Birding Ecuador, January 2024, Part 8
The Amazon
Almost everyone going to the Amazon in Ecuador uses the trading town of Coca as a jumping-off point. It is at the junction of the Napo and Coca rivers and has a decent airport - a sort of mini-Manaus. It also functions as the administrative centre for the oil companies that are much in evidence up and down the riverbanks and transport heavy vehicles up and downriver interminably on barges. We were taking the early flight to Coca, so we stayed in the Quito airport hotel, which had a decent buffet, while Andres was briefly united with his family. We saw a kestrel on a traffic roundabout!
In the morning, we checked in with plenty of time and then bought a coffee before heading for the gate. Kim and I noticed a couple of middle-aged female passengers with tote bags from Amos Tuck, our business school, so we engaged them in conversation. They were looking more for a general eco-experience in the Amazon than hard-core birding but described themselves as birders. That gave us an insight into the American perspective.
The flight was uneventful, offering views of the Andes, and we landed in Coca, collected our bags, and headed off for the river. The transshipment HQ is a large boat that seems permanently moored to a downtown quay.
We looked out over the brown waters and awaited the arrival of our boat. As we could see from watching others, the boats are long, thin and high-powered, not unlike the Thai rooster-tails.
After a short time, our boat arrived, and we discovered that heading downstream meant criss-crossing the river, as much of it is very shallow. This requires detailed and current knowledge of the…er…current and depths. We were the only passengers other than some indigenous people hitching a lift back to their village. A packed snack bag was thoughtfully provided.
We were heading for Sani Lodge. Several lodges offer Amazon experiences, and they are all located on lagoons separated from the main river by barrier islands. You pull up to an island, walk across it, and reembark in a smaller canoe on the other side to access the lodge.
We saw disappointingly few birds along the Napo on the way to the lodge, and most of them were distant. The best birds were when we stopped to deposit a villager, and we found a couple of Drab Water-Tyrants courting by the riverbank.
Drab they may be, but this was no barrier to their mutual affection, shown by various wing-spreading displays, and quite ignoring us.
There was also a Great Kiskadee. We seemed to see fewer of these during our time in the Amazon than Lesser Kiskadees, although the former are supposed to be much more common. “Kiskadee” is, of course, for the sound they make and yes, they are Tyrant-flycatchers. Strangely, it’s the only species in its genus, according to most ornithologists (there is some dispute) - the Lesser Kiskadee is in a different one!
It was originally named by Georg MarcGraf around 1640. He was a German natural philosopher who, during his short life (1610-1644) developed the material for and wrote a work on Brazil, Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, the first of its kind and apparently a solid effort.
Once we were in the paddle canoe and slipping through the brown water underneath the forest, there was more birdsong and monkey activity.
There would now be a big shift in our tactics back to “old-fashioned” birding. Not much in the way of feeders or birds visiting the lodge - we would have to seek out the birds the old-fashioned way. Relative to the cloud forest, the birds are also more thinly dispersed and many of them are skulkers or canopy-dwellers, so we were now looking for ant swarms, bird waves, clay licks, or ascending towers to boost our prospects. We would mostly be walking trails and canoeing backwaters.
We dropped off our kit at the lodge, which seemed to have no other guests. The country’s political disruptions might be frightening off potential tourists.
There was time to admire the House Wrens hopping about outside our bungalow.
Then it was off birding in the canoe with Guillermo, a very senior guide from the lodge, and his sidekick, as well as Andres. I’m not sure I remember being outnumbered by guides on any other birding trip.
This first afternoon, we paddled west of the lodge through a lagoon that gradually narrowed, until the trees met overhead in a sort of cathedral. We were looking for some important and interesting birds, such as the hoatzin. Remember the hoatzin? It’s the whole reason we were on this trip.
As you recall, the hoatzin is not only the only bird in its genus but also the only bird in its family! It has claws on its wings, eats and internally ferments leaves, and smells bad. Despite its many weirdnesses, it is doing pretty well in a wide range of Amazonian territory, which should offer some comfort to those of us who are differently normal. Its scientific name is Opisthocomus hoazin, of which the Opisthocomus means “long hair behind” (referring to its crest) which might be translated as “mullet”.Yet another curiosity about it is that its internal biological apparatus for fermenting leaves (it’s the smallest creature in the world that can do this) takes up so much chest cavity space that there’s not much left over for wing muscles, so it’s not much of a flier.
Another important bird in the Amazon, also because it’s the only representative of its family, is the Black-Capped Donacobius.
Its scientific name, Donacobius atricapilla, means “Black-haired reed-dweller”, which is both succinct and accurate. However, it was originally mistakenly thought to come from South Africa when it was first described in 1760 and was only given its own genus in 1831 by Swainson (the ornithologist with the colourful life story who emigrated to New Zealand). It then spent time as a thrush, mockingbird, then a wren during the 1980s until it was given its own family in 2018. Unlike the hoatzin, clearly an oddball from one’s first glimpse, it looks a bit like many birds.
There was also a Grey-Capped Flycatcher and a Lesser Kiskadee. More flycatchers in the same colour scheme we have met elsewhere.
As we paddled along Andres pointed out some bats clinging to a treetrunk stuck in the water. These are Proboscis Bats, and for some reason, they roost on trees and branches in the water in small groups of 5-10. They seemed quite common and rather endearing. They have an extensive range, from all of South America north of Paraguay to Mexico.
Now we ducked into the dark green tunnel created by trees meeting overhead, and making photography a challenge in the dim light. It was cooler and quieter, and we watched and listened hard for the birds. Fairly soon we found a Dot-Backed Antbird, which is small and cute and has dots on its back, and hopped out of a bush long enough for us to see it.
It’s Hylophylax punctulatus, meaning “spotted forest sentinel”, in the family Thamnophilidae, meaning “bush-lovers.” Quite.
We also found a Rufous-Tailed Flatbill, which is a kind of flycatcher. Its name translates as “red-butt triangle-bill”. You be the judge. There’s some fairly serious discussion about what kind of a flycatcher it is, with two camps disagreeing about which genus it should be in based on the molecular data.
Looking way high up into the canopy, we craned our necks to try to get a glimpse of the Blue-Crowned Trogon we could hear. It looked like it was doing the same for us!
We emerged into a beautiful evening, quickly picking up some birds outside the gloom of the mangroves.
No day in Ecuador can be complete without a tanager, and this one was visible from some way off. It was originally described by Spix of macaw fame, whom we have met before. Do you know that over 4% of the world’s birds are some form of tanager? It’s no wonder we keep running into them.
Another striking bird was the Red-Capped Cardinal. A red eye on a black cheek on a red head. It was originally described by Brisson, the same bloke who thought the Donacobius came from South Africa. Of course, it’s not a cardinal, it’s a tanager, but the name seems to have stuck, although it’s classified in Paroaria, the red-headed cardinal-tanagers, which are tanagers. I don’t know why they can’t let go of the cardinal bit. The name Paroaria comes from the Tupí name, Tije guacu paroara, meaning “small grey red and yellow bird”, and de Buffon picked out the “paroara” to retain a local name in the classification.
The White-Winged Swallows had become less active and were sitting on sticks in the lagoon.
Herons and kingfishers tend to stay still, which is a good thing when the light is failing, and we saw some of them.
The Striated Heron is the same bird we see in Singapore and is rather ubiquitous, like the Black-Capped Night Heron. Its range circles the globe, from South America through Australia, Japan and the Pacific to the Old World of Asia and Africa. In South America, the subspecies is the nominate, Butorides striata striata.
There was also an Anhinga drying its wings in the fading light.
The Anhinga is effectively the American Darter and is very similar to the African, Indian and Australian Darters. The only reason it’s called an Anhinga was to preserve the Tupí name ajíŋa, which means “Devil bird”, and this became the generic name, perhaps because the American version is the nominate subspecies. As you might expect, they’re closely related to cormorants.
It was now too dark to see much, so we looked up to see the birds flying overhead to their roosts.
Parrots! Macaws! So much to look forward to in the upcoming days at Sani. On our way back to the lodge we saw a huge moon rising behind the forest.
Grey red and yellow bird? Which one is Tiff referring to? I'd like to hear more about Hoatzins. Do they have a call? Courtship dance? Clamber about rather than fly? Relatively easy to see? What are their main predators? Or are they predator free on account of the smell? Amazons answer to the Koala?
The small grey red and yellow bird certainly is striking - wow :) And I love hoatzins - there's something sort of shambolic and ancient about them.