I’m but hours away from leaving Ecuador, but I’m squeezing in one last post before I go. (There will be one final post after this one.) For our last hoorah, my whole study abroad group returned to a familiar location: Comunidad Yunguilla.
Chico, our host family’s dog, was eagerly awaiting us.A view of the valley below Yunguilla.
We were last in Yunguilla three months ago, after visiting the beautiful Santa Lucia. Last time around in Yunguilla, we spent most of our time doing community service work (which we did a bit of this time, too).
Trail clearingHammering a log to loosen the bark… after hauling it up a hill.
This time, we spent most of our time giving presentations on our projects (see my last three posts for info on my project). The venue was the restaurant/hostel Casa Tahuallullo, which happens to have aroids with giant leaves outside.
Also known as “the beard plant” by absolutely no one.
When we weren’t hard at work presenting or doing manual labor, there is a giant swing with an incredible view of the valley below.
I also got a bit of birding in, as I am apt to do.
Blue-winged mountain tanagerBlue-and-black tanager, a reasonably uncommon but beautiful species
One particularly interesting bird from an ecological standpoint is the black flowerpiercer, so named for its feeding habits. Flowerpiecers use their sharp beaks to rob flowers of nectar without pollinating.
Some pena-pena flowers pierced by a flowerpiercer.
My flight back to the states leaves in approximately 4.5 hours, but as I mentioned earlier, I still have one more post planned. Stay tuned!
I feel the warm sun against my skin as I lay in the…
Snow?!
You might have though I went to the beach again, but those were and Andean gull, Andean lapwings, and a Baird’s sandpiper (in that order). The first two stick around the Andes all year long, while the Baird’s sandpiper migrates all the way from the Arctic to the Andes, which some migrating as far as the southern tip of Argentina (Source).
One week ago today was my last sojourn into the shadow of Volcán Antisana. However, I made sure that last week wasn’t a dull week, as Vladimir (co-owner of Tambo Condor, the place I have been staying) and I climbed up to an altitude of 4700 meters (3 miles) to the base of the glaciers of Antisana.
While the area was barren at first sight, upon closer inspection there is some very cool plant and bird life at three miles up.
Rufous-bellied seedsnipe. Looks and acts like a bit like a chicken, but is more closely related to the gulls and shorebirds you saw earlier. There are only four species of seedsnipe, all found in South America.Nototriche ecuadoriensis, a gorgeous small flower of the hibiscus family. It is only found in the highlands of Ecuador.Senecio canescens. The hairy leaves keep water from freezing on the leaf surface and block excess sunlight. (Note: I miss ID’ed this as an Espeletia species earlier. Oops. Fixed 6/17/2015)Wish I could tell you what this is, but I’m clueless! Update as of 6/17/15: I have been informed that this is species of violet, Viola polycephala, that is endemic to Antisana. Thank you, Charles Dawkins of Denmark!
Other points of interest last week were the field tests of our ibis models. Turns out, they don’t attract ibises very well, though we did have a pair get reasonably close.
We also finally saw some ibises mating, which was was quite good for the study, as one of our main objective was to find reproducing birds.
Unfortunately, if they were starting mate last week, that means they could be nesting starting this week, after my study is over.
In other news, I finally managed a decent photograph of one of my favorite birds, the sword-billed hummingbird! It’s the only bird with a beak longer than its body.
Tomorrow I head back to Quito, and Monday I’m off to the cloud forest community of Yunguilla, a place which I have visited before but did not have the chance to write about.
I’m afraid this blog is coming close to its end, as I head back to the US in one week. However, expect at least one or two more posts before I ship out. Until next time!
That glacier-covered mountain is not only a site of snow and ice very close to the Equator, but it is also an active volcano. Its name is Antisana and is the mountain which Antisana Ecological Reserve is named after. See that little shack in the foreground? That was a home of the famous naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Laguna Micacocha, an important source of water for the city of Quito.
The name for this type of habitat is páramo, which essentially means “tropical alpine grassland and scrubland. While the landscape may look a little bleak, there is actually some really cool plant and animal life hidden away in the grasses and shrubs
Flower of the Puya, an alpine member of the pineapple family and source of nectar for the giant hummingbird.Purple gentians growing near tussock grasses and cushion plants.Individual plants from a cushion plant colony. Cushion plants retain dead organic material below ground to soak up water and preserve nutrients.
Some of the wildlife isn’t necessarily hidden. It’s pretty hard to hide when you have a ten foot wingspan.
That would be an Andean condor, Ecuador’s national bird. The IUCN classifies the worldwide population of this bird as “Near Threatened” and estimates that its population is declining (Source.) Fewer than 100 condors remain in Ecuador, making them endangered in this country. Condors face a variety of problems, including cattle ranchers killing them due to the belief that they eat cattle, lack of food, and habitat loss. Condors principally eat carrion and only take live prey (such as newborn livestock) rarely (Source). In order to provide food for the condors, the Hacienda Hosteria Guáytara, a private ecological area near Antisana, sacrifices cattle to provide food for these gigantic birds, thus aiding in their conservation in Ecuador.
Speaking of Guáytara, its land has hundreds (or potentially thousands) of chuquiragua flowers, which are a favorite food of a very special hummingbird.
The Ecuadorian hillstar is found in no other place but the Ecuadorian Andes. At night it nearly halts its metabolism by going into a state called torpor, which allows it to survive frigid páramo nights (Source). Other hummingbirds also enjoy chuquiragua nectar, including the black-tailed trainbearer.
While found in Quito, Guáytara is simply swarming with them. You can hardly go a minute walking the trails without hearing a male sing.
If you want more information on Guáytara, check out their website. The accommodations are quite nice and the wildlife is spectacular. I saw four condors during breakfast one morning, and you can reportedly see over fifteen at a time on a good day.
Well, it might be a while before I post, since I’m off to the Amazon on Friday and will be staying there for a whole week. I’ll be sure to update if I do anything cool in the next few days, but if I don’t expect another post in a couple weeks!
Well, today was my first day in Quito, Ecuador. I could tell you about how I ate at a place called Texas Chicken twice with two different groups of people, but I’ll stick to the stuff that I found more interesting, mostly El Parque La Carolina, its botanical garden, and some common birds in Quito. I apologize for the photo quality in this post; I didn’t have my nicer camera on me as I was still trying to gauge how safe such devices would be to bring around.
I’ll start out by telling you about a dream I had last night. The basic idea was that the ornithologist at my college was in Quito with was disappoint in me for not finding any birds yet. In my dream, the first bird I saw was an eared dove, an lo and behold the first bird I found today was an eared dove.
Dream bird! (I guess…)
Eared doves are essentially South American mourning doves with shorter tails and a slightly different head pattern/color. They are as ubiquitous as pigeons in other big cities, but are actually native! Quito still has feral pigeons, but it’s still cool that they aren’t displacing the native dove.
That photo was taken in El Parque La Carolina, which looks like this:
It’s still the dry season here, so the grass isn’t terribly happy, but the palm trees are nice change of pace from both Iowa and Maine. The air is dry here, as Quito is in the mountains and so does not have the humidity characteristic of the Amazon and cloud forests of lower altitudes.
Within El Parque La Carolina, there is a botanical garden with a very impressive orchid collection, which is no surprise considering that Ecuador has 1710 endemic orchid species (Source). The botanical garden has about 400 species of orchids in all kinds of colors and shapes. In retrospect, I should have taken more pictures, but here’s my best one.
The orchids in botanical garden that I found the most interesting (at least from a biological perspective) were epiphytes (plants with no roots in the soil) from the Amazon that have aerial roots. These roots not only take up water but also can store it since the plants rely on an inconsistent water source, namely rain. The aerial roots can even photosynthesize in some species (Source and a brief overview of aerial roots).
Put your roots in the air like you don’t care!
Other cool plants also had a home in the botanical garden, including a greenhouse with the ominous sign “Carnívora,” which at first glance conjured images of a jaguar.
Don’t think that’s a jaguar, but I’m new to this continent.
That would be a pitcher plant, which traps insects in a pool of digestive juices. The insects cannot climb the slippery sides and thus drown and are eventually digested. The plant does this to obtain nitrogen (an essential component of proteins) when it is not available in the soil.
Other pretty flowers included bromeliads, relatives of the pineapple. This one had a fluorescent pink flower stalk and a purple flower.
This flower of an elephant ear (aroid) was bigger than my hand!
The floraof the garden, of course attracted pollinating fauna, including the spectacular black-tailed trainbearer.
That tail!
Other birds also inhabit the garden, including the great thrush (Quito’s answer to the robin/Eurasian blackbird) and purple gallinule.
Don’t you belong in the Everglades?
Even outside the botanical garden, the flora and avain fauna of Quito is quite enthralling. Here’s a sparkling violetear (what a name!) feeding on flowers in downtown Quito. What’s even better is that these gorgeous hummingbirds are everywhere here.
What I’ve shown you is just a microcosm of Quito itself (I’ve only had a day here!), and in the grand scheme of Ecuador, Quito is but one place in a land that includes both snow-capped volcanoes and sweltering rainforests. Despite that, I’m pretty excited but what I’ve seen so far and can’t wait to explore more!
An Iowan on the Equator 