Fiery Topaz

I'd pretty much assumed we were going to see a Fiery Topaz.  I'm not sure why, since it turns out they don't come to flowers (or presumably feeders either, though lowland hummingbird set-ups mold so quickly that I haven't been to many lowland locations with feeders), and according to the book are actually pretty rare.

So we were pretty fortunate on the 2nd full day's afternoon boat trip on a couple of levels.  First of all, we stayed dry, which after the monsoon we'd experienced the first day was something just in and of itself.  Second, we found a Topaz.  Some people I think saw it pretty low down, but in glaring sun I wasn't able to pick it out until it flew up and teed up on a little branch.

 The tail was unique for me with the two long central feathers.

The iridescent green throat patch was reminiscent of some of the Thornbills we've seen on previous trips.

I held on the birds long enough that my shoulders started knotting up hoping to capture the bronzy brick red upperparts

And while I may or may not have really captured the look I was going for, it did get added to the peeBird list!

Sumaco hummers 1

It should not have taken me this long to get the next post up, but what can you say.  Life gets busy.

Wild Sumaco was at mid elevations which typically gives the highest hummingbird diversity and this location was no different.  The smaller hummingbirds had a lot of adornments, giving them a very alien feel.  This is Wire-crested Thorntail (a full breeding male will have head and tail plumes that are twice as long).

Here's a couple of the females arguing over the flower patch...

Booted Racket-tail is perhaps the hallmark species at Tandayapa, the famous lodge on the other side of the Andes we visited last year.  On the east side of the Andes the boots are orange rather than white.  It gave them a very different feel, and somewhat of a warmer one somehow by adding more color but less overall contrast

Here's the west slope version for comparison (I tried to link to the post that had these but can't search it up no matter what I do, maybe I forgot...)

an accidental umbrellabird

Have we established that there's LOTS of birds in Ecuador?  The book has about 1000, and obviously they're not evenly distributed; I focused my study on the 300-400 birds that eBird deemed most likely.  The problem with that strategy is that it assumes you know where you're going!  On the way from San Isidro to Wild Sumaco we visited Loreto Road, situated at an elevation band between the two main stops.  And with a different elevation come some different birds, some of them very specialized.  I didn't study Loreto Road.  There aren't very many places you can see Cliff Flycatcher in Ecuador, but this is one of them.  Most of us had to take a quick peek in the book on the way to this site to figure out what a Cliff Flycatcher even looked like.

A lot of the tyrants in South America have more colorful wings than our flycatchers do.  These birds soared when they would sally out, acting as much like martins as they did flycatchers.

We stopped at a little waterfall garden whose feeders attracted White-tailed Hillstar, another bird with a very narrow elevation band.

 

It'd be nice to just use the pic with no feeder, but given you can barely see the blue and the white without the bird being head-on we'll go with both. This was the only time we saw this species.

Admittedly I cheated on this Many-spotted Hummingbird.  It started with the same feeder as the Hillstar has, but was far enough from the feeder that I photoshopped in the flowers from the bush the feeder was in...

While some of the group waited by the feeders, given the so-so at best lighting some of us wandered back down to the waterfall where birds would filter through the treetops.  Violaceous Jays, some distant Aracaris, and a few tanagers appeared, and then Irene started calling out a bird, questioning if it was an Umbrellabird.

I honestly had no idea.  The umbrellabird that can (rarely, and never by me) be found in Central America has a dark eye and a dark bill (and an entirely different adornment of head feathers).  I thought this was some kind of fruitcrow I hadn't studied ... turns out umbrellabirds and fruitcrows are both weird cotingas and are relatively closely related!  Long story short, it's an Amazonian Umbrellabird.  I felt a little sheepish that I didn't know what an UMBRELLABIRD was, but what are you going to do.

Aside from take pictures of orchids (you're not supposed to know what those are)...

Lancebill!!

Green-fronted Lancebill is a bird that's been possible on a bunch (if not most) of the trips I've taken to Central and South America.  Afternoon at San Isidro however was the first time I've ever seen one.  The classic habitat is little snags along rapidly flowing streams or small waterfalls;  this one was away from the water though.

Really it ought to be named sword-billed and the sword-billed hummingbird (whose bill is double in length) ought to have the lance-billed moniker, but who's keeping score.  Honestly I expected the bill to be longer, but sword-billed probably spoiled me.  Some of the starthroats have similar length bills to the lancebill too. 

 The sun got up pretty well this afternoon (a nice respite from rain), but it did slow down activity a fair bit, but we did find some high tanagers.  This is my best pic of Saffron-crowned Tanager. 

We saw them a bunch of days but they tended to stay pretty high and move pretty fast.

Green Jays were common as well.

Finally a look at "San Isidro Owl", a bird intermediate between the Black-and-white Owl of Central American and Black-banded Owl of South America.

Some believe it to be a distinct species, others simply an intergrade.

last hummingbird pics

A few last birds from Angel de Paz, hummingbirds, what else?

Violet-tailed Sylph is not an easy bird to photograph.  The tail is so long it's hard to keep the bird in focus, or even in the frame for that matter.  And while this may not come as a surprise, hummingbirds frequently don't hold still very long.  There were reasonable opportunities at Angel's though.

I liked the little dashes of rain in this pic of Andean Emerald.

Brown Inca wasn't really ever common so it was nice for them to appear at close range

Same for Speckled Hummingbird (the sexes are alike) and look like female mountain-gems

I try not to use birds perched on feeders, but this was by far my best pic of this species so let's make an exception

Mashpi hummers - the rest

While Velvet-purple Coronet and Empress Brilliant were the rarest hummingbirds at Mashpi, they certainly weren't the only birds of interest.

Violet-tailed Sylph was a bird I worked most of the trip trying to get a shot that does the bird justice.  This one is good, but comes up short of really capturing the bird.

We only saw a couple White-whiskered Hermits, this was my best pic of this species

This is Purple-throated Woodstar, clearly appropriately named.

I'm not sure what this orange flower is, I photographed a Little Hermit at one in Costa Rica several years ago, but it's a nice contrast to the plainer Brown Inca.

Empress Brilliant

Another of the Choco endemics, Empress Brilliant was a fairly dramatic and unique species.

We didn't see a ton of males in decent light, but the glossy dark dark green upperparts, long heavy tail, and lime underparts made for an impressive bird.

Here's one with a Violet-purple Coronet.

It's easy to forget how long hummingbirds' tongues are...

Both the brilliants that I've encountered have a rufous wash to the malar in young males (Green-crowned Brilliant does as well).

This next bird is a female brilliant (note the whitish malar mark) and the speckled throat.  I'm pretty sure this bird's tail is long enough to be an Empress, though it might just be a Green-crowned perched at an odd angle.

Here's a for-sure Green-crowned female for comparison.

Velvet-purple Coronet

Another Choco endemic, this bird was our guide Jose's favorite hummingbird.  It was crazy-iridescent.

Some more views from different angles

I think the body iridescence is rivaled only by the Fiery-throateds in Costa Rica amongst hummingbirds I've encountered.

I think it's doing a trogon impersonation in this one.

I watched Chestnut-breasted Coronets perform a similar behavior on the other side of the Andes in the trip's first days.  It was no less cool to see a second time.  The first shot is one of my favorite of the trip.

With sexes similar in this genus hard to know whether this was courtship or more general squabbling.