Jon Feenstra from the midway point in his tour to Southern Ecuador

It has felt like a bit of a whirlwind, but that's the way it goes when traveling from one great birding destination to another, each one bursting with endemics, near-endemics, local specialties, and just plain spectacular tropical birds.

Grass-green Tanager

We're half way through the tour of southern Ecuador and so far we've been almost entirely on the Amazon slope of the Andes from tree line in El Cajas National Park to the low foothills of the remote Cordillera del Condor, and various levels of cloud forest in between. We've made visits to both high and low elevations of the vast Podocarpus National Park, and the small corner of the Rio Maranon watershed with its own special bird life. Some of our bird highlights include the critically endangered Pale-headed Brushfinch and the striking Jocotoco Antpitta, the bird that started a huge conservation movement here in Ecuador.

Jocotoco Antpitta

Other goodies were a pair of Giant Conebills working the branches in a polylepis grove, seemingly daily Andean Cock-of-the-rock sightings (including as many as six at once feeding in fruiting trees in Podocarpus National Park), a Coppery-chested Jacamar, Amazonian Umbrellabird, White-necked Parakeets, several of the gorgeous and near-endemic Orange-throated Tanagers, a dizzying array of tanagers and hummingbirds, and plenty of tricky little flycatchers and such just to add a little challenge to things.

Part of the group in Polylepis looking at Giant Conebills

Coppery-chested Jacamar

Orange-throated Tanager

The backdrop to all of this has been pretty amazing as well. We passed Cotopaxi, an erupting volcano on our first day, and waterfalls, sheer cliff faces, rainbows, and huge swaths of unbroken green-ness meet us every day.

A smoking Cotopaxi

Tomorrow, we're off to the Pacific slope of the Andes with new adventures and entirely new birds in store.