Elementary my dear Hoatzin

I met Pedro at the Quito airport and we took off the next day on a 9-hour trip (involving a plane, a boat, a pickup truck and another boat) to Tiputini Biodiversity Station, a remote research outpost in the heart of a huge swath of pristine old growth lowland tropical rainforest.

The lack of hunting pressure on local populations of macro-fauna makes it a phenomenal place for seeing big game such as monkeys (we saw 8 species including this Squirrel Monkey…


…And these bite-sized Pygmy Marmosets…

…), curassows (we saw seven individuals in one day) and capybara (the world’s largest rodent).

The reserve’s Laguna was also home to bird that through the shear smelliness of its innards has managed to avoid most sources of predation all-together.

This Hoatzin or ‘stinky turkey’ is the only bird in the world that has a diet consisting entirely of leaves. It is also the only bird that has a prehensile claw on the wrist joint of its wings. Depending on which taxonomist you ask it belongs in an order or at least a family of its own.

A lot of other resident birds proved to be at times difficult to see given the immense height of the canopy (some 160 feet) and the density and darkness of the undergrowth. After six days of rather intensive bird hunting Pedro and I managed to collectively see about 170 of the reserves 550 or so species. Our list included some truly fantastic birds that are impossible to see most anywhere else in the world and would impress even the most cold-hearted bird-hater; see Scarlet Macaw, Salvin’s Currasow, Paradise Tanager and Bartlett’s Tinamou (sitting on a nest). Many-banded Aracari may or may not belong on the same line with the previously mentioned birds, but I got a decent picture of one (yes, he looks much like the Pale-mandibled from last time, but they’re just so photogenic).

If you think my photos are any good, then you’re wrong. You should see the ones Pedro has bagged with his 500 mm howitzer. The image quality comes at a price of course…both in cost and in weight. While he has to worry about lugging around an apparatus roughly 20 times heavier and costlier, I’m not sure if his images are actually 20 times better. There is some subjectivity of course. We’ll get a link to some of his best shots up soon.

We got back to Quito just in time to catch Duke’s nail-biting victory over Butler that earned the school its fourth national title.

There was no time to celebrate (we were exhausted anyway) as we got up the next AM several hours before dawn to make our way to La Hesperia for a 30-hour bird-a-thon. I took Pedro all the way from the highway (1100 meters) up to the summit (2000 meters) to see the Choco-endemic and near-threatened Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan (see below) and we saw some 75 other species along the way.

It was really too bad Pedro didn’t have more time to spend down here since he has 1400 or so more birds to see. But he did manage to help me find a couple of new species for the La Hesperia list and adding to those a handful of others found over the weekend while camping at the summit, the official total is now well above 300.

Well I’m sure that’s about as much birds as anyone can handle for one post (it’s Pedro’s fault). Next time around things will be different. I’m leaving this week on trip, destination unknown to renew my visa. I’m thinking Columbia, but possibly Peru. Any suggestions are welcome.

In the meantime I’ve got to decide on what I’ll be doing for the next 1 to 5 years of my life. Please, no suggestions.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The computer has been broken for awhile so I have no idea when this post will get out to all my concerned and alert readers.

I spent the weekend at La Hesperia, which meant no chance to watch March Madness, though the chances of watching Duke, I figured, were pretty low anyway from previous experience. For all I know they are playing at this moment for a spot in the Sweet 16.

Instead I got to go camp up at the summit of La Hesperia.

A beautiful spot and we got to hike back down through a portion of the reserve’s Bosque Primario the morning after.

I got to see flocks of the near-threatened Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan which, of all the1600+ species found in mainland Ecuador, is the one that is featured on the cover of my field guide.

Unfortunately none of the pictures turned out that well (too many orchids and clouds in the way). But here’s a good one of a very cooperative (and sad-looking?) Crimson-rumped Toucanet I found just by the volunteer house.

We lucked out on weather though and had the first non-rainy 30-hour streak I’ve experienced so far here.

Undoubtedly our good fortune was granted by this leprechaun disguised as a baby Ecuadorian Thrush that Jorge-Luis caught just as we were departing.

A lot has been going on…

In the past week we’ve built a caterpillar apartment in which we have begun a breeding program.

So far we have about 10 larval monarch tenants, two of which have already made cocoons. We’ll start planning and building a proper butterfly house soon.

Two Canadian farmers have completely renovated the organic garden and foolishly left me in charge of keeping it maintained.

Here’s the shot just after they completed their work. After a few weeks of misguided volunteer efforts I’m sure we can reduce these smooth rows into a smoldering crater.

Fortunately I’m off to the Amazon for a week come the 29th so I’ll be able pass the blame off to someone else!

Feliz Cumpleaños a mi

This was written 12 years ago back on March 15, 2010....

The computer monitor died while I was away so I haven't been able to post.

---------

I went into Quito over the weekend for a few reasons: 1) to watch Duke basketball, 2) get a yellow fever vaccination for my upcoming trip to the Amazon, and 3) celebrate my 25th birthday.

1) There’s some sort of blackout on Duke games in Quito. On Friday night I got see Maryland play Georgia Tech and witnessed, with joy, enough Gary Williams exasperation to last me a season. But for the semifinal Saturday and final Sunday I was forced to watch Atlantic-10 garbage and hope for halftime highlights.

2) The Ministry of Health is closed on weekends so I had to extend my weekend through to Monday morning. But if it happens to be a weekday, the health care system here is amazingly efficient and cheap. I made it in and out in under 15 minutes and the cost?...a whopping zero dollars. They didn’t even charge an extranjero tax.

3) I had a really fun weekend and a great birthday. Somehow though my bank (Etrade grrr….) screwed up my last fund transfer and I ended up with essentially $20 for the weekend. Now Quito is a relatively cheap city, especially if you get away from the heart of Gringolandia, but my room alone was going to cost $12 per night. Luckily I had brought my driver’s license as proof of my quarter-century achievement which made asking favors of strangers and semi-strangers consistently successful. And since I had to stay through Monday anyway, I was able to put off paying for the room until cash came through.

Now usually I base my blog around pictures I happen to have taken, but really none apply to any of the above stories.



So here’s a massive slug one of the Canadians found when we were out hiking the other day.

Also, I’ll refer you back to my first post from Ecuador in which I expressed perplexity regarding the popularity of 3-on-3 white-collar volleyball in Quito parks. I recently found out the game is called “ecuavolley” and the players (and probably many of the spectators) wager hundreds or thousands of dollars on matches. We’re building a court at La Hesperia so we can practice and plan our great gringo ecuavolley hustle fundraising event.

I’ve got a lot of logistics planning to do in the next few days. Now that I have my vaccine I can go visit Tiputini (the most biodiverse place in the world). I’m trying to get my friend, ‘Pedro’ who’s coming into town, involved as well, but he doesn’t have much time and getting to and from the place can only be done on Mondays and Fridays and takes all day.

And then after that I have to leave the country for visa renewal purposes. I’m thinking a week in Peru, though there was a landslide in Macchu Pichu so it may be closed. Any votes for Columbia or elsewhere? For whatever reason there are no direct flights to Buenos Aires so getting to Argentina is a bit more expensive and time-consuming.

It wouldn’t be a post without a bird pic.

I finally got a good picture of a Pale-mandibled Araçari, a bird found only in Ecuador. It looks almost like a Muppet no?

I went to Quito last weekend to try to watch Duke demolish UNC in basketball. Unfortunately the game wasn’t being aired, but I did get to go to the Quito botanical gardens to photograph orchids and see my 900^th bird species (worldwide, not just in Ecuador!).

This Long-tailed Trainbearer’s tail is so long I couldn’t fit it in frame.

We might is well make hummingbirds a focus of this post. It took less than 24 hours to attract customers to this feeder by the volunteer house.

At least four different species have dropped by to visit in the first week including this Green-crowned Brilliant

…and this White-whiskered Hermit.

I would like to set up a whole row of feeders someplace where people can sit and watch them closely and take photographs (like the setup I saw in Mindo). So far I haven’t been able to find any feeders in Quito and most online vendors won’t ship to Ecuador, so I’ll have to have somebody bring some down for me.

Random notes:

Things have been going well with the Canadian high school kids who showed up yesterday. They’re pretty quiet, but seem to be enjoying La Hesperia and the cloud forest so far.

I gave a talk the other day about alternative energy (with essentially no preparation) that seemed to go over well.

After tomorrow I’ll be the only American (Estadounidense) at the reserve.

I turn 25 this weekend.

This isn’t the biggest spider I’ve ever seen, but it may be the bluest.

I’ve decided that this is so far the tardiest and most unimaginative of my Ecuador posts. There’s so much going on here all the time and I’ve taken on so many projects that are competing for my time (particularly that spent in front of a computer).

I am off to Quito again for the weekend…this time to try to find a yellow fever vaccination so I can visit the rainforest. Hopefully I´ll have luck with that as well as with the satellite feeds so I can watch some of the ACC tournament.

Donde esta el Baños?

Banos is a cute little touristy town of ~20,000 nestled among the jagged hills of the Eastern slope of the Andes. It is named for its hot springs (baths or banos), not its toilets, though the mineral content of the water gives it a murky, brownish quality further suggesting the use of elementary-school humor.

The town was completely demolished by nearby Volcan Tungurahua and subsequently (perhaps foolishly?) rebuilt three times in relatively rapid succession back before 1850. Paintings in the main cathedral chronicle these events (alongside the time in 1930 when some tourists drove their car of a cliff and miraculously survived)

Paranoid geologists evacuated the town in 2000 when the volcano began spewing lava again, but after years without an eruption the inhabitants forced their way past roadblocks and reclaimed their homes. We saw a huge plume of ash ominously rising into the Friday afternoon sky that fortunately didn’t culminate in a catastrophic disaster (seems like there have been a lot of these recently in the region).

We went to the zoo (“animal prison”) to see a bunch of fauna native to Ecuador including many species of endangered birds that I likely won’t ever get to spot in the wild. Then they inexplicably had a cage with five American Wood Ducks.

Why they chose to include a relatively common, albeit beautiful, North American species among their menagerie of threatened Ecuadorians is beyond me.

Back at La Hesperia things are going well, except that the week before we were scheduled to receive funds for the school construction project from a Chilean organization an earthquake devastated the town in which it is located. Now we are in dire need of a new source of funding. As unofficial director of outreach and fundraising, everyone’s looking to me for some magic to happen.

Any ideas?

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but we´ve been without power for the last 24 hours or so...

We went on another hike Friday, this time with the whole group of volunteers (needless to say ‘Martha’ opted not to come). No natural disasters this time around, though the hike ended up being way longer than any of us thought it would be. Between being a bit out of shape, not acclimatized to the altitude and twisting both ankles, one of the new volunteers did have a bit of a rough time. Walter ended up going ahead to get a horse to carry back the last bit. With the slow pace we ended up taking about nine hours altogether and I ended up missing out on a Friday night in Quito.

Oh well.

I went instead Saturday morning and inadvertently ended up couch surfing at this Canadian guy’s amazing apartment in the scenic and conveniently located neighborhood of Guapulo. Check out the view:

He had agreed to put up the volunteer I was with and graciously extended the invitation to me as well. He even cooked us curry and went out into La Mariscal with us that night. He teaches at a high school in Quito. So we’re going to try and get him to visit La Hesperia and maybe get his class to come visit for an end-of-year trip.

Back in the cloud forest all is well. We’re planning a lot of projects; hopefully some of them will work out.

Oh, and I saw a bunch of monkeys today.

I´m off to Baños for the weekend (the town not the toilet). Should be fun.

One of the dogs gave birth to puppies today, so I´ll try and get some super cute pics when I get back.

death and near-death

So I posted the wrong picture of the Parula last time.

Check it. It´s really just here to soften the blow of the next pic.

This Rufous-naped Brush-finch wasn’t as lucky as the others.

Don’t worry we gave him a nice catholic burial out in front of the house.

We really need to invest in some stickers or something for the windows. I mean we’re supposed to be trying to preserve wildlife and biodiversity right?

At least it wasn’t a volunteer that died.

This morning I was re-cutting the cascada trail that follows a rushing stream up through lush humid forest. It’s gorgeous. There are fern-encrusted cliff faces, waterfalls, tropical flowers, and the nest of one of Ecuador’s marquee bird species, the Andean Cock-of-the-rock.

Here’s what the chicks looked like back on 1-24.

They’ve really plumped up and gotten some good color in the past few weeks and must be nearing time to fledge.

So far so good.

During the rainy season, the river swells and erases the path and redefining it becomes a bit of a Sisyphean task. For much of the trail, the path is simply the river itself, especially after the full day of rain we had yesterday.

After a lot of machete hacking and slogging through the torrent we reached the point where the trail diverges from the river and climbs directly up the vertiginous valley wall back to the farm. Just was I was about to announce our progress to my sole companion, ´Martha´ I heard an exclamation and turned to see her, several plants and a truckload of loose dirt which had just been part of the path disappear from sight.

!!

Fortunately, despite falling a good 35 feet down to the rocky river, she hadn´t broken anything. I backtracked until I reached a point of the trail at her level and pressed through the thick vegetation, clawing at flimsy vines and stalks and the shear dirt wall. I found her a bit shaken and bruised, but otherwise seemingly fine.

Getting out was a challenge of its own. My two crossings of the impromptu path was all it could handle. Just as I reached its junction with the trail, what soil was left for purchase dropped away and suddenly we were separated: she trapped on a precarious platform of loose dirt, and thorny sticks and me on the path to safety just out of reach. So I retrieved my machete and cleared plants from above so I could reach down and help her traverse the gap.

While she is convinced that I saved her life, all I will say is that I perform well under pressure. It comes with the cool head.

No pictures obviously, but I´ll get some up later that will hopefully capture what ´a 35 foot fall into a rocky river´ or ´a landslide´ might look like.

Stay safe