Reserva Las Tangaras

As there is no electricity at Las Tangaras, the sun defines our days. The sun rises and wakes us, lights our journey through the day and then when the sun disappears, it lets us know that it’s time to relax and unwind. During the day, while we go about our daily chores, we a privy to a huge amount of avian, mammalian and herpetological species and we are constantly kept in a state of wonder with each new encounter. You would think this would be enough for us…. But you would be wrong. We needed to know what was prowling the darkness after the doors of the lodge were firmly closed. So, with the help of our trusty camera trap, we delved into the Las Tangaras nights. This is the result of our first 2 weeks camera trapping.

 Central American Agouti (Dasyprocta punctata)

Although we have an Agouti that regularly visits our back yard, so regularly in fact that we have named him Frugal, we had no real idea of how many Agoutis were occupying Las Tangaras and in what habitats. Based on our preliminary photo trapping we have found Agoutis to be numerous and widespread throughout the Riparian and Secondary Forest habitats. Most of our camera trapping records are from between the hours of 4.30pm and 6pm with the addition of occasional daytime observation.

This species of Agouti is the most widespread in the Americas, distributed from Mexico down into northern South America.

Oncilla  (Leopardus tigrinus Spp. pardinoides)

By far our favorite and most exciting camera trapping result is this one of a small Oncilla. This tiny jungle cat was photographed in Secondary Forest cautiously coming in to check out the cows digestive tract that we were using as bait. Given that this species is known to have a territory of only 2km squared it is safe to assume that the majority of this animal’s territory, if not the whole thing, is contained within Las Tangaras.

Footprints for this species were also found a day after this photograph was taken only 50m from the house. These tracks measured less than 5cm in length which gives you some idea of how small these cats actually are. This cat is know to eat small mammals, lizards, birds, eggs, invertebrates, and the occasional tree frog which is good… because there is an abundance of all of these within Las Tangaras. Oncillas are typically distributed from Costa Rica through to Northern Argentina, and show a strong preference for montane forest.

This species is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Paca (Cuniculus paca)

Although they look rather similar, with the obvious exception of the stripes, the Paca is not as common as the Aguti within Las Tangaras. In fact, this is the first of 2 we have observed here. This animal was photographed in Riparian habitat, attracted by the bait of egg and banana that we were using at the time. 

Interestingly, Pacas originated in South America and are one of the few mammal species that successfully emigrated to North America after the Great American Interchange 3 million years ago. Their similarities with Agutis mean that they were formerly grouped with the agoutis in the family Dasyproctidae, subfamily Agoutinae, but were given full family status because they differ in the number of toes, the shape of the skull, and coat patterning.

Black Eared O’Possum (Didelphis marsupialis)

The scavenger of the forest, the O’Possum has appeared in every single trapping period in which we used meat in the Secondary Forest habitat. Wherever present, they increase the survey effort required by us because they come in and eat all of the bait in the first few hours, therefore removing the incentive for other species to come in to the camera trapping site. Although frustrating at times, this is still the first time we have seen a wild O’Possum on our Journey so it was still pretty exciting.

This opossum is found in tropical and subtropical forest, both primary and secondary, at altitudes up to 2200 m.  

Stay tuned for more Confessions of a Las Tangaras Camera Trap.

With already 3+ weeks gone on our stay here, it’s already going by way to fast! We had a strong push of visitors through the end of December, but perhaps the incessant rains are keeping them away now. Despite the lack of people here to enjoy the rainforest, this place has not stopped bustling with biodiversity. I’m still seeing different species of birds on nearly every walk I take out into the forest and I’ve already seen nearly 200 species since arriving on December 12th, all within walking distance of the reserve. Whenever I run into bird watchers I town, I tell them about this place and several of them have shown up later and been mightily impressed. I have been many places around Mindo and this is undoubtedly the best place I have birded. Not only do we have the best Andean Cock-of-the Rock lek around and 12-15 species of hummingbirds at the feeders everyday, but many uncommon and hard to find species also occur here. Here is a list of some of the unusual and hard to find birds I’ve seen at the reserve: torrent duck, fasciated tiger heron, bicolored hawk (seen on same perch daily), black and chestnut eagle (the locally famous guide Marcelo Arias told me he has seen this bird once in his life), white-throated quail dove, white-capped parrot, little cuckoo, green-fronted lancebill, wedge-billed hummingbird, velvet-purple coronet, barred puffbird, ringed kingfisher, crimson-bellied and powerful woodpeckers (both large and spectacular), streak-capped treerunner, uniform antshrike, rufous-rumped antwren, esmeraldas antbird, ochre-breasted antpitta (I got an incredible long long at this very shy species!), narino tapaculo, pacific and fulvous-breasted flatbills, caerulean and canada warblers, glistening-green, rufous-throated, beryl-spangled and white-shouldered tanagers, black-winged saltator, chestnut-capped brush-finch, olive finch, buff-rumpled warbler, white-throated spadebill and thrush-like schiffornis. Slaty-capped flycatcher is apparently a new species for the reserve. Other wonderful species that can be found here on a regular basis include: golden-headed quetzal, toucan barbet, strong-billed woodcreeper, white-capped dipper and yellow-collared chlorophonia. We also have a club-winged manikin lek and their bizarre display can be viewed every day!

We are Ryne, Jenny and Cypress, the new managers of Reserva Las Tangaras. We are excited to spend the next 6 weeks taking care of the lodge and exploring the precious rainforest that surrounds it. We arrived here December 12 when Dusti and her crew of volunteers were here to participate in the Christmas bird count and also to band birds! We shocked everyone by arriving with a baby in the dark, but quickly meshed with this fun and conservation minded group. Well over 300 birds were banded during their stay here. Their research, which they graciously donated their time and money to make happen, will broaden our knowledge of many rare little known species. Many thanks to all!
On December 14th the biggest event of the year in Mindo occurred, the annual ChrIstmas bird count! Out of all the Christmas bird counts in the world, this one routinely has one of the highest counts. Our team (8 volunteers, Dusti and Ryne) alone had 139 species all within a short walking distance of the reserve! Although the numbers are not in yet this count can get around 500 species for one day all within 15 miles of Mindo!
Since their departure we have been graced with the company of several interesting guests which are keeping us busy!

Well our time here at Las Tangaras is sadly drawing to a close.  We feel lucky to have been given the opportunity to manage this place and all the beauty it contains and will miss it very much.  For our last blog post, we thought it might be nice to give a rough idea of what daily life is like out here.

Most our days start at dawn when the birds start singing, but once a week (sometimes twice) we get up just before 5AM to get to the Lek for the Cock-of-the-Rock data collection.  The mornings up there are really unique, beautiful, and peaceful.  Previous manager Tom Lord created a new mapping system for monitoring the displaying males´ locations, which Emme is adding to below.

Recently we have had some help on our avian front! Las Tangaras has had a volunteer whose excitement and knowledge of birds combine to create a very motivated and valuable lady! Nikki spent a little over a week with us and we very much enjoyed having her help, excitement and expertice around. Thanks Nikki! Check out Nikki¨s blog  http://onehealth47.blogspot.com/ to read more about her time at Las Tangaras, see pictures of the lodge, delicious food, birds,  the property and lek as well as her work in Conservation Medicine.

After the lek has been visited it´s time to pay attention to our other, much bolder avian friends, and feed the hummingbirds.  This gets combined with recording their numbers and eating breakfast which ends up equaling potentially the nicest and most relaxing “job requirement” either of us can really remember having, so on slow days we like to put in a moment of overtime on this one.

When breakfast and hummingbirds finish, we start the mornings work.  Although we´ve been blessed with an unbelievable stretch of clear weather in November (over 15 days without a rainstorm!) we are still in the habit of expecting afternoon showers so try and get the work away from the cabin finished before that happens.  Our mornings thus get filled with lots of work on the trails and property.  This work doesn´t lend itself very easily to being photogenetic but here is a picture of Andrew clearing out the orchard (the care and preparation of which has been a fairly big priority for us during our time here)

A huge part of living on the Reserve is finding personal hobbies that can keep your mind a bit challanged.  We often take time for this during the afternoon rains.   Andrew has been keeping up with his Spanish Studies, making his way through language textbooks as well as Ecuadorian Readers to get a better understanding of the country we are living in. Emme has been working hard on botanical illustration, practicing her watercoloring of various species and techniques as often as possible.  We thank the pace of life at the Reserve to give us time to enhance our skills! Below Emme sketches an apple before painting.

A post lunch swimming break

It would not exactily be a full day without taking advantage of the abosolutely beautiful Rio Nambillo and its many swimming holes. We have explored up and down this river, but often find it helpful to take a post lunch dip to get the blood flowing again.  And by this we mean, Andrew likes to take a dip… a little too cold for Emme.

We feel it would not be right to skip a mention about a task we dedicate many hours to… washing laundry. We have both lived in quite a few places that require handwashing laundry, but this place is by far the most luxurios. Fresh, extremly clean water right at our finger tips from a stream far up hill on the property helps to get our laundry sparkling clean.  A woman in India once told us that she believed she could get laundry cleaner than a washing machine, and this was using water from a muddy creek… with our water here at Las Tangaras, this statement just might be true!

After the afternoon comes to a close, we enjoy the resurgence of all the hummingbirds feeding on the porch, while listening to the evening sounds of the cloud forest. Life out here does not sound half bad does it? And for this reason, we are sad to leave, but thankful for our time here. Thank you Las Tangaras! We hope you find the time to come visit this very special place.

Until next time,

Andrew and Emme

Hello everyone!  We are the new managers here at the beautiful Reserva Las Tangaras.  After a really helpful orientation from outgoing extraodorinaires Tom and Freya we´ve spent our first week brainstorming, planning, and getting started on the projects we´d like to create and contribute to during our time here.  We just wanted to post a quick introduction to both ourselves and our projects.  Updates will be following!

Our first task was putting up the lovely new sign for the reserve that Tom and Freya created.  Here´s a look at the new sign and us (the sign is better looking)

We also spent a fair bit of time creating and distributing new flyers (not featured) for the reserve around town focusing on our accomodations.  Andrew and I have both worked in international eco-friendly and conservation minded tourism in the past and are hoping to increase awareness of the efforts and research of the reserve.

Our first personal undertaking, and one that we´re most excited about, has been to identify some of the native plants in the reserve.   With her experience and interest in native plant conservation and education, Emme, with Andrew´s help, will be trying to accomlish three goals:

– First, add drawings and information of more plants to the existing reserve manual.

– Second, create signage and identifiers for various species along the reserve´s trails so that guests can view them as they walk.

– Third, create a native plant garden focusing on useful, edible, and flowering plants.

Here she is identifying:

Another main project we´re hoping to do is some overhaul on the existing hiking trails for the reserve.  Prior to being here Andrew was part of a trail crew in the US maintaining and creating different trail systems throughout Arizona, so we´re hoping to put some of his knowledge and experience to use.

Other than these projects, we also have plenty  of ideas for smaller scale improvements we can add to the reserve.  Two things we have started on are improving the orchard (botanical sprays, nutrient mulch, ground growth clearing, etc.) and creating a new covered information booth at the entrance to the reserve in front of the lodge.  Here we hope to have copies of bird lists, information about the reserve and the Cock-of-the-Rock Lek, trail guides, etc. to make information more accesible to visitors.

As always there is lots of work just in the upkeep of the lodge, hosting of guests, and avian data collection, and we are sure to have many more ideas for future projects.

Further updates to come!