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Ecuador eastern slope hot spots (1 Viewer)

W

Western Tanager

Active member
I am in the planning stages for my 3rd trip to Ecuador. The 1st time was in April of 2016 and I went again in November of 2018. This next time will likely be in December of this year. The 1st 2 times I birded mainly around Mindo. This next time I would like to go to some of the hot spots in the Andes and eastern slope. The likely itinerary will be:

Day 1 Birding Antisana, Cayambe y Papallacta

Day 2 Birding Guango and Baeza area

Day 3 Birding in San Isidro, Guacamayos Ridge

Day 4 Birding Sumaco (Night Sumaco lodge)

Day 5 Birding Sumaco and back to Quito.

Does this itinerary sound like a good plan? Are there other hotspots in this area that I should try to visit?

I plan to use the same guide that I used in 2018 and I am confident that he will know where to go but I thought I would ask here as well to get some ideas.

If I were to add 1 more day where should it be spent in this general area?

Thanks for any advice!
 
Having visited all of the spots in the end of last year, i feel this is a bit rushed in only 5-6 days.
I would rather focus on less spots and have a little bit more time available then, but that is also personal preference.
All of those spots are good and you see amazing and also unique birds in all of them.
The question where to add a day, also depends on the species you are mainly looking for.

We did Antisana in the morning and didnt reach Papallacta before late afternoon, so this day might be worth investing more time if you want to see some of the specialities in cayambe coca.
If you want to max out the total of species, probably an additional day in sumaco or around san isidro would be the best bet.
 
Dortmundbirder said:
Having visited all of the spots in the end of last year, i feel this is a bit rushed in only 5-6 days.
I would rather focus on less spots and have a little bit more time available then, but that is also personal preference.
All of those spots are good and you see amazing and also unique birds in all of them.
The question where to add a day, also depends on the species you are mainly looking for.

We did Antisana in the morning and didnt reach Papallacta before late afternoon, so this day might be worth investing more time if you want to see some of the specialities in cayambe coca.
If you want to max out the total of species, probably an additional day in sumaco or around san isidro would be the best bet.
Click to expand...
While I haven't birded the East Slope, I would agree this feels a bit rushed compared to the itineraries, especially given driving times and such. I think San Isidro might be fine for a day, but I would do at least two full days for Wildsumaco.

Some people also chose to dip down into the amazon lowlands proper on an East Slope trip, but I wouldn't add that if you are strapped for time.
 
Yeah this is really fast. The travel times are longer than one would guess and on top of that unpredictable - if the road gets blocked by anything, there is not way to get around in most places, just wait. Also a lot of the birds aren't exactly easy.
 
It is fast, but if this is the time you got, it's sort of doable.
Expect to see plenty of species, but don't expect to clean up on each of the sites.

I wouldn't recommend the 'Sumaco - Quito' part. That sounds like the best part of the day driving.

If you can mentally cope with skipping a site, I wouldn't go to Sumaco and just stick with 1 day Papallacta and surroundings, do the feeders at Guango and make sure you're at San Isidro on day 2, bird San Isidro / Guacamayos on day 3 and 4 and bird your way back on day 5 with another attempt at some species near Guango / Papallacta on the way to Quito.

Sumaco is an excellent site but worth 3 days on its own, and its location isn't very handy if you spend more time travelling to that place, than you have time to bird...
 
If species count is a priority, I would agree with maybe skipping the Antisana-Papallacta day to give you more time at Sumaco. The high Paramo has some cool birds, but the diversity is low. It would also be easy to add that as a day trip if you are ever in Quito again.
 
I am back in the USA after my trip to Ecuador. It was a great trip and I am very happy with how it turned out. The guide that I had used in 2018 and had planned to use again on this trip ended up being sick so he found me an excellent replacement named Jorge Luna. Jorge normally guides for Neblina but occasionally does some guiding for private groups or individuals.

Before and after the guided trip I did some birding on my own in the rural development where my parents live which is a few miles south of the town of Cayambe in the Pichincha Province. I added White-crested Elaenia, Spectacled Redstart and Blue-and-yellow Tanager to my life list at this location.

Some of my target species for this trip were Andean Condor, Giant Hummingbird, Sword-billed Hummingbird, Antpittas, Torrent Duck, Toucans, Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, new woodpeckers, owls and tanagers. We did great and I picked up 110 new species.

Jorge picked me up at 6am on December 19th at my parents home. Our destination was Antisana and we had some great birding there. From Antisana we went to the radio towers at Papallacta Pass for the Seedsnipe but did not see it. Then on to Guango for the 1st night.

Here are the Ebird trip reports for the 1st day. I took about 2200 photos during my time in Ecuador. Many of those were deleted due to poor focus or lighting and some of the ones that I kept and submitted to Ebird are not the greatest but I decided to keep them anyway as they were the only pics I got of some species. I may have mistakenly identified some of these submissions. If any of you notice an error please let me know.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S156710870 Guango 1st evening.

Day 2 at Guango
https://ebird.org/checklist/S156937700 we scored on the Torrent Duck big time. A male and female with 3 chicks! Also great views of Gray-breasted Mountain Toucan and my guide was quite excited to show me a Dusky Piha.

Day 2 travelling to Wild Sumaco

Wild Sumaco
1st evening- https://ebird.org/checklist/S156937458
Full day at Sumaco

2nd morning at Sumaco

A brief stop on the way to Cabanas San Isidro for Band-bellied Owl and we also got Black-capped Donacobius.


We saw a Black-banded Owl (might be split in the future- some are calling it the "San Isidro Owl") both evenings at San Isidro.

Full day in the San Isidro area

Guacamayos Ridge (which was an area I really wanted to bird)

As we were walking down the trail we came upon a mixed flock at a bit past the 1 kilometer trail marker and Jorge said that this flock might contain a Greater Scythebill. I had read of others seeking this bird at Guacamayos without success so I was not holding my breath but sure enough we saw one. I did not realize until later when I was sorting through photos that I had succeeded in getting a couple pics of it. They are not great pics but there are good enough that the species can be identified. I added them to the Ebird checklist. Jorge said that we were really lucky to see one and to actually get a couple pics was icing on the cake!

Just before we got back to San Isidro to have lunch and check out Jorge stopped along the road by the lodge and found this Andean Potoo that he had heard was roosting.


Then after checking out we drove back to my parents. Thanks for reading and thanks Jorge for an awesome trip!
 

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