The Breathtaking Yanacocha Reserve (and its Hummingbirds)

 Well, the title of this blog post has a dual meaning. First off, check out these views from the cloud forest of the Inca Trail at Yanacocha Reserve, and how they change from morning in the afternoon.

Sunny morning…

…cloudy afternoon.

 

The place was also breathtaking in the sense that it was at a very high altitude and thus I got a little out of breath. To get to Yanacocha Reserve, we took an hour-and-a-half bus ride up from the valley of Quito into the mountains. We went up some pretty steep dirt road, which was a bit frightening both going up and going down. However, once we got to the reserve, I was greeted by a few of these guys engaged in aerial combat.

 

That is a great sapphirewing, one of the largest hummingbirds in the world at a whopping (for a hummer) six inches without the beak. (The largest, the giant hummingbird, also lives in Ecuador.) Sapphirewings have an undulating flight pattern similar to woodpeckers, and they flap their wings quite a bit slower than other hummingbirds.

Yanacocha is one of the few places were the endangered black-breasted puffleg can be found. No one in our group saw one, but I saw a total of eight hummingbird species, including two other pufflegs, plenty of buff-winged starfrontlets, and even a sword-billed hummingbird (which I sadly don’t have good photos of).

Sapphire-vented puffleg

Golden-fronted puffleg (you can see the white puffs quite well)

Buff-winged starfrontlet

 

Other bird life included Andean guans, turkey-like birds which spend much of their lives in trees. It is heavily hunted for meat in some areas, but they are protected in Yanacocha.

 

The insect life was also quite friendly, which was not always a great thing. Sandflies, which are smaller than grains of sand, inflicted nasty bites at higher altitudes. However, non-biting flies and a butterfly landed on us. The butterfly even gave kisses!

 

The plant life was also quite spectacular.

Ñacha (Spanish name; not sure of the name in English or Latin)

Gunnera. I have never seen larger leaves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the coolest plants was a carnivorous plant of the genus Pinguicula (butterwort), which traps insects with a glue-like substance on its leaves and subsequently digests them.

You’d think it could have eaten a few more sandflies…

 

Well, that was Yanacocha! Tomorrow morning I’m off to a lower elevation cloud forest reserve called Santa Lucia, and then to the rural cloud forest village of Yunguilla. It’ll be at least a week before another post, but I hope it will be worth the wait!