Day 9, Cueva de Tayos, 3/16/16

Another nice breakfast at the Rio Quijos Ecolodge and I was out on the trails.  There were the usual Black-burnian and Canada Warblers and Swainson's Thrushes.  Then I found an olive woodcreeper with a very straight bill.  The color reminded me of the Spotted Woodcreeper from the cloud foreset of Mexico.  In fact it was a close relative, the Olive-backed Woodcreeper which replaces Spotted Woodcreeper on the eastern slope of the Andes.

I ran into a mixed flock with some tanagers and this Montane Foliage-gleaner.

The flock contained Golden Tanager.

and Golden-eared Tanager among others.  But getting photographs was difficult.

Wandering back to the river I saw a distant Torrent Duck and this White-capped Dipper.

Back at the hummingbird feeders the White-tailed Hillstars still ruled.

I was supposed to meet Angel at noon for our trip to the Oilbird cave but he had a guest who he had invited to lunch.  The man's name was Pedro and apparently he is a influential local oilman.  In Spanish he made a point to tell me it was beneficial for the United States to keep the unrest going in the Middle East to help get the oil prices back up.  I told him he was probably right and ate lunch.  As he was leaving I spotted a new hummer in the yard, a Collared Inca.  This is a common species at Guango and Cabanas San Isidro but was the first I had seen here.

So now Angel and I were ready to head for Cueva de Tayos.  "Tayos" are what the locals call Oilbirds. Ridgley and Greenfield uses "Guacharos" in Birds of Ecuador but Angel was not familiar with that name. Angel drives like all Ecuadoreans who apparently attend the Mario Andretti driver's ed class.  I held on as we sped around the corners and past collapsed portions of the road and minor landslides for the 22 km to Cuevas de Tayos.  There is a small restaurant at the trailhead where I guess you are supposed to pay a fee but no one was there.  As we made our way down a steep wet trail, we flushed a couple of dark birds that were probably antbirds but I could not get my glasses on them.  We reached the bottom and had to wade a small fast flowing steam to the cave.  A female Andean Cock-of-the-rock flushed on the other side but I did not get much of a shot.

The oilbird cave was a perhaps fifty yards long tunnel with a tall ceiling.  I could not tell if the stream had carved its way through creating the tunnel or perhaps a collapse of the hillside had closed the top.  But it was a magnificent setting.

Angel pointed out some Oilbirds.  I was surprised by how large they were, nearly two feet long  These birds emerge at night searching for fruit by using echo location.  Apparently the young grow quite fat on the diet of fruit and at one time were harvested as a source of fuel oil.

It was difficult to tell how many birds were in the cave but I am guessing over a hundred.  Dozens flew screaming over our heads and many were perched on the walls high above us.  I was a little worried about disturbing the birds but I guess people have been bothering them here for centuries.  They started calming down after a while.  Here's an iPhone video.

                                      

Yours truly enjoying the sights and sounds.

I was huffing and puffing as we make the hike back up the steep trail.  Back at the lodge it was another fine dinner.  I was the only customer.  Angel's son Joel drove in from Quito and I learned that he would like to be a bird guide.  We spent hours that night talking about birding  and how to market the Rio Quijos Ecolodge as a birding lodge.  They have the field guide, a pair of binocs and a great location so all they just need to do is put in the work and learn the birds.  For some reason the lodges I visited on this side of the Andes (Guango, Cabanas San Isidros and Wildsumaco) do not feed the tanagers.  I suggested they experiment with this because they really do have some nice tanagers around.  I also showed them eBird and Xeno-canto.  All of this was done in my poor Spanish and I was mentally exhausted afterwards.