My Blog

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. Since the last post (September 2022) I've completed two years of university, changed my specialization from biology and computer science to honours mathematics, and started doing research in the Irwin Zoolgy lab at UBC (more about that to come later). I also found time to do a little bit of travel including family trips to Spain, Mexico, Vancouver Island and New York City. I won't be posting the details of those trips here, but I have photos on my Facebook page.

What I hadn't had much time for however was fieldwork. After spending the better part of a year stuck behind a desk studying mathematics and working on the code for my research I decided I needed a break so I signed up for one month of volunteering for Birds Canada at the Long Point Bird Observatory. The LPBO is the oldest migration monitoring station in North America and people have been banding birds there for over 60 years, I had previously spent a week there in 2019 at the Doug Tarry Young Ornithologists Workshop learning how to band birds and I'd wanted to go back ever since.

At Long Point a standard day involved waking up at 5 am to open the mist nets and then banding birds for six hours before closing the nets and taking a break for lunch. In the afternoons, aside from the basic chores needed to keep the station running we were largely free to do what we pleased (which in my case was typically birding or napping depending on the weather). Most of my time at Long Point was spent at the Breakwater remote station where I lived in a small cabin alongside two other volunteers without electricity or running water. Living at a remote station was something I really missed after my time at Burntpoint and Akimiski since it gave me an opportunity to unplug from news and social media and live a life much simplified.

Other highlights from my time at Long Point include seeing the northern lights on May 10th during the solar storm, photographing Eastern Foxsnake and Spotted Turtle (two of my most wanted reptile species for the province), seeing my first stick insect in Ontario, and helping out with the Tree Swallow nestbox study (which involved handling a ton of newly hatched swallow chicks). I also met a lot of fantastic people during my time at Long Point, and though my time there was short (just four weeks) it's an experience I'll remember for the rest of my life.

One thing that I learned from Long Point was how great it could be to cut down on screentime so I will end the writeup here and let the photos do the rest of the talking!

After spending the month of June at the Burntpoint research camp in Polar Bear Provincial Park my coworkers and I returned to Moosonee. In Moosonee I had a few days off to relax before the second phase of my summer job started, goose banding. My first introduction to goose banding happened in the second week of July when we took the helicopter up the coast from Moosonee. Funnily enough the first good flock of geese we found was on a peninsula I was intimately familiar with just a couple kilometres away from my old James Bay Shorebird Project camp. It was just as I remembered it, even the ashes from the fire my coworker and I lit back in 2019 to keep warm while stranded by a high tide were still there!

The protocol we used for goose banding was fairly involved and required a crew of at least 5 people and a helicopter. The steps roughly consisted of:

1. Finding a flock of a hundred or so geese by flying along the coast in the helicopter
2. Circling the flock with the helicopter to get them to bunch together
3. Drop off several runners at a couple strategic locations to surround the geese
4. Land the helicopter at the closest suitable location and set up a makeshift pen while the runners get the geese under control
5. Herd the geese into the pen (the geese are molting so they are mostly flightless at this time of year)
6. Band the geese (this step consists of sexing the goose, measuring the head, and putting a metal band on the tarsus)

During this Moosonee portion of the banding we saw a lot of wildlife from the helicopter including several black bears, a few wolves, hundreds of pelicans, and even a flock of nine Mute Swans (very rare this far north)!

Akimiski Island

After a few days of banding geese along the lower James Bay Coast we got back on the Twin Otter (small airplane) and set off for Akimiski Island. Akimsiki is the large island located near Attawapiskat in James Bay. Despite being much closer to mainland Ontario, the island, along with all other islands in the bay are part of Nunavut!

The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) camp on Akimski Island was pretty similar to Burntpoint, but it had several notable improvements including a sturdier fence (to keep out the polar bears), a Starlink dish to provide wifi, and even an observation tower for birding (and keeping an eye out for the bears). During late summer Akimiski Island is typically home to hundreds of polar bears that come to wait for the return of the sea ice. This year had been colder than usual so there was still a good amount of sea ice left in the northern part of the bay so there weren't nearly as many bears as usual. Despite this, I still saw several dozen bears during my time living on the island including nearly daily sightings from camp. The most memorable of which was when a mother and cub caught a family of geese right in front of camp!

Aside from the polar bears we also saw a lynx, sharp-tailed grouse, and some rather remarkable plants including Elephant's Head. Elephant's Head is a fairly scarce species of lousewort found in western North America and the Hudson Bay lowlands, and a handful of sites in north eastern Quebec and Labrador. It's a species that I had been wanting to see for a while, and now I can attest to the fact that the flowers really do look like little elephants! I found a colony of these remarkable plants while retrieving some ARUs (autonomous recording units used to monitor birdsong for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas) along with a selection of orchids (pictured below).

I'll add some more photos of the crew in action once I track them down over the coming weeks, but here's what I have for now. Photo credits go to Tamara Tadashore.

Looking back on my time working for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources I can say that my job last summer was the coolest thing I've ever done. I don't know how I'm ever going to top this. The people, the work, the wildlife, and the scenery were all incredible and I will forever be grateful to have been lucky enough to have this experience. I will be hard at work on my studies (and writing a paper from my work in Ecuador) over the coming months, so I likely won't be posting much on the blog. Thank you for reading, and be sure to check in next summer to see where my work takes me next!

One of the main reasons why I chose to take a year of absence from UBC to volunteer in Ecuador was that I was unsuccsful in my search for a summer job in 2021. I had applied to dozens of opportunities and interviewed for several positions, but the only offer I received was for a Discovery Student position at Presqu'ile Provincial Park which I had to turn down due to the lack of staff housing. I felt as though I needed to do something big to make my resume stand out when applying to competitive fieldwork positions and taking a year to gain valuable experience at various research stations seemed like the perfect opportunity.

It was a bit of a risk considering I would fall a year behind in my studies, but in the end it paid off since I received an offer for my dream summer job; Student Wildlife Biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources, and Forestry (MNR). The job would take place in the low/sub-arctic of northern Ontario and southern Nunavut where I would assist with shorebird nest monitoring, goose banding, and many other projects.

Working at the Burntpoint MNR field station in Polar Bear Provincial Park had been a dream of mine for years. I applied twice previously and even interviewed for the position in 2021 but fell just short of getting the job. I had even dedicated a substantial amount of time doing things that I thought might improve my chances of getting the job including passing over paid positions to get more avian fieldwork experience, getting my firearms license (PAL), and teaching myself how to use R and QGIS! Naturally most of those things would come in handy in other positions but needless to say I was thrilled to get the job!

Burntpoint June 2022

On June 6 I met up with several of my coworkers in Peterborough and we drove up to Timmmins together. The next day we loaded all our things onto a Twin Otter (a small plane used by the MNR due to its ability to take off and land on very short airstrips) and set off to Burntpoint making a quick stop in Moosonee to refuel. I hadn't been back to Moosonee since my time on the James Bay Shorebird Project (2018-2019) and it felt great to be back in the far north. Unfortunately I had made the mistake of not eating anything for breakfast that day so I spent the second half of the flight with my head on my lap trying not to be sick. When I finally looked up we were already in the tundra and had begun our descent.

The Burntpoint research camp consists of four plywood buildings located on a heath ridge surrounded by wet tundra. The four buildings include a bunkhouse, a kitchen/eating area, a lab, and a washroom with two incinerating toilets. It was fairly basic, but compared to some of the other field camps I've been to it seemed like the height of luxury! They even had indoor lighting (powered by solar panels), an oven, a stove, and a freezer! During the last fieldwork position I had worked in Canada we were camping by the side of the highway without even a tarp.

The work at Burntpoint consisted of numerous projects including but not limited to:

• Shorebird nest monitoring
• Canada Goose nest monitoring
• Breeding bird atlas point counts
• Small mammal surveys
• Herbivore abundance transects (counting caribou/goose/ptarmigan poop)
• Permafrost sampling
• Recording plant phenology
• Incidental predator surveys

The job was hard work often involving long days in the field and late nights entering data. Due to my birding experience, I was put in charge of maintaining the daily bird and mammal lists, so every evening I would ask everyone how many of each species they had seen that day and write it down in the official log as well as what breeding evidence had been recorded. I was at Burntpoint during the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas (a province wide project to get data on how the bird populations are doing every 20 years) so I was also responsible for conducting point counts for the atlas.

My favourite part of the job was the shorebird nest monitoring. Whenever we were out in the field we'd always be keeping an eye out for potential shorebird nests. Usually this entailed keeping an eye on the adults when they seemed agitated, but sometimes we'd almost step on the nest and have a bird flush out from right underneath our feet. Once we located a nest, we'd take measurements of the eggs and set up a trail camera to record potential predation events. We'd then stop by the nest every few days to see how the eggs were doing. A lot of the time the nest would be predated by one of the many nest predators around (gulls, jaegers, foxes, skunks, etc.), but occasionally we'd get to see the newborn chicks right after they hatched! Shorebird chicks don't stay in the nest for very long (sometimes just a day or two) so finding them requires a lot of luck since once they're out of the nest they're nearly impossible to see in the grass!

Highlights

Some of the highlights from my time at Burnpoint include:

• Finding 2.5 new birds for the official checklist; Yellow-headed Blackbird, Iceland Gull, and a meadowlark sp. (the half bird with which I shared the finding credit with a coworker)
• Getting to see the newly hatched chicks of a Hudsonian Godwit nest I found and monitored for weeks
• Seeing a herd of over a thousand caribou walk by camp and then get chased by a black bear
• Seeing Willow Ptarmigan, Smith's Longspurs, Parasitic Jaegers, Rough-legged Hawks and Golden Eagles on a regular basis
• Seeing a wolf walk by camp
• A fox catching dozens of voles in front of camp to feed her adorable kit
• Getting the chance to photograph many rare/range-restricted species of plants, butterflies, and dragonflies
• Seeing the Strawberry Supermoon rise over the tundra

Looking back on my year in Ecuador I am astonished by how lucky I was. Not only did (nearly) all of my volunteer experiences work out perfectly, but I also had incredible wildlife encounters beyond my wildest expectations.

In numbers

During my time in Ecuador I saw 848 species of which 827 were new for me. The first new bird I saw in Ecuador was a Rufous-collared Sparrow outside my first hostel window in Quito and the last was a Rusty Flowerpiercer as I explored the area around my last hostel (quite close to the first one) on my last day before heading to the airport. #100 was a Rufous Motmot at Maquipucuna, #200 a Club-winged Manakin at Maquipucuna, #300 a Blue-whiskered Tanager at Tesoro Escondido, #400 a Red-crested Cotinga in Quito, #500 a Coppery-chested Jacamar at Narupayaku, #600 an Agami Heron in Cuyabeno, #700 a Gould's Jewelfront at Reserva Narupa, and #800 a Limpkin at Laguna Paikawe.

Clean sweeps

There are 1,656 species of birds in Ecuador and it is impossible to see them all, but it is possible to see all the occurring members of certain subgroups. Some groups that I got clean sweeps of include Hawk-Eagles (Ornate, Black, Black-and-white, and Black-and-chestnut), Kingfishers (Ringed, Green, Amazon, Green-and-Rufous, and American Pygmy), Quails (all 4 Wood-Quails + Tawny-faced), Toucans (2 Emerald-Toucanets, 3 Mountain-Toucans, 5 Aracaris, 2 Toucanets, and 4 Toucans), and Campephilus woodpeckers (Powerful, Crimson-bellied, Red-necked, Crimson-crested, and Guayaquil).

Highlights

It's too hard to pick a top 10 overall so I will break it down into top 10 by region.

Western Lowlands

• Great Green Macaw
• Long-wattled Umbrellabird
• Purple Quail Dove
• Ocellated Antbird
• Black-tipped Cotinga
• Scarlet-and-white Tanager
• Great jacamar
• King Vulture
• Ornate Hawk-Eagle
• Blue-whiskered Tanager

Western Mountains

• Andean Cock-of-the-rock
• Club-winged Manakin
• Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan
• Dark-backed Wood-Quail
• Giant Antpitta
• Ochre-bellied Antpitta
• Black-and-white Owl
• Torrent Duck
• Velvet-Purple Coronet
• Tiny Hawk

High Andes

• Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe
• Andean Ibis
• Sword-billed Hummingbird
• Giant Conebill
• Rainbow-bearded Thornbill
• Crescent-faced Antpitta
• Grey-breasted Mountain-Toucan
• Andean Condor
• Giant Hummingbird
• Masked Mountain Tanager

East Slope

• Greater Scythebill
• Black-and-chestnut Eagle
• Orange-breasted Falcon
• Black-billed Mountain-Toucan
• Lazuline Sabrewing
• Fiery-throated Fruiteater
• White-rimmed Brushfinch
• Gould's Jewelfront
• Wire-crested Thorntail
• Andean Potoo

The Amazon

• Pied Lapwing
• Rufous-headed Woodpecker
• Plum-throated Cotinga
• Boat-billed Heron
• Sunbittern
• Red-necked Woodpecker
• American Pygmy Kingfisher
• Long-billed Woodcreeper
• Capped Heron
• Black-collared Hawk

Though I was mainly focused on the birds, I also saw many furry critters. Some mammals that deserve a shoutout include:

• Spectacled Bear
• Ecuadorian Capuchin
• Kinkajou
• Nine-banded Armadillo
• Brown-headed Spider-Monkey
• Mountain Tapir
• Amazon Pink River Dolphin
• Capybara
• Tayra
• Pygmy Marmoset

Though it may look as though I spent the last year just looking for birds, I also got a significant amount of serious work done. I learned many techniques for monitoring wildlife populations and got firsthand experience in the ecotourism industry. Whenever I get a chance over the coming months I will be hard at work on turning my research with the Sustainable Roots Foundation into a research paper that I plan on submitting to a refereed journal. Stay tuned for further updates!

There is something special about foothill rainforest. Because of its location on the edge of both the lowlands and the mountains it contains the highest bird diversity, and the unique climate leads to a high rate of endemism. One of the places in Ecuador that I most wanted to visit was a reserve called Rio Bigal located in the Amazonian foothills of the Orellana province. Rio Bigal had gotten a reputation as one of the best places to go birding in Ecuador due to it being home to some extremely difficult to see species such as Pink-throated Brilliant, Red-winged Wood-Rail and Salvin's Curassow. I had originally intended on visiting the reserve to volunteer for one week in January, but they had cancelled last minute since they were in the process of acquiring new land and were too busy to take on volunteers. Luckily they were able to fit me in in the first week of May right before I returned home to Toronto.

During my week at Rio Bigal I spent most of my time birding by myself since the owner had suggested I try to get photos of some of the numerous bird species in the reserve for them to use in an upcoming field guide. Every day I would leave the research station at sunrise and spend the entire day in the jungle exploring the trail network. Sometimes after dinner I would join the other volunteers (a group from France) on their nocturnal amphibian surveys. The highlights of my time at Bigal were Red-necked Woodpecker, Epaulet Oriole, and a (heard only) Red-winged Wood-Rail. Bird activity was quite low and the birds that I was able to find tended to stay hidden making photography extremely difficult (especially in the low light of the rainforest understory). Birding at Bigal was the hardest birding I've ever done and I think I'll have to come back some day (and bring a guide with me) to see all the stuff I missed!

Aside from the birds I also saw an assortment of other wildlife including lots of monkeys and frogs!

During my time at the Sustainable Roots Foundation I did many excursions (both day trips and the occasional weekend) to various locations in the Napo province in search of birds. Since I was given Fridays and Saturdays off I would usually do one excursion per week and then use the other day to go into town and by groceries.

Guacamayos Ridge

After my unsuccesful trip to Guacamayos with Will I was determined to return and find the specialty species (Peruvian Antpitta and Greater Scythebill). For the first month I spent volunteering at Sustainable Roots I visited the ridge every weekend (including a visit with Amit and Jaee who I met back in December and had taken my suggestion and were staying at Cabanas Tamiaju). Each time I went I found interesting birds including Plushcaps, Bicolored Antvireo, Peruvian Antpitta and Swallow-tailed Kite (very rare for that elevation) but still the Greater Scythebill eluded me. It took 6 visits to the ridge before I finally caught up with the scythebill! That's the longest I've ever spent looking for one bird, but it was all worth it in the end as the Greater Scythebill is a truly impressive specimen. Greater Scythebills are very rare and found only in the upper subtropical forest of the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They are about the size of a Blue Jay and have a spectacular long decurved bill that they use to probe for insects as they creep up the sides of trees.

Loreto Road

After I finally saw the Greater Scythebill at Guacamayos Ridge I shifted my focus to the foothill specialties found along the base of the Andes. I concentrated my efforts on a little used trail off of the highway that I could easily access by bus and didn't need to pay any entrance fees for. I'm not sure who made the trail but it seemed to be used mainly for lumber extraction. Despite this there was still some old growth forest and the birding was very productive. Along the trail I found Military Macaws, Ecuadorian Piedtail, Blue-rumped Manakin, White-crowned Manakin, Fiery-throated Fruiteater, Andean Cock-of-the-rock, Paradise Tanager, Rufous-breasted Wood-Quail, Golden-collared Toucanet, Foothill Schiffornis, Chestnut-crowned Gnateater, and even Lazuline Sabrewing! Lazuline Sabrewing is a very rare species of hummingbird that is only known to occur regularly at one site in Ecuador and had never been reported on this trail before. While exploring the area along the highway near the trail I also found Rufous-tailed Tyrant, Blackish Nightjar, and a pair of Orange-breasted Falcons!

Papallacta

In mid-March I decided to make my first overnight excursion from the volunteer house since I arrived at the end of January. My destination was Papallacta to try again for Crescent-faced Antpitta, Rainbow-bearded Thornbill, Grey-breasted Mountain-Toucan, Mountain Avocetbill and a few others. I was succesful on all of my main targets and got some additional good birds such as Band-winged Nightjar, Grey-hooded Bush Tanage, and Andean Condor! The highlands near Papallacta are my favourite place in Ecuador so it was wonderful to be back there and have a chance to hike through the Paramo again. I had spectacular looks at the Avocetbill and the Mountain-Toucan near Guango Lodge, both of which are quite difficult species to find in Ecuador.

Mindo

Despite having spent almost half a year traveling around Ecuador by the end of March 2022 I still hadn't been to Refugio Paz de Las Aves which is generally considered a must for any birding trip to the country. Paz de Las Aves is famous the assortment of rare and difficult to see birds that the owner Angel Paz has trained to come out and eat worms especially the five species of antpitta. Aside from the antpittas Angel has also trained a Dark-backed Wood-Quail and a Rufous-breasted Antthrush, and there is an Andean Cock-of-the-rock Lek on the property. Toni had also never been to Angel Paz so we went together and split the costs of a hotel room (which only ended up be $5 per person per night).

After seeing the specialty species at Paz de Las Aves we went to the nearby Balcon Tumpiki where we saw Velvet-purple Coronet, Empress Brilliant, Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan, Black-chinned Mountain Tanager, and Blue-capped Tanager at the feeders.

Laguna Paikawe

In April I was nearing the end of my time in Ecuador so I decided to make a list of birds that I wanted to see before I left and Rufous-headed Woodpecker was near the top of that list. After searching on eBird I found several reports of the species near a small reserve in the lowlands called Laguna Paikawe. I contacted one of the people who had reported the species and he told me that they weren't too difficult to find so I packed my weekend bag and headed off to the Laguna Paikawe B&B. There was no remaining primary rainforest in the area around the lagoon (just outside of Puerto Misahualli), but even despite this I still had good luck with several sightings of Rufous-headed Woodpecker, Casqued Cacique, Masked Crimson Tanager, Crowned Slaty Flycatcher, and Cream-coloured Woodpecker. I even heard Amazonian Motmot, Great Potoo, Grey-cowled Wood-Rai, and Black-banded Crake. I also saw my 800th species for Ecuador (Limpkin) and lots of monkeys!

Return to Antisana

Even after spending half a year in the Ecuadorian highlands there were two must see Ecuadorian Andean birds that I still needed to find, the Andean Ibis and the Silvery Grebe. Upon mentioning this to Toni (my boss at the Sustainable Roots foundation) she suggested that we do a trip together to Antisana and that she could do the driving if I paid for the rental (I didn't have my license yet). We set out to Quito by bus at about 4 am to get there as early as possible. Unfortunately once we got to the car rental place at the Quito airport we discovered that they do not rent cars for single day excursions (despite the fact that I had made a reservation online) and nobody was at the desk. Determined to get to Antisana by any means necessary we caught a bus to the closest town to Antisana we could get to and then found a taxi driver who was willing to drive us around for the day. All in all we saw some good birds (Andean Ibis, Silvery Grebe, and Paramo Pipit were all lifers for me), got some bad photos, and had a great time in the highlands.

Looking back on my year in Ecuador, I think the single thing I miss the most is the freedom of being able to take these day/weekend trips to new and exciting places. Hostels generally cost less than $20 a night and meals are under $3 if you avoid the fancy places so I was able to travel around very cheaply. Because of the steep elevation gradient on the east slope of The Andes I could take the bus for an hour or two and be in wildly different habitats with very little overlap in the bird species. None of this is possible in Canada. From where I am writing this (Vancouver, BC) it simply isn't possible for me to do a weekend birding trip to add some species to my life list since I can't get anywhere that different by public transit and a cheap hotel room would set me back hundreds of dollars.

Volunteering at Sustainable Roots

After arriving at the Sustainable Roots Foundation volunteer house (just down the road from Cabanas Tamiaju which my boss Toni also runs), the first thing I did was quarantine for a week because I had begun to show some symptoms of Covid-19. I had a fairly mild case so I was able to use that time to start building my website, but I was unable to start my work with Toni. After a week I was feeling better and eager to start my work.

The first thing I did was discuss with Toni what potential projects I could work on. We discussed many potential ideas, but the most feasible one was to spend my time conducting a bird inventory of the newly purchased reserve land the foundation owned across the street from the volunteer house. The land in question had been owned by Toni's husband Eladio's family for generations. It had been used for lumber harvesting and part of it was formerly a pasture, but it had not been used in some 20-30 years so the forest had time to regenerate into a beautiful secondary cloud forest with some old growth remaining.

The main barrier to conducting bird surveys on the reserve was that I simply did not have enough familiarity with the birds of the region. While I could recognize the birds by sight I knew scarcely any of them by call and in the dense cloud forest the birds are heard far more often than they are seen. I clearly had my work cut out for me and I made hundreds of audio flash cards using recordings from Xeno-Canto so that I could study up on the birds of the region.

It took weeks of studying both from flash cards and going into the forest every day before I was comfortable with the birds of the region. During that time I also worked on some other projects including a survey of the dragonflies and damselflies of the reserve.

Over the course of my stay at the Sustainable Roots I recorded 10 species of dragonflies and damselflies and over 50 species of butterflies. Included in this list were species that hadn't been found since their discovery and a good number that were endemic to the Napo province.

Aside from my projects on the reserve I also helped out with some more community-oriented projects including a tree-planting initiative. In the nearby town of San Francisco de Borja a local group of conservation-minded people decided to do something about the rampant deforestation they saw in the Quijos valley. Several years later they are a well-oiled machine capable of planting thousands of trees a year. Over the years they've developed many important techniques and now they travel around Ecuador teaching other tree-planting groups

Their technique involves going to a nearby Oilbird cave and harvesting seeds from the floor of the cave since the seeds often require passing through the digestive tract of an Oilbird before germinating. The seeds are then planted in a sheltered lot in Borja in a mixture of soil that includes fertile volcanic soil from the highlands, sand for increased drainage, and added calcium, potassium and phosphorous. Once the trees grow to a size when they're safe to transport they are transferred to bags and then driven to their final destination which is typically a former pasture that the owner has decided to reforest in the hopes of attracting birds. They reached this through a long process of trial and error and now their succes rate is incredible!

By the end of April I had recorded a total of 126 species of birds along the 4 km trail at the reserve. Of these 126 species, 5 are at risk (Wattled Guan, Lemon-browed Flycatcher, White-capped Tanager, Peruvian Antpitta, and Bicolored Antvireo). The latter two species are so rare that they have been recorded at only half a dozen or so sites in the country. I also recorded some vagrants including what I believe to be the highest elevation record of Guira Tanager (usually a lowland species). Not only are these findings important for understanding the distributions, they are also an economic boon for the Sustainable Roots Foundation since they will attract birders who wish to see some of these specialty species. Just days after I reported the Bicolored Antvireos on eBird Toni received an email from a guide inquiring about taking his tour groups to the reserve. The money brought in from these birds will hopefully allow the reserve to persist through the years and even grow to incorporate more of the surrounding forests. The Sustainable Roots Foundation is also a grassroots organization that strives to provide employment opportunities for locals and to educate the children on the importance of conservation, so this reserve will serve as a cornerstone for those iniatives as well.

During my time at Sustainable Roots I got to witness what community driven sustainable conservation looks like. All along the Quijos and Cosanga valleys there are enterprising locals who have set up ecolodges and small bird reserves. The owners work together to coordinate reforestation efforts and increase tourism to the region. While the area is surrounded by 3 beautiful (and very large) national parks, these parks are not well-equipped for visitors and don't provide many employment opportunities so the small reserves and ecolodges are an equally vital part of the picture. Conservation doesn't have to be a top down endeavour through international NGOs and governments, it can also be a local initiative and the local iniatives are more sustainable in the long run since they're more effective at convincing people that these places are worth protecting.

The tree-planting in Borja was an example of the Ecuadorian "minga", when the community comes together to work on a shared project that will benefit everyone. While talking to Sandra, the leader of the Borja tree-planting minga, she said something that really resonated with me. I don't recall the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of "if you see a problem in the world go out and do something, because empty talk does nothing". Sandra saw what deforestation was doing to her community and decided to act and she has been extraordinarily succesful to that effect. Sandra also finds time to be a professional bird guide and a representative for the We Chariity Foundation (among other things), certainly a force to be reckoned with!

This will be a short post without any photos (I didn't take any good ones during this time period). I'm just including this so that I have a complete record of my time in Ecuador, feel free to skip on to the more interesting posts.

Return to civilization

I was dropped off in Shushufindi after my Amazon tour (despite the tour supposedly ending in Coca which is 75 km away). It took 2 buses to get to Coca, but luckily the Ecuadorian couple who were in my tour group live there so I could just follow them. I had booked a hostel in Coca for 2 nights so that I could briefly relax and try to figure out what to do next. I had no concrete plans at this stage of my trip but I was considering a few options, namely returning to Maquipucuna, volunteering at a research station in the Amazonian foothills, or joining my friend Will and volunteering at a new reserve in the Amazonian lowlands. Unfortunately my plans with the research station fell through since they weren't currently accepting volunteers and Will backed out of the volunteering plan (the place was new and looked a little suspect). Then Will suggested I meet up with him at Cabanas Tamiaju (a small lodge on the East slope) and we could go birding together for a few days.

I jumped at that opportunity since I was getting tired of solo travel and left my hostel a day early to meet up with Will. After a long bus journey and about half an hour of wandering around on the side of the highway in the dark, I finally arrived at the cabins where I was greeted by the owner's very large and rather intimidating looking dog Dwayne (after Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson). Thankfully Dwayne was all bark and no bite and he alerted the owner to my arrival. The owner then showed me to the cabin that I would be sharing with Will for the next 3 nights. I had never met Will before (all our prior contact had been through Facebook), but like me he was a young birder from Ontario and he had been travelling around Ecuador for a few weeks. Funnily enough the owner of Cabanas Tamiaju, Toni Walters, was someone who I had met before. She and I had shared a ride in the back of a pickup truck on the way to our respective survey spots during the Christmas Bird Count!

Birding with Will

My first day birding with Will was spent at Guacamayos Ridge. This was a spot that I really wanted to visit to have a chance at finding the specialty species of the ridge (Greater Scythebill and Peruvian Antpiitta among others), but had never had the chance to despite passing by it on several occasions in December. We didn't have much luck with the Guacamayos specialties, but I was still happy to get my lifer Hooded Mountain-Tanager, Grass-green Tanager, and Slate-crowned Antpitta. We then headed down to San Jorge de Guacamayos where I had done the Christmas Bird Count and where I had promised Will that Vermillion and Rufous-crested Tanagers would be easy to find. Naturally we saw neither of those species or much else as the reserve proved to be nearly devoid of birds.

The next day Will and I went down to Wayra reserve where we had more luck with the birds and we each saw a good number of species we hadn't seen before. For me the highlights were Wire-crested Thorntail, Black-throated Brilliant, Long-billed Starthroat and Red-crested Finch.

On our third and final day at Tamiaju we were joined by Toni and her husband Eladio to do a seldom-hiked trail near Guacamayos Ridge in search of White-rimmed Brushfinch. White-rimmed Brushfinch are one of the rarest birds in Ecuador that very few people get to see (only 100 observations of the species on eBird). After a short but arduous hike up the very steep slope we reached the spot where Will had been told the Brushfinches frequented. After several attempts at playing a recording of the Brushfinch song we finally got a response and got a fleeting glimpse of a small group of the birds. Apart from Toni none of us really got a satisfactory look at them (all I saw was a flash of a chestnut cap on a dark bird), but the birds were gone and we had to get back to the cabins so we made our way back down the mountain to the highway where we caught a bus back to Tamiaju. Before Will and I left for Quito Toni agreed to take me on as a volunteer at her conservation-focused foundation Sustainable Roots. I didn't get many details from her, but told her I'd be back in a week after I knocked off a few of my remaining target species in Western Ecuador.

Return to El Occidente

After WIll and I said our goodbyes to Toni, Eladio, and their 6 dogs (Dwayne, Panchi, Nala, Pancho, Legend, and Zorro) we made our way to Quito from where Will head to Southern Ecuador and I would make my way to Western Ecuador to look for the Banded Ground-Cuckoo that had recently been seen at Reserva San Jorge de Milpe. Before we went our separate ways we spent one last day birding together. I had poured over eBird records and satellite imagery and identified the a quiet road in the Quito exurb Tababela as having good potential for the inter-Andean specialty species we were after and it did not disappoint. Over the course of the morning I added 11 species to my Ecuador list including Streaked Saltator, Scrub Tanager, Saffron an Grassland Yellow Finches, and Harris's Hawk! This was a quiet dusty road and we were probably the first foreign birders to visit, and yet the birding was better than anywhere else I've been in the Quito area! Here's the ebird checklist that shows what we saw and where.

After parting ways with Will I headed to Mindo. Mindo is probably the most famous birding destination in Ecuador if not in all of South America, and yet I hadn't been before even though I had spent months in Western Ecuador. Despite being in this supposed mecca for birding I had no plans to explore the town and was only interested in the holy grail of Ecuadorian birding, the Banded Ground-Cuckoo. Banded Ground-Cuckoos are an extremely rare and seldom encountered species of the Chocoan rainforest, but one had been coming to a moth sheet in the early morning to eat insects at the light at the San Jorge de Milpe reserve. After making my way to the reserve at 5 am and paying the exorbitant $60 entrance fee (the owner knows he can charge whatever he wants since people are willing to fly halfway across the world just to see this bird) I waited patiently at the moth sheet for the cuckoo to show up. To make a long story short it didn't and I returned to Tamiaju somewhat disappointed.

Despite not seeing the cuckoo I do not regret trying for it. I knew the bird was unreliable and almost nothing when it comes to nature viewing is guaranteed. I was not the only one to be disappointed by the cuckoo as I showed up near the beginning of a 2 week long dry spell. I am however a little annoyed at the reserve owner's extortionate pricing. $60 is a ridiculous price to pay for a reserve entrance fee in a country where the norm is $5-15. The San Jorge de Milpe reserve was beautiful and had probably the nicest trail network of any privately owned reserve I've been to but it still fell short of justifying the expense when ordinarily that would cover a whole weekend of travel, lodging, and food costs for me. It's great when locals are able to profit off of conservation, but not so much when they get greedy. Eco-tourism is a big industry in Ecuador with many small competing reserves and sooner or later someone else will figure out how to train a Ground-Cuckoo and be able to undercut San Jorge.

The Amazon

I returned to Ecuador on January 12th after spending 2.5 weeks at home in Toronto. First up on my itinerary was an 8 day camping trip deep in The Amazon. The Amazon makes up over half of the world's remaining rainforest and houses at least 10% of the world's known biodiversity, so no trip to Ecuador is really complete without a visit. I had booked a tour with Kichwa Lodge to have a local guide take me on a small group tour out to the Peruvian border by motorized canoe.

I met up with my guide Edgar and the two other people on my tour (an Ecuadorian couple who were also interested in photographing Amazonian wildlife) in Shushufindi. I immediately noticed a difference in the cities in the Amazon, aside from being much hotter than the other parts of Ecuador the Amazonian cities are in worse shape and felt less safe. I've been told that this is due to the oil industry attracting a rougher crowd, and the drugs coming in to the country from Peru and Colombia. Despite all of this I never felt as though I were in any sort of danger, but I wouldn't want to stay there for very long.

After leaving Shushufindi we drove to the town of Tierras Orientales where we waited for our boats to arrive. After about an hour (during which I saw my first Red-bellied Macaws and Bare-faced Ibis) our boats arrived along with our chef Darwin and our boat operator Byron. Edgar, Byron, and Darwin were all locals from the Kichwa community and had grown up in or around Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve (where the tour was taking place).

On our first night we stayed at the nice but rustic Kichwa Lodge located on the bank of a small river 50 km into the reserve. The next day we set off down the Rio Aguarico to our next stop, the Peruvian border. As the crow flies the Peruvian border is only about 75 km from Kichwa Lodge, but along the winding Rio Aguarico it is without a doubt much further so it was a long trek by motorized canoe. We put up our tents at a ranger station that night and then set out for our final destination, a campsite on the Peruvian side the next day. After spending several days exploring the wetlands along the border (including a visit to a local community) we set off back to cibilization via Kichwa Lodge.

The birds of Cuyabeno

Needless to say the birding in The Amazon was spectacular. Edgar was not a birder (though he had keen eyes which certainly helped) so I was mainly on my own to identify what we were seeing. We were also there in the dry season, which made it much harder to find songbirds (the most diverse group) but easier to spot raptors and water birds. By the end of the trip I had seen a respectable, but not particularly impressive 164 species of bird. Not nearly as many as the dedicated birding trips get, but included some highlights that very few people get to see in Ecuador.

Since we were straddling the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border for most of the trip I had the opportunity to see several species of birds that only barely make it into Ecuador. These include Black-collared Hawk, Festive Parrot, Band-tailed Nighthawk, and Black-chinned Antbird. Apart from these range-restricted (in Ecuador) specialties I also got to see 10 species of heron (including Agami, Capped, and Boat-billed), all 5 Ecuadorian kingfishers (including the miniscule American Pygmy Kingfisher which is the size of a chickadee), all 6 toucans, 3 species of cotinga (including a stunning male Plum-throated Cotinga and an Amazonian Umbrellabird), 4 species of Macaw, Long-billed Woodcreeper, Sunbittern, Sungrebe, Wattled Jacana, Great Black Hawk, and my personal favourite, Pied Lapwing!

Mammals of Cuyabeno

Aside from the birds we also saw many spectacular mammals in the Amazon. The highlight was the Pink River Dolphins (aka Boto) which we had close encounters with almost every day! We also saw many monkeys including Colombian Howler Monkey, Capuchins, Squirrel Monkeys (with babies!), and Sakis. My only previous experience with Sakis had been the ones at the Toronto Zoo which spend most of the day asleep in their box so I was shocked to find out how agile these monkeys can be in the wild. In fact, their local name translates to "fast monkey"! Other sightings include a Tayra (a large arboreal mustelid related to the Wolverine), Capybaras, and on the very last day a Pygmy Marmoset I found while exploring the trail behind the lodge by myself in the early morning before we headed out. Pygmy Marmosets are the smallest monkeys in the world (they're about the same size as an Eastern Chipmunk) and feeds mainly on tree gum!

Cuyabeno is a spectacular place and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Ecuador. The wildlife is amazing and visiting is a fraction of the cost of the neighbouring Yasuni National Park. Part of what makes Cuyabeno so special is that the reserve is part of a joint project between Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. All three countries have large national parks/reserves along their shared border and work together to protect the wildlife found within them. What makes this all the more impressive is that Ecuador and Peru were involved in the longest running border dispute in the Americas which lasted from 1821 to 1998 and included four seperate periods of active war (including the Cenepa war in 1995) and many more "military confrontations" over the years. Despite all this, where I was on the border I did not see a single military personnel and locals were free to cross back and forth (all that separates the two countries is a 40 m wide river). Though the long history of conflict is distressing this provides some hope for the future of international conservation efforts, since if Ecuador and Peru can learn to get along in the name of conserving their shared natural resources surely other countries are capable of following suit.

The High Andes

After leaving Tesoro Escondido I returned to Quito to stay in a hostel for a couple nights before continuing east. On the second day I met up with Carlos, a Quito local wildlife photographer who had generously offered to take me with him to Reserva Antisana to photograph Andean Condors. We were joined by his friends Amit and Jaee, Carlos's friends who were in Quito for a year to teach at an international school.

We spent the morning at Antisana where we lucked out and saw 12 Andean Condors! Andean Condors are the largest birds of prey in the world with a spectacular 3 m wingspan. Apart from condors we also saw Andean Lapwing, Carunculated Caracara, Cinereous Harrier, Tawny Antpitta, and Ecuadorian Hillstar.

We then went to the nearby Tambo Condor Restaurant to have lunch and look for the Giant Hummingbirds that frequent the feeders there. Giant Hummingbirds are the largest hummingbirds in the world at approximately 20 cm long (about the same size as a House Sparrow). Neither the lunch nor the hummingbirds did disappoint. Watching the world's largest hummingbird while eating delicious trucha al ajillo (trout with garlic sauce, a specialty of the High Andes) is an experience I won't soon forget.

It would be remiss of me not to give a shoutout to Carlos's new ecotourism company Avis Equatoralis (he did show me around Antisana for free after all). Carlos is an excellent guide with superb local knowledge of the area around Quito. Unlike many of the guides I met in Ecuador, Carlos speaks near fluent English which is a skill that can be hard to come by in Ecuador.

Papallacta

After spending most of the day with Carlos, Amit, and Jaee I took a taxi to the town of Papallacta about an hour and a half from Quito up in the mountains. Papallacta is best known for its hot springs, but I had my sights set on the birds. I spent the next two days exploring the area area around the town looking for birds above the tree line. The highlights of my time there were hiking up to the radio towers were I found 7 Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, and almost walking into a Mountain Tapir on the road just outside of town. Mountain Tapir are endangered and very seldom encountered in the wild so I was in shock to see one standing less than 10 m away from me in the middle of the road!

Apart from those two highliights I also encountered Blue-mantled Thornbill, Red-rumped Bush-Tyrant, Purple-backed Thornbill, Rufous-breasted Chat-Tyrant, Masked Mountain-Tanager, and Black-backed Bush-Tanager. The Cayambe-Coca National Park located just outside of Papallacta is spectacular and easily the best hiking I did in Ecuador.

Yanayacu Biological Station

By December I was getting tired of being on the road, but I still had one more volunteer commitment before coming home for the holidays. I arrived at the deserted Yanayacu Biological Station, a small research station on the east slope of The Andes around midday on December 1st where I had to wait two hours for Jose the manager to show up which proved to be typical of him. I had made the decision to volunteer at Yanayacu after seeing descriptions on their website of volunteers assisting with research projects but when I got there it turned out that there were no ongoing projects and I was given hardly anything to do other than a few menial manual labour projects during my 2.5 weeks there.

It was obvious that Jose saw volunteers as little more than a paycheck (this was the most expensive place I stayed at $25 a night) and I hardly ever saw him (I was the only person staying at the station). One day he left for town saying he was going to get some paint for me to finish painting the station with and he would be back in a couple hours. I didn't hear from him for 3 days. Fortunately I was exaughsted from all the traveling so I was happy to take advantage of the station wifi and library and take it easy for a couple weeks. I did see some neat birds during my time there, however, including Andean Potoo, Black-billed Mountain-Toucan, and Rufous-banded Owl, and I even came across another Mountain Tapir!

The highlight of my time at Yanayacu was my very last day when I participated in the Cosanga Christmas Bird Count. The Christmas Bird Count is an annual event where birders survey bird populations across the world, andd the Cosanga count circle is famous for having the highest bird diversity! To my surprise Jose put me in the crew surveying the San Jorge de Guacamayos Reserve since he thought the crew of novice birders would benefit from my birding experience. Between my lack of knowledge of the birds there and the constant downpour the day was a bit of a flop, but I still had a good time and saw some new birds including Vermillion Tanager, Yellow-throated Tanager, Rufous-crested Tanager, and Greenish Puffleg.

After the count Jose then drove me to the airport (naturally he waited until we got there to inform me that it would cost $110). On our way back just as the sun was setting behind the mountains an Andean Motmot flew across the road in front of our car. Jose missed it since he was too busy texting which was a little concerning as we drove along the narrow mountain highway, but I was also excited to be able to say that the last bird I saw in Ecuador was a lifer!

I have some mixed feelings about my time at Yanayacu. I had a pretty good time there, the station was beautiful, I got to relax, the mothing was great (more about that here) and Jose even took me on a couple of day trips to go birding at a couple of nearby spots (including taking me to see a nest of the endangered Black-and-chestnut Eagle), but I can't help but feel as though I were cheated out of a volunteer experience. Taking on volunteers is the main way many of these research stations generate income, but it's supposed to be a reciprocal affair. In exchange for paying a small (by Canadian standards) daily fee to cover station upkeep, the volunteer is supposed to gain valuable experience and this was lacking at Yanayacu. At every other place I volunteered I felt as though I was both contributing something to conservation/research efforts and getting something out of it and neither of these things were true for Yanayacu. On the other hand, every dollar I spent goes directly to the community and supporting conservation/research efforts so I can hardly be too upset especially when I essentially got a 2.5 week vacation in the cloud forest for a fraction of what some people spend in a weekend at the neighbouring San Isidro birding lodge.

On the road again

I left Maquipucuna in mid November after spending 7 amazing weeks volunteering there (read more about that here). The next reserve were I was to volunteer was Reserva Tesoro Escondido in the Choco lowlands (the Choco is a rainforest that once covered most of western Colombia and Ecuador). However, I had just received a message from them moving my travel date back a day so now I had 2 full days to spend exploring western Ecuador before I was to be picked up in Pedro Vicente San Maldonado. At the very last minute (just an hour before I left Maquipucuna) I managed to get a reservation at the Umbrellabird lodge in the town of Recinto 23 de Junio for that night.

Recinto 23 de Junio

Recinto 23 de Junio is a small agricultural community deep in the mountains. They are fortunate to have a large Long-wattled Umbrellabird lek at the edge of the cloud forest and they have been able to capitalize on this and are now in the process of revitalizing their community through ecotourism. It is still a very bare bones operation, they operate a 2 room guesthouse connected to one of the houses in the village and nobody who I met there spoke any English. One thing that stood out there was the quality and quantity of food, I ate two meals there (dinner and breakfast) which were included in the very reasonable lodging price and both of my meals were enough to feed several people!

After a sleepless night due to the constant crowing of several roosters right outside my room I was taken out to see the umbrellabirds an hour before sunrise. The umbrellabirds did not disappoint, within 10 minutes of arriving at the lek site we were greeted by several displaying males. In total I saw at least 12 of these spectacular birds along with some other surprises including Dark-backed Wood-Quail (heard only), Cloud-forest Pygmy-Owl (heard only), and Crimson-bellied Woodpecker!

Rio Silanche

After the tour of the umbrellabird lek I took a taxi to the town of Pedro Vicente Maldonado where I had booked a hostel for 2 nights. The town was the nicest town I've been to in Ecuador, the streets were clean and I felt comfortable walking around after dark (very important when the sun sets at 6 pm). The next day I took a taxi to the nearby Reserva Rio Silanche, a bird reserve famous for its canopy tower. I spent the day birding there where I saw most of my targets including Orange-fronted Barbet, Chestnut-fronted Macaw, White-bearded Manakin, Gray-and-Gold Dacnis, Rufous-winged Tanager, Scarlet-browed Tanager, and Scarlet-breasted Dacnis. I even got to see a Great Tinamou walk across the path in front of me! In total I added close to 40 species to my life list that day which is probably the best I've ever done at a single location.

Reserva Tesoro Escondido

The next day I got a ride with the reserve manager to Reserva Tesoro Escondido. In Spanish Tesoro Escondido means "hidden treasure" and I can't think of a more apt description of the place. The reserve protects over 2000 hectares of primary rainforest in one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world, the Chocoan lowland rainforest. Less than 5% of the Ecuadorian portion of this rainforest persists after most of it was cleared for agriculture, yet it is still one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Tesoro Escondido was originally founded to protect the home of the Brown-headed Spider-Monkey one of the most critically endangered primates on the planet, but it protects so much more than that. It is also home to Harpy Eagles, Great Green Macaws, Banded Ground Cuckoos, and Jaguars!

I was taken on as a volunteer to help inventory the bird species at the reserve. For more about that, click here. Apart from birds, I also saw 3 species of monkey including the Brown-headed Spider Monkey (one of which had newborn twins!) and dozens of reptiles and amphibians! I visited a lot of incredible places in Ecuador, but at none of them did I encounter the level of biodiversity that Tesoro Escondido possessed.

Reserva Tesoro Escondido is a wonderful example of community lead conservation. Not only does it protect thousands of hectares of rainforest, but it also provides jobs to members of the community as cooks, day labourers, and parabiologists. Parabiologists are people who have received basic training in biology in order to assist researchers and research in the tropics would not be possible without them. At Tesoro they are responsible for monitoring primates, setting up trail cameras, and assisting with reforestation efforts by collecting seeds.

Tesoro Escondido is also involved in educating the next generation of rainforest stewards. While I was there a local school group came for two days to learn about the jungle. These efforts are crucial since many of the children have never actually been inside the forest despite living right next to it. They are often taught by their parents to see the forest as a dark and scary place that must be tamed in order to grow crops. Education programs like the one at Tesoro teach the kids that though dangers do exist in the forest (bullet ants and pitvipers are surprisingly common there), the rainforest is also a place of wonder and beauty.

During the excitement of the last few months I was unable to find time to write a proper summary of my seven months in Ecuador, but since I'm heading back to school in a few weeks I'd better get through this backlog of posts before I get too busy again. So here it is, I hope all this effort was worth it to keep my nonexistant reader base informed on my comings and goings.

The beginning

After getting my volunteer VISA just two days prior I set off on my adventure on September 18th. I spent the night at a small hostel near the airport where I was lucky enough to get upgraded to a private room because of the lack of tourists due to the pandemic. I spent the 19th exploring Quito and doing some light birding at Parque Guapulo where the highlights were Rufous-chested Tanager and Crowned Chat-Tyrant, two species that I did not encounter again during the rest of my time in Ecuador.

Yanacocha and Zuro Loma

On my second full day in Ecuador I woke up early to take an Uber up into the mountains to check out the Zuro Loma and Yanacocha reserves. At Zuro Loma I was greeted by Jonathan Dario, the manager of the reserve. Jonathan showed me around the reserve and pointed out birds to me for about an hour (at no extra charge beyond the reserve entrance fee) before we were joined by a tour group from The States to watch Jonathan feed the resident Chestnut-naped and Equatorial Antpittas. Some of the birds I saw during this time include Streaked Tuftedcheek, Black-tailed Trainbearer, and Scarlet-bellied and Buff-breasted Mountain-Tanagers.

Antpittas are a diverse group of neotropical birds that for a long time were nearly impossible to get a good look at due to their secretive habits. 10-20 years ago this changed when some enterprising locals figured out how to train the antpittas to come out to be fed worms. Jonathan learned how to do this from Angel Paz who was one of the first people to accomplish this feat (more on that later). The antpittas clearly know when their feeding times are, and they came out almost immediately after Jonathan put out the worms. The highlight was seeing the pair of Chestnut-naped Antpittas up close, Chestnut-naped Antpitta is a very rare species that can only be seen reliably at a handful of locations in the Andes.

After leaving Zuro Loma I paid Jonathan's uncle to take me on the back of his motor cycle a few kilometres up the road to Yanacocha Reserve. Yanacocha is managed by the Jocotoco Foundation which operates many reserves across Ecuador that protect over 240 km² of vital habitat and provide home to countless species. I started off with a visit to the hummingbird feeders where I found Goldden-breasted Puffleg, Mountain Velvetbreast, Great Sapphirewing, and Sword-billed Hummingbird.

After leaving the feeders I continued up the slope where I lucked out with a Giant Conebill. Giant Conebill was one of my main target species for Ecuador, but I wasn't counting on seeing one since they are pretty scarce but there one was on my first full day of birding in the country! Certainly a good sign for what was in store for me in the coming months.

Maquipucuna

The next day I took a taxi to the Maquipucuna Reserve where I would be an intern for the subsequent 7 weeks. The Maquipucuna Foundation is a nonprofit organization that was founded by Rodrigo Ontaneda and Rebeca Justicia over 30 years ago to protect a small piece of the jungle just outside of Quito. The reserve now protects over 60 km² of land spanning from foothill rainforest up to the paramo (high elevation grassland) and is home to many imperiled species. The Maquipucuna Foundation is an incredible conservation success story and I count myself very lucky that they were able to take me on as a long term volunteer on such short notice. In fact my trip to Ecuador would not have been possible without them since they were the ones who signed off on my volunteer VISA application.

During my time at Maquipucuna I worked on many projects including:

• Leading tourists on bird and bear hikes (Maquipucuna is the best place in the world to see Spectacled Bears)
• Setting up a new bird feeding station for photographers
• Trying (unsuccesfully) to train the antpittas and opossums
• Surveying the dragonflies and damselflies of the reserve (more about that here)
• Analyzing historical weather data to find a way to predict the timing of future bear seasons (the bears come down from the mountains once a year to feed on the Aguacatillo fruit, but that can happen any time during a 4 month period)

I was unsuccesful with my attempt to predict the bears, but the project forced me to teach myself how to use R (a programming language for statistical computing) which I now have the chance to use for my data analysis.

There weren't as many bears around as there have been in past bear seasons while I was there, but I got the chance to see 3 or 4 different individuals. It was a real treat to see them foraging in trees 40 m off the ground!

The highlight of my time at Maquipucuna was the troup of Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkeys that showed up near the beginning of my stay and hung around for about a month! Ecuadorian Capuchins are critically endangered and only about 300 individuals are left in the wild so I was very lucky to see 6 of them (including a newborn baby)!

I got to interact with many guests from around the world during my time at Maquipucuna, many of them had travelled extensively and I loved hearing their stories about far flung places such as Borneo, Antarctica, and Cameroon. One of the guests that stands out the most in my mind was a young man from The Netherlands who came to Maquipucuna in search of Spectacled Bears and Oncilla (a small spotted jungle cat). He was on a mission to photograph every species of cat in the world and I think he was close to half way! He had brought with him a thermal camera which he took out on a night hike I helped lead and with it we found 7 different species of mammals including my first ever Kinkajou and Olingo sightings!

Though not as impressive as the mammals, the birds at Maquipucuna were also out of this world. Notable highlights inclue Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, Club-winged Manakin, Torrent Duck, Barred Parakeet, and Oilbird! There was a family of Torrent Ducks that lived near the lodge and I had a Crimson-Rumped Toucanet nest right in front of the volunteer house. I saw over 200 species of birds during my time at Maquipucuna including 3 that were new for the official list (Grey Kingbird, Eastern Kingbird, and Pale-vented Pigeon).

I would often set up a moth light at night at Maquipucuna, since the sun set so early I could get several hours of mothing in and still be in bed by 11 pm! The moths at the reserve were breathtaking both in terms of the colours and the sheer numbers at my sheet. During my 7 weeks I photographed over 300 species at my sheet and those are just the ones that I was able to identify! As with everything else the tropics contain far more moth species than there are in Canada, so many of the moths that I found in Ecuador were undescribed species!

Equally spectacular were the numerous butterfly species during the day

Seven weeks were not nearly enough to take in the reserve, for Maquipucuna is the sort of place where one could spend many lifetimes and still discover something new each day. That is what makes the tropics so special and why it is so important to protect these places. Humans can plumb the deepest depths of the ocean and build colonies on Mars, but there will still be beetles waiting to be discovered at this wonderful reserve just outside of Quito.

In the rush to get this website up and running before hiring season I unfortunately do not have enough time to upload a ton of posts to the blog, but I thought I'd do a short initial post to get things started.

I am writing this from the Sustainable Roots Foundation's volunteer house in Cosanga, Ecuador where I will be living for at least the next month. During my time here I plan on conducting bird transects on their newly acquired reserve across the street and general biodiversity monitoring (plants, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.).

Last week I had to quarantine due to a COVID-19 infection, so I spent much of my spare time putting together this website. Fortunately, I have two previously completed websites (sharonwrites.ca and nachiketchildrenslibraries.org) from which I can cannibalize parts. As of writing this, the website is not complete, but I will be adding a lot of content over the coming weeks.