Day 10 More hummingbirds

Another rainy start but it improved after breakfast to an occasional light drizzle so we walked up the road looking for bird flocks. Across the river was a pair of Slaty-backed Chat-Tyrant while the first flock we encountered contained Silvery and Blue-and-Black Tanagers and White-banded Tyrannulet. 

Slaty-backed Chat-Tyrant

Cinnamon Flycatcher

Golden-rumped Euphonia

Hillside

 

Further stops produced a Purple-throated Sunangel - you have to admit that hummingbirds do have the best names: Sunangel, Woodnymph, Starfrontlet, Trainbearer, Fairy, Hermit, Sylph, Comet, Sunbeam, etc, they’re just Brilliant. Oh, and that’s another one.

Grey-breasted Mountain-Toucan

Streaked Tufted-cheek

We continued our quest of seeing more birds with double-barrelled names, adding Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, Grey-breasted Mountain-Toucan and Streaked Tufted-cheek to the list. The last two are also pretty smart looking too with the latter bird really puffing out its cheeks to show why it’s so named. We climbed to around 2,800 metres so it felt fairly cold at the top when we got out for a walk where we saw a pair of Yellow-billed Teal and a group of Andean Flickers.

river at 2,800 metres

Yellow-billed Teal

Torrent Duck

White-capped Dipper

On the way down we still saw plenty of new birds including more Torrent Ducks and another White-capped Dipper on the river, plus three White-collared Jays, our third species of Jay during the trip and two flyover Andean Condors.

White-collared Jay

We stopped at a lodge for lunch while watching the hummingbird feeders and then had a wander around the grounds, finally getting a good look at a Rainbow Starfrontlet.

Rainbow Starfrontlet

We visited another road in the afternoon, adding Black-crested Warbler, Rusty Flowerpiercer and Green-tailed Trainbearer before re-trying the lower slopes of the road where we’d been in the morning. Our driver located two more Condors perched up on the hillside and we finished the day with a fly-catching Sword-billed Hummingbird.

Sword-billed Hummingbird