed on a rock for some time before jumping in. When he finally did jump in, he managed to swim across the current to the opposite shore.

[TL] Torrent Duck male & female, Tadeusz Stawarczyk; [TR] diving female, Jon Atkinson; [BL] swimming male, K.C. Choo; precariously perched torrent duck family, Joe Prasil 

Next we watched several White-capped Dippers. These Ecuadorian dippers are not like their American counterparts. They do not dive and forage under rapid water, but they do tempt fate by clinging to rocks amid rushing water to feed on invertebrates at the water line and at the lips of cascading water and waterfalls.

White -capped Dipper; [L] Jeannie Mitchell; [R] Sam Woods

We crossed the Sabanilla River and continued to bird along the muddy, pothole-filled road, dodging intermittent traffic that chose to use the old road to Zamora.

One of the tree ferns I mentioned on another day; you can see one of its leaves in the previous photo

Willy was leading us down the road at a good clip. He was intent on our seeing an Oilbird. We arrived at a bridge over a side stream. Willy quickly binned it and found our oilbirds, two of them, way back on a dark cliffside. He got the spottiing scope on the birds and we all took turns looking at the birds' white wing spots, about all we could make out. Later, Rose Ann told us the story of the oil birds:
They are nocturnal feeders on the fruits of the oil palm and tropical laurels and are the only nocturnal, flying, fruit-eating birds in the world. They forage at night, navigating by echolocation in the same manner as bats, but with a high-pitched clicking sound audible to humans.
       During the day, the birds rest on cave ledges. They produce a variety of harsh screams while in their caves. Entering a cave with a light especially provokes these raucous calls which may also be heard as the birds prepare to emerge from the cave at dusk.
       Oilbirds are colonial nesters They build a nest in a heap of droppings and debris, usually above water, on which they lay 2 to 4 glossy white eggs. The squabs become very fat before fledging, weighing up to half again as much as the adult birds do. They used to be harvested and rendered for oil, hence the name "oilbird."

Side stream up which the oilbird  was located

We had left the bus and started walking and birding way down around the bend you can just see in the photo below. Eventually we learned that the paved road would not be opened today. Instead, traffic was released to the old LZ single-lane dirt road alternately so that traffic flowed for 30 minutes or so in a more-or-less steady cavalcade of trucks, cars, pickups, and buses from the Zamora end before Edgar and our bus were released from the Loja end. It was probably about two hours before the Loja end was released and Edgar managed to wrestle the big bus up the narrow road to us. When he did catch up to us, we were near the top of a hill, but Edgar managed to pull the bus far enough to the edge (yikes!) that traffic could get around him while we boarded.

Looking from the bridge up the Sabanilla River



The bus and Edgar are around the foot of the mountains across the valley. We have climbed up the old road to the side of the opposite mountains and can now look down on the river and the way we walked.

It was a relief to be on the bus and not treking uphill, but it was a slow, hairy, often cliff-hanging, very jolting ride for the next couple of hours. We were behind a truck loaded inexpertly with coke bottles that threatened to fall off or pull the truck over with each pothole, washout, or slide. We all found ourselves anxiously catching a breath when the truck lurched and the high load of bottles swayed and leaned. Add to that my anxiety when Zamora vehicles heading to Loja passed from the other direction. We were on a narrow, one-way dirt road often on the side of the mountain and often the road was narrowed even further with slides and waterfalls. I did my best to hold the left side of the bus down.

A wide spot in the Old L-Z Road; of course it is flooded, but on we ventured

Hillside deforested for cattle grazing

Near Zamora we passed a HUGE hydro plant in the making. The Chinese were creating an enormous tunnel to carry water and had rearranged the mountainside with their oversized equipment and dirt from the tunnel.

Workers at the entrance to the hydro tunnel

I snapped this photo of a small shrine and danger sign at the hydro project from the bus

Finally we reached a paved road in Zamora, and eventually another dirt road to Cabanas Copalinga. I joked at the end of the ride that I had lost one kidney. The ride was definitely a "kidney  killer."


Catherine Vits, lodge owner

We arrived at Cabanas Copalinga Lodge about 5:30 pm to be greeted by its dynamic owner Catherine Vits, who ran us through dinner times, bar selections and prices, and property rules and regs: "Insert the electric bug repellant devices into your electrical outlets to deter no-seeums; no hairdryers allowed. Hair dryers will crash our power plant that can otherwise fuel the hot water and run the lights and refrigerators all night; no paper in the toilets [a standard throughout Ecuador, even in the best hotels], leave shoes and boots outside the cabin door so as not to ruin the hardwood floors," etc.

Catherine also gave us the location of the drying room and orchid garden and trails. I was distracted from Catherine's talk because we stood in the dining room/bar area where hummingbirds were buzzing in for a sip of nectar at the bar feeders, and colorful tanagers were feeding on a banana feeder just opposite the eating area.



Hummingbird (a Hermit of somekind, maybe a Baron's Hermit) at the lodge bar feeder

Catherine assigned us our cabanas. Iris and I were in Cabanas #2, just a short hike up the trail. The keys to each room were attached to small pieces of wood with a stylized tanager on each. Our room was represented by the Blue-capped Tanager.


Blue-capped Tanager; Internet photo: Mikko Phyala

Belgians, Catherine and her husband Baldwin had even created a U.S.- style sewage treatment plant for this nearly self-sustaining eco lodge. The lodge was wonderfully welcoming and fine.

We had just enough time before 7:30 pm dinner to settle into our cabin, and to shower and dress in clean, dry clothes before a wonderful dinner, eaten by candlelight in the dining/bar area. It rained through the night, the roar of the river loudly adding to the din on our tin roof. At least this is what I was told, I slept like I was drugged.

Day 6--Podocarpus Park, Bombuscara Entrance

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013

Carry hotel lunch in daypack and carry walking stick; wear boots and bring umbrella; hilly trail in foothill forest; dinner at the lodge; owling after dinner
Night at Cabanas Copalinga Lodge, Zamora

Iris and I were up early to see the birds coming to the lodge feeders, our alarm being a frog that sounds exactly like my alarm clock. We ate a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, breads & jams, fruit, juice, and coffee. While eating, we delighted in the easily seen tanagers, hummingbirds, and others that came to the banana and hummingbird feeders: Thick billed- and Orange-bellied Euphonias, Scarlet-rumped Caciques, Russet-backed Oropendolas, Yellow- and Ashy-throated Bush Tanagers, striking Orange-billed Sparrows, Buff-throated- and Grayish Saltators, Green Honeycreepers, a Golden-eared Tanager feeding a fledgling; and a slew of other colorful tanagers: Saffron-crowned, Green-and-gold, Paradise, Orange-eared, Flame-rumped, Silver-beaked, and White-lined. A Swainson's Thrush (one of several N.A. birds spending the winter in Ecuador) came repeatedly to the banana feeder, as did a Collared Aracari.


(L) Thick-billed Euphonia, arthur Morris; (R) Orange-bellied Euphonia. Jim Ownby--one of my fellow Payne County Audubon members

Green Honeycreeper male (L) and female (R); Internet photos: ecuadorrebel.com

Paradise Tanager, (L) Lovern Raffy Lopez; (R) Nathan Rupert

Clockwise: Golden-eared Tanager, Dusan Brinkhuizen; Green-and gold Tanager, Wim De Groot; Orange-eared Tanager, Ang Hwee Yong; Saffron-crowned Tanager, Andy Wombat

Orange-billed Sparrow, Jim Burns; Silver-beaked Tanager, Carlos Henrique L.N. Almeda

There were so many hummingbirds that it was hard to keep track. My favorite was the Spangled Coquette. I even bought a tee with a Spangled Coquette male on it. Unfortunately, all we saw while at Copalinga were far less showy female Spangled-Coquettes. The male, with his wild, rusty hairdo was not in evidence and Catherine said he had not been around for a couple of days.

(L) Spangled Coquette male; Glenn Bartley; (R) Spangled Coquette female, Tom Hince

 Some  larger birds also came to the feeders at Copalinga.

Squirrel Cuckoo; these birds were common on both slopes. I like these birds. They are big, flashy birds and not quietly shy like our Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Collared Aracari; Internet photo: Kevin Watson

Speckled Chachalaca; Internet photo, Sharon and Jack Parsons

We could not tear ourselves away from the feeders until well after breakfast. We returned to our cabins, washed up, grabbed our gear, and then boarded the bus and headed for the Bombuscara entrance to Podocarpus NP. The trail was narrow and steep in places, and it was hot. Nonetheless, we saw some good birds, but we spent a lot of time doing it, going back and forth several times on the trail to get them. One that we kept missing was the Coppery-chested Jacamar.

Leaf-cutter (Atta), army, and other ant species crossed the trail in many places. There were so many of them that they actually left cleared, grooved trails of their own. In one place a leaf-cutter mound was right next to the trail. It was about 3-feet high by 5- or 6-feet long, looked like a mound of coarse sand, and had many entrances and exits, with bits of cut leaves strewn over it. I have read that next to humans, leaf cutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth. Large colonies may have as many as 5 to 10 million workers, with up to seven different castes, or job categories. Different-sized ants do different tasks. The queen, far larger than the others, may lay 50 million eggs over a lifetime. Soldiers protect the nest; workers gather leaf material. "Minima" or smaller workers are specialized for moving around in the small spaces of the fungus garden. I find these ants absolutely fascinating. I tried to get down to take a photo but the hip wouldn't allow this, so the photos here are from the Internet.

Leaf cutter ants cutting a section of leaf and others transporting bits of leaves that are far larger than they to their nest; bottom left photo shows a Minor ant (one a little larger than a Minima) on the leaf piece. How strong these ants must be! The ants do not eat the leaf bits but chew them up and integrate them into a large fungus garden that becomes their food source.

Enough about ants. Back to the birding. We birded our way up the trail to the administration building at the top, stopping on the way so that I could snap a photo of the group at a sign explaining the bird species at this south entrance. We ate our box lunches sitting under a shelter out of the sun at the Ranger's Station. Our lunches were huge, two sandwiches, so many of us shared a sandwich with the ranger, who was also sitting in the shelter. He made out like a bandit. Most of us ate our very tasty chicken curry sandwich, however, and ended up asking for the same sandwich in our boxed lunches next day.

Back row l to r: Rose Ann Rowlett, Susan Marsden, Iris McPherson, Bev MacMaster, JimRundel, SallyMarrone, Mike Seamans -- Front row l to r: Margaret Kelch, Willy Perez, Harvey Medland, Lynn Peterson

New administration building

Sitting after climbing up the trail felt fine; that's the shelter inthe background where we ate our lunches

We checked out the administration area where a lot of work was going on. Then it was back down the trail, not stopping very much. On the way back, Rose Ann spotted the Coppery-chested Jacamar sitting in the open right by the trail. We didn't really need binoculars to see it well. 

Coppery-chested Jacamar; Internet photo: Wim de Groot

On the way back we stopped at theRio Bombuscaro where we saw a Fasciated Tiger Heron.

Rio Bombuscaro where we saw the Fasciated Tiger Heron below

Fasciated Tiger Heron; Internet photo, Nick Athanas

When we got back, we had some free time--the first of the trip! Iris and I rested a little and then joined the others watching the feeders. Eventually we all moved some chairs into the parking lot to watch the hummer activity at the vervain hedge. Here is where the female Spangled Coquette acted like one. People brought out wine and beer and we had a great time sitting, sipping, and easily seeing the birds that came to the hedge or flew over.

Easy birding at the Copalinga Lodge vervain hedge

Bev, binocs in one hand, glass of wine in the other

Just before dark, we boarded the bus and set off for a place where Rose Ann and Willy had previously seen a Blackish Nightjar. Nightjars tend to rest in the  dirt road and their eyes shine brightly in the dark. Willy and Rose Ann shone their bright lights into roadside trees, and we walked a bit searching for this elusive nightjar. Suddenly Willy spotted it resting beside the road, its eyes bright orbs. We all had good views of it as it made short flights down the road away from us.

Blackish Nightjar; Internet photo Martin Reid

After dinner, Iris and I left for bed. It was raining. I was in the shower and Iris was partially undressed when Rose Ann knocked on the door to tell us that Sally had spotted the Band-bellied Owl if we wanted to come. We were tired and on our way to bed, so passed on the owl. In fact, I didn't hear about the owl until I was out of the shower. I would not have dressed and gone out in the rain again, nonetheless. Below is the owl we didn't see.

Band-bellied Owl; Internet photo, Pete Morris