In March/April I made the long journey from Ecuador to the Middle East to join IBOC (International Bird Observatory Conference) in Israel. I was lucky enough to get one of the scholarships to participate in the conference for free and give a talk. It was an awesome opportunity to meet people from all over the world working in bird research and conservation, and it was a very inspirational experience for our...

Happy new year!!

It’s really been a while since I have updated this blog. Something that needs to change in 2019, so there’s one of my resolutions. 2018 was a busy year! Especially for me. It started in January and February with me sitting down and studying: Ecuador’s history, geography, politics, tourism regulations, National Park system etc etc. The tourism law had changed recently and now every guide in Ec...

It's been a while since we've seen one of our ground-cuckoos in the reserve. I think the last time that we actually had a sighting was last summer around an ant swarm down there in the forest when a volunteer video-taped an individual. Since we are not feeding the birds anymore, they have again become as elusive as anywhere else. Although we are still checking out army ant swarms when one comes by and we als...

It’s already been a month since we’ve had our last x-mas bird count for the season. And as it has become a tradition, the last count is the one in the reserve, which is part of the Los Bancos-Milpe count circle. As always, we had invited a few of our birding friends to help us and the night before the count some friends from Mindo, Quito and Guayaquil arrived. This year we had a group of sixteen participants...

Soon after the Bird Counts in Chical and Mindo we got invited to participate in another Bird Count, this time in Mashpi. It did not take long to agree that all of us were totally up for another count, so early in the morning of the 26th December we drove to Mashpi. On the road we met with three other participants and divided into two groups, one of which, including Wilo, took a route through the forest, whil...

On the count day in Mindo, we all left before sunrise and drove to the starting points of our routes. Jens, Mees and Roel went early to Bellavista (~2300 m), while Nicole, Wilo, Pablo, Maia and Silja took the route that went through the grounds of Sachatamia Lodge, which is at a lower elevation.

At Sachatamia Lodge we started...

After the recount in Chical we stayed for a night in Chilma Bajo and were able to go to a lek of the Red-ruffed Fruit Crow in the forest nearby. It can be difficult to see this species, and although we spent 2 hours searching in the afternoon, it wasn’t until early the next morning when we went back that we finally saw them. In Chilma Bajo we also saw a Bare-faced Ibis, which is a really unusual species to s...

Each year around Christmas, communities throughout Ecuador and other parts of the world take part in Christmas Bird Counts run by the Audubon Society. This way the bird species and populations in the area can be estimated and changes from year to year can be observed. Additionally, Bird Counts are a way to bring people together and raise awareness about the importance of conserving local bird species.

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The bird count in our reserve this year was rather a rainy one. Too bad, given that we even got supported by the local authorities this time. The current mayor likes to promote ecotourism in the area and therefore friends from the Milpe area had asked for support at the municipality of San Miguel de Los Bancos. Thus we were offered promotional materials for our count. A few days before the actual count we me...

The second X-mas Bird Count we participated in this year was the Mindo-Tandayapa Bird Count. As the compiler of the count data and member of the Mindo Naturalist Guides Asociation, I was also quite busy helping with the organization of the count this year. The CBC in Mindo is the biggest x-mas bird count event in Ecuador with 200-300 participants each year. So there is a lot to organize beforehand: count rou...