Southern Ecuador Hummingbird & Tanager Extravaganza

Rainbow-bearded Thornbill © Stubblefield Photography/Shutterstock

This spectacular complement to our Northern Ecuador Hummingbird and Tanager Extravaganza features the dramatic habitat and elevational diversity of southern Ecuador and the promise of possibly up to 60 hummingbird species and as many as 50 tanagers.

Ecuador has long been regarded as the planet’s hummingbird and tanager epicenter, and on this exciting sequel to our Northern Ecuador Extravaganza, we’ll experience many of southern Ecuador’s prime habitats and ecosystems while in pursuit of these spectacular living gems that exemplify the glory of the Neotropics. This 10-day trip has been designed specifically for birding enthusiasts and photographers, along with anyone interested in Neotropical birding, with a special focus on color and glitter. Of the nearly 200 species combining hummingbirds and tanagers (including their allies) found in this region, we hope to enjoy well over half of them, including many of the same actors present on our Northern tour, along with a whole new cast of superstars!

In the high temperate and páramo-zone elevations of El Cajas National Park, we’ll search for mixed foraging flocks and their attendant tanagers and scan flowering trees and shrubs for an array of hummingbirds with names as angelic as their unique appearances that could include Green-tailed Trainbearer, Shining Sunbeam, Ecuadorian Hillstar, Mountain Velvetbreast, Great Sapphirewing, Sword-billed Hummingbird, Purple-throated Sunangel, and Viridian Metaltail. We will focus especially on locating the Violet-throated Metaltail, one of South America’s most range-restricted hummers. Tanagers could include Hooded and Scarlet-bellied mountain-tanagers, Grass-green and Blue-and-black tanagers, along with Tit-like Dacnis.

In the Amazonian foothills, a region of exceptional diversity, at the lovely Copalinga Lodge, the many possibilities can be overwhelming, with a list far too extensive to present here, but consider this tiny sample: Orange-eared, Green-and-gold, Turquoise, Blue-necked, Paradise, Golden, and Saffron-crowned tanagers, and Golden-collared Honeycreeper, along with Green and Gray-chinned hermits, Buff-tailed and White-tipped sicklebills, Wire-crested Thorntail, Spangled Coquette, Peruvian Racket-tail, Black-eared Fairy, Glittering-throated Emerald, and Golden-tailed Sapphire. We could even be distracted by a parade of parakeets, a tinamou, jacamar, umbrellabirds, cocks-of-the-rock, manakins, and who knows what else?

At the Jocotoco Foundation’s Tapichalaca Reserve, the nectar feeders and temperate-zone vegetation should be alive with birds, and some of the new hummingbirds we’ll seek include Andean Emerald, Fawn-breasted Brilliant, Collared Inca, Buff-winged Starfrontlet, Amethyst-throated and Flame-throated sunangels, Glowing Puffleg, Tyrian Metaltail, and Rainbow-bearded Thornbill; tanagers could include Red-hooded and Grass-green, and Lacrimose Mountain-Tanager. This area is also home to many other specialties—including the recently discovered Jocotoco Antpitta—and we will offer an optional opportunity to locate some of the key species. We will also venture to lower elevations not far from the reserve where we may run into some upper Amazonian and Marañón Valley specialties like Silver-backed, Straw-backed, and Buff-bellied tanagers, which are all possibilities.

At the Jocotoco Foundation-owned Buenaventura Reserve, the nectar feeders and flowers at Umbrellabird Lodge teem with a diversity of hummingbird species that include such beauties as Band-tailed Barbthroat, White-whiskered Hermit, Green Thorntail, Violet-bellied Hummingbird, Velvet-purple Coronet, Gorgeted Sunangel, Violet-tailed Sylph, and Purple-crowned Fairy.

Good accommodations and good to excellent cuisine; some field lunches; birding is varied with visits to feeding stations mixed with roadside birding and optional forest birding; some long drives between birding sites; optional walking on varied terrain; varied altitudes with visits to two high-elevation sites (maximum 12,500 ft.); midday rest periods most days; climate ranges from cool to mildly warm to hot, humid, and dry (briefly).

Grass-green Tanager © Andrew Whittaker