Well, I had a day to explore the botanical gardens, but right now my program, SIT Ecuador: Comparative Ecology and Conservation, has a officially started. I can’t say I’m complaining, though: I get to basically go birdwatching (and listening) as an assignment, and tomorrow we’re off to Yanacocha Forest Reserve, a.k.a. a place with so many hummingbirds I might faint from excitement.
A little bit about this program: we get to travel all over (Amazon, Galapagos, cloud forest, mountains), and our classes (Spanish, ecology, conservation, and research methods) all blend together. They are taught both in the field and at a place called the Experiment in Intercultural Living (EIL). Here’s some great views of Quito from the top story of the EIL.
That white mountain you see in the second picture is the volcano Cotopaxi, which is actually not covered in snow but in glaciers. I get to visit it (but not climb it, that requires training, a guide, and ice axes) at some point, and there’s supposed to be Andean condors there. For the unfamiliar, Andean condors are gigantic mountain-dwelling vultures, weighing a whopping 33 pounds and having wingspans of 10 feet. I hope to get a photo to share eventually, but for now here’s National Geographic’s pictures and info.
I’ve been starting to dive into the local fruit, having had batido de guanabana (soursop smoothie), various juices, and this grandilla.
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In English you would call this a yellow passionfruit. The inside is fully of juicy seeds that are very sweet and almost bubble gum-tasting; the hard portion of the seed providing a nice, light crunch. It tastes nothing like the purple passionfruit juice you get in the US, which I’m honestly not very fond of.
Well, that was a brief post, but believe it or not I have work to do to plan out my ornithology project. I’ll put up another post on Yanacocha within the next few days.
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 