CERRO DE ARCOS - BUENAVENTURA RESERVE

A 4.20am start (ouch!) saw us heading out to the paramo of Cerro de Arcos in search of a bird only discovered in 2017 – Blue-throated Hillstar. This entailed a one hour drive in the minibus and then two hours up the mountain in a couple of 4WD vehicles. It was bumpy and uncomfortable but we felt it was a bit of an adventure and enjoyed the experience. Well, at 3700m it was cold and a gale was blowing but we walked over the brow of a hill in to the leeward side and it was quite pleasant. Within a couple of minutes a fine Blue-throated Hillstar flew in and landed on a tall, moss-encrusted stalk and stared at us, its blue throat literally glowing. Wow! 

The magnificent scenery of Cerro de Arcos

Blue-throated Hillstar

We stayed here for about an hour and watched a couple hillstars chasing Black-tailed Trainbearers and Shining Sunbeams away from its favourite food source. After a while a Viridian Metaltail appeared and he too was chased away! What a magical experience!

Shining Sunbeam

Celebrating the hillstar with smiles all round

So we left here and headed downhill to our waiting minibus and then visited a small garden where we saw White-vented Plumeleteer easily. This is an isolated population and may warrant full species status as Ecuadorian Plumeleteer in the future. 

White-vented Plumeleteer

Leaving here, we drove to Quindi Garden where we failed to locate Ochraceous Attila but enjoyed the hummer feeders and the spectacle but added nothing new. So after a picnic lunch here we drove to the higher section of Buenaventura Reserve and our El Oro Parakeet stakeout. After an hour’s wait it wasn’t looking good until Juan Carlos found a small group loitering at the top of a bare tree across the valley below us and they looked mighty fine in the scope! 

A distant group of El Oro Parakeets

We’d also seen a few other species in the same area including Spotted Woodcreeper, Scaly-throated Foliage-Gleaner, Beryl-spangled Tanager, Golden Tanager, Dull-coloured Grassquit, Common Bush-Tanager, Orange-bellied Euphonia, and a few other previously seen species. 

 

With the day slipping away we decided to push our luck and ended the day at a different section of the reserve seeing a pair of unusually cooperative Esmeraldas Antbirds on the way to getting crippling views of the fantastic Long-wattled Umbrellabird. 

Long-wattled Umbrellabird

We had an incredible encounter with one as it flew from perch to perch uttering its low display call. And so a remarkable day ended on a fantastic high with what can only be described as a terribly weird but undoubtedly cool looking bird - and one i'd wanted to see for a very long time.