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Andean West Slope Diary
6 - 10 October 2001
1. Introduction

We greatly enjoyed our four nights and 3½ days at Tandayapa Bird Lodge. The spectacle at the hummingbird feeders was great and we found that after a day or so we could identify them easily. The only other 'hummer feeders' we had encountered were at the Asa Wright Lodge in Trinidad, but here at Tandayapa you were so much closer to the birds - even walking amongst them.

Birding along the trails was slow, but with some exciting moments - such as the Dark-backed Wood-quails and the Immaculate Antbirds. And it was good to get views of the Cock-of-the-Rock. The encounter with the tanager flock in the upper valley was exhilarating. I guess that if we had been more experienced, or if our guide, Raphael had been more familiar with calls, we might have ended up with a bigger list - we experienced 103 species, of which 4 were only heard. But to us, numbers are not everything, and the friendliness of Raphael and his family added greatly to our enjoyment.. and we met up with them again one evening in Quito, which was very pleasant.

The Lodge itself is very well run, with clean, comfortable rooms, good food and friendly staff, and we would recommend it. Maybe a few more nights, and excursions by vehicle further afield would reveal even more of the delights of Tandayapa and the surrounding area.

The lodge is on a ridge overlooking the Tandayapa valley at about 1600m. We arrived there late morning and were welcomed by one of the co-owners, Ian Campbell.

The lodge is simple in construction, and well-built. There is a central bar-dining room with the bedrooms off a very wide corridor leading from the main room.

Also off the main room is "The Deck" - a veranda with a row of seats facing the famous humming-bird feeders. This provided us with many hours of pleasure - and 16 species of 'hummers' during our stay.

We met up with our guide for the next few days, Raphael Furniss, an Australian who has settled (temporarily) in Ecuador, and who is also a (sleeping) partner in the lodge, who had brought along his Ecuadorian partner, Belin and their young (15 months?) son, Martin. All three of them were to accompany us on our trips around the Tandayapa trails, and it worked out very well.

Although Raphael was more of a "naturalist" guide, rather than the "bird" guide that we had requested, and he lacked the skills in IDing birds by call, his general knowledge, and the companionship of himself and Belin added to the enjoyment of our stay at Tandayapa.

Our stay at the lodge - 3½ days, 4 nights - followed a common pattern. We had breakfast at around 5.30 am (one day at 5 am), walked a trail in the morning, had a solid lunch at around 1 pm and, after a short siesta, went out on another trail in the afternoon.

Only on one of the days did we have use of a vehicle when we drove to the upper valley, past Bellavista Lodge. It's possible that Bellavista (6 km further up the dirt road from Tandayapa) has a wider (or easier-to-see) range of birds. But this is a personal judgement, not made from good knowledge!

Birding from Tandayapa (without a vehicle) is of three types:

• From "the Deck" - the feeders and the nearby bushes
• Along the trails, the main source of birds. (see next page for full details) These are well-graded (many steps) and signposted, and optimistically named ('Antpitta'', 'Potoo', 'Nunbird', 'Tanager'). I would also include under "trails" Tandayapa Village and the lower parts of the old Nono road. These are easily reached on foot from the lodge.
• From the "Canopy Platforms". There are two of these. The nearest and newest is just a few minutes walk from the lodge. The private name for the path to this is 'The Geriatric Trail' - it's so easy! We went there several times. I had an in-flight view of a female Cock of the Rock from here, but not much else. It overlooks the stream valley opposite the lodge, and the end of the Potoo Trail. The older, and further platform looks over the canopy of more mature forest. We didn't record anything new from here, but it can produce some different species. Worth re-visiting.