Reserva Las Tangaras

Marc and Eliana hike up one of the many refreshing streams on the Las Tangaras Reserve

Greetings! Saludos from a new duo of intrepid Las Tangaras managers, Marc Kramer & Eliana Ardila. To introduce ourselves, we hail from Miami, Florida (USA), though Eliana is a native Colombian (from Bucaramanga) and Marc is originally a New Yorker (Long Island). Our backgrounds lie in veterinary medicine, field ornithology, zoology, and nature appreciation in general. We’ve been together as a couple for 8 years and travel regularly in North, Central, and South America, wandering the globe with an insatiable appetite for experiencing new biomes, cultures, foods, landscapes, and adventures. Having a fervent love for the tropics and its avian fauna, we are also passionate birders and are greatly looking forward to the vast potential of the Ecuadorian cloud forest in turning up new birds for our life list and all manner of animals and plants.

In front of the rustic Las Tangaras cabin

With two weeks behind us at Las Tangaras thus far, we can definitely say life in the tropics has been extremely busy. Outgoing managers, Jo and Hamish, overlapped with us for two days and gave us an intensive crash course on running the reserve. Not long after their departure, we quickly welcomed a myriad of enthusiastic new visitors. We had house guests from Belgium, England, France, Australia, and even an adventurous couple from French Polynesia (Tahiti).

While our new friends hiked the many reserve trails and spotted wildlife such as coatimundi, tayra, golden-headed quetzals, and Chocó toucans, we stayed hard at work in the kitchen cooking a cornucopia of flavorful homemade meals. Some of the favorites that will likely make a regular appearance on the 

Empanada master Marc hard at work in the kitchen

Las Tangaras menu included vegetarian bean curry, meatless lentil burgers topped with fresh avocado, cloud forest pasta primavera, tropical Caribbean soup, quinoa bowl breakfast, and Colombian-style empanadas made from scratch!

When we weren’t creating culinary masterpieces, we kept our international company engaged in a number of other ways. Both of us guided early morning tours to the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock lek, where visitors can witness firsthand the rambunctious iconic bird of the South American cloud forest and its incredible courtship behavior. Hummingbird identification sessions on the front porch were a big hit and our guests left with a good grasp on discerning the 12 or more vibrant species regularly seen at the feeders.

Purple-throated Wood-stars… Green-crowned Brilliants… Brown Violetears … the potpourri of colorful hummingbirds here is like a bowl of Lucky Charms!

A female green-crowned brilliant eagerly awaits a meal of high-energy sucrose. Look closely to see her micro leg band.

We celebrated a birthday for one of our multi day visitors, Jane Hulland, and baked an amazing batch of birthday-candle-topped melt-in-your-mouth brownies for her using locally produced cocoa from Mindo’s El Quetzal Café. Que rico!

One morning, three of us hiked the Patos and Colibri trails to the “Three Teacups” and delighted in a refreshing dip in the trinity of cool tropical pools.

The edges of the nearby streams and the Nambillo River are teeming with fluttering butterflies of all colors and sizes, as they feed on salty stream residues and even the droppings of other animals. Frogs appreciate the watery environment as well and can be found in both adult and tadpole form in and around the streams.

Pastures Rainfrog, Pristimantis achatinus

We’ve developed a particular fondness for the avian inhabitants that have an affinity for streams: the white-capped dipper, torrent tyrannulet, green-fronted lancebill and black phoebe — though we’re still holding out for our first torrent duck. Photographing these water-loving birds has been challenging and will hopefully be featured in a future blog post.

Despite the hard work involved, we really enjoyed our company from all over the world. We reveled in the opportunity to share our excitement and appreciation for the flora and fauna of the Neotropics and savored the challenge to cook three delicious meals a day for up to five people at a time. Best of all, we made some new friends!

Marc & Eliana with Belgian visitors, Lore and Joost, and their South America touring camper van

Eliana (middle), with Nicolas and Lea from Tahiti, excited after spotting a golden-headed quetzal on the trails

Jane (England), Eliana, and Skye (Australia) catch a glimpse of morning sun — a precious commodity in the montane cloud forest!

It’s great to hear positive feedback on the reserve and that our efforts are really appreciated! A few recent quotes from the Las Tangaras guestbook:

And now for some down time… Eliana has discovered her favorite place to relax and photograph — the bridge over the Nambillo River. Hasta luego!

Marc & Eliana

The biggest event of July at Reserva Las Tangaras was the arrival of Dr Dusti Becker and a team of volunteers who flew down from North America for a short season of birding at the equator. For Jo and I the arrival of these guys was even better than suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a mixed flock of tanagers on a forest trail in the shafts of morning sunlight.

New mattresses arrive by mule for nesting birders

Larry liberates a bird

Dr Dusti Becker helps me band a bird

For two weeks the cabin and trails at Reserva Las Tangaras were full of new friends, laughter, songs to Larry’s guitar, and discussion, especially about birds. Our days began alarmingly early at around 4:30. Beams of headlamps swept around the cabin as people dressed and made their way from the communal sleeping quarters, downstairs to breakfast by candlelight. Two Ecuadorian couples regularly help Dusti with birding research. The men, Pascual and Mauricio are experts at handling birds, while the women, Jessica and Alicia are experts at feeding people and keeping houses in order amidst their families, or birders.

Boys watching birds

Jheri bands with guidance from Mike

Kevin prepares to release a flighty friend

Still before dawn we packed up our snacks, donned our rubber boots and walked out into the reserve to open mist nets just in time to catch early birds, but not so early as to catch too many little furry, leathery, sharp-toothy bats. Captured birds were released from the tangled locations in 30 nets every half hour, until we closed the nets in the warmth of the day, an hour before noon. Placed in cotton bags the birds were returned to banding stations where we recorded species, ages, sexes, all manner of measurements and the presence of any ectoparasites. Birds without leg bands were given them, each with individual numbers, and previously banded birds had their numbers noted. The object of the ongoing research (since 2005) at Las Tangaras is to gain longitudinal information about the composition of bird communities at several established sites on the forest edge and in the deeper forest within the reserve.

Jo (right) learns from Alison

Checking the T-shirt for accuracy with a real-live Golden Tanager

Callie measures a Trogon. Photo by Kevin Shaw

On one day of banding the birding team was visited by a group of teenagers travelling with National Geographic Student Expeditions. Many were fascinated by the up-close contact with birds that the banding experience provides.

Pascual with members of the National Geographic Student Expedition. Photo by Kevin Shaw

For Jo and I birding and banding with birders has been a lot of fun. We’ve learned to recognise the songs of several species in the forest around us and we have closely observed and handled many species. They have now become much better-known neighbours.

Morphometrics with Mike

Bagged birds await banding

Beryl-spangled Tanager in hand

While our highlight for the month was definitely the half of it that we spent with the birding crew, July at the reserve was also busy in other respects. Jo managed the construction of a new shower, floor and wall in the bathroom of the cabin. A new septic pond was constructed after the existing one choked on its substantial contents. I walked all of the reserve’s trails with a GPS unit to create a new map and Jo’s new flyers advertising the reserve were printed in Quito and we began distributing them in Quito and Mindo. Time for us at the reserve has flown, like the departing North Americans. We are determined to make the most of our final few weeks here.

Left to right; Mike, Larry, Dusti, Alicia, Kevin, Mauricio, Hamish, Pascual, Jessica, Alison, Callie, Jo, Jheri and Sarah. Thanks for the fun!

The forest canopy over the reserve provides requirements for niches of numerous plant and animal species. We’re frequently straining to spot a small bird calling high in the foliage or admiring a tree festooned in a hanging garden of epiphytes. Walking along the trails, particularly in previously disturbed forest, we are sometimes stopped suddenly as something big crashes through the leaves overhead – a monkey, a guan? Falling down through the layers of forest it is a cecropia leaf 60cm across, palmate like a hand, with a long heavy stem that makes the leaf plummet like a stick. The plants and animals become familiar to us.

Cecropia tree

Looking up

Heliconia leaves

Distinctive melastome venation

Aroid or triffid?

Over the canopy from the entrance trail

In June we recorded 132 mm of rain, less than one fifth of the quantity that fell in May. As the season changes many canopy trees and vines, epiphytes, shrubs and herbs are flowering more prolifically than they did the month before. This reproductive effort is a boon to insects and birds whose niche includes collecting payments of nectar from flowers in return for pollination services. This month the hummingbirds have found more nectar all over the forest so the feeders at the front deck of the cabin are relatively less attractive to them. The regular rush of this bar’s happy hour that Jo records at the end of the each day has been quiet, a little bit lonely.

Nambillo River rapids bonier than last month

Heliconia bracts

Rūb in flower with pollinating wasp

Delicate gesnarian flower

Evening light

One morning Jo found clear cat prints along the beginning of the Quetzales trail. Our guest Danielle later found more of the same prints treading up and down new steps at the top of the trail in the freshly disturbed soil. After some research they concluded that the prints belonged to either an ocelot or a jaguarondi – quite big cats! Exciting. On our next visit to town we bought a chicken leg for bait and a stack of D-sized batteries to power up the reserve’s boxy camera trap with its bright flash and motion sensor. Every evening for about two weeks I put out the camera and the increasingly foul-smelling chicken leg. The results: no cat. Only gangs of tank-like scarab beetles chomped great holes in the chicken leg and they were joined at the feast by primitive carrion beetles, large butterflies and of course, flies. Scarabs have become favourites among the insects at the reserve with their animated antennae, shiny VW exteriors, trundling progress when walking and surprising flight. Amongst the most entertaining characters were a tiny dung beetle in metallic-green rolling a ball of precious poo along a trough of corrugated iron and a massive 41 mm beetle who had hidden on the forest floor. As for the cat, it wasn’t so surprising that it didn’t show for the photo shoot given that they range over a large territory. Jo found more of the same prints several weeks later on the other side of the reserve.

Cat print

Scarabs on drumstick

Giant scarab beetle

July is holiday season both in Ecuador and in the USA, so Mindo and Reserva Las Tangaras will become busier with keen bird watchers. Dr Dusti Becker will bring a team of birding volunteers for two weeks from the middle of the month. We’re looking forward to learning masses of ornithological facts and bird-researching skills from these avian enthusiasts as well as chatting about their experiences of home and travel. It promises to be a great month at Las Tangaras.

Hi there! My name’s Hamish. Jo and I are from New Zealand and we’re managing Las Tangaras until late August. We first heard about the reserve around 18 months ago when we were in a tramping hut (that’s Kiwi for “trekking cabin”) in Arthur’s Pass in New Zealand’s South Island where we met Bex, who managed the reserve in 2011. It’s great to now be here ourselves!

Corey, Niki, Jo and Hamish

We arrived to a warm welcome from Corey and Niki, who introduced us to some of their favourite locals, made us beds and dinner and showed us how things work around the reserve. They had recently re-named trails in the reserve at Dusti’s suggestion. Niki chose names from birds she had seen on each trail so we now have ‘Los Tucanes’, ‘Los Colibríes’, ‘Los Momotos’, ‘Los Patos’ and ‘Los Quetzales’. The ‘Bosque’ and ‘Gallo de la Peña’ trails remain unchanged. The day after we arrived Danielle also came to the reserve. She’s a Californian who has been studying in Quito for a semester and is staying with us for five weeks, doing research on hummingbird interactions, amongst other things, as part of her studies for her college in Maine.

Danielle

For me, living here is a remarkable opportunity. Tropical forests with their enormous species richness continue to be cut and compromised all around the girth of our planet. As a global community we lose the contained biodiversity forever. I think part of the reason why tropical forests continue to be eroded so quickly is that most people have no way of relating with them or their inhabitants and therefore have little reason and unclear means to conserve them. Most of us don’t consider tropical forests in our day-to-day lives. So I’ve often wondered, what are valid ways for those of us who normally live in cities or closer to the poles to personally relate with tropical forests?

In flower

Jo and I are excited about our stay in the 50 hectare Reserva Las Tangaras on the edge of a 19 200 hectare forest reserve called Bosque Protector Mindo-Nambillo. Part of the excitement for me is getting to know a few of the animal and plant species in the brilliant display of life here. People attach names and therefore importance to the species they relate with. Reserva Las Tangaras has a small library of great guidebooks to the names and human uses for many plants and animals in South American topical forests. So we are reading and looking and learning every day.

Neglected 88

Jo has taken a shine to the hummingbirds and has become the best at identifying them. About twelve species commonly visit the feeders at the front deck of the house we live in. Jo frequently informs them that “You are all beautiful!” Here in the cloud forest on the shoulder of the Andes there are much greater numbers and diversity of these stunning little birds than down in the rain forest of the Amazonian lowlands to the east.

Green-crowned wood nymph

I’m getting a handle on identifying plant families as we maintain trails around the reserve. I’m fascinated to learn how many members of these groups my community and I back in New Zealand use daily as food and medicine. Strange, beautiful insects and myriapods walk, eat, hunt and find mates all over the assorted foliage in the reserve and I have enjoyed photographing these over the last couple of weeks. For three months Jo and I get to relate closely with this patch of tropical forest as managers of the reserve. Maybe our new understanding of the inhabitants can also sustain a longer-term relationship with and appreciation for their home. Maybe our means to conservation from afar could be in supporting others who conserve reserves or in encouraging others to undertake eco-tourism in places like Mindo, Ecuador, so that locals more highly value the biodiversity on their doorsteps.

Bright-eyed orthopteran

Peppermint and bronze weevil with mauve dancing shoes

Insex

Millipede

Gumboot-residing orthopteran

The sun has been sparkling through blue skies in the mornings here, almost, but not quite enough sun to dry the clothes and linen we wash by hand. The forest cloud and afternoon rain enable lush vegetation to grow outside the house and moulds to establish on neglected surfaces within. We carry machetes on every walk to clear vegetation from trails. On the steep, slippery parts of wet tracks we build steps from fallen logs and drift wood collected from the edge of the Nambillo River. The smaller tributary that is the source of our water is a beautiful series of cascades and pools that support dippers, insects and tiny, exquisite frogs. The stream also frequently rejects the water pipe that carries water to the house, thereby necessitating frequent admiring or disgruntled visits by the inhabitants of the house to re-establish the flow. In Ecuador this cloud forest to the west of the Andes is currently transitioning from the wet season to the dry, so we are seeing more and more sunshine as the days go by, making this is a great time to visit! There’s even a chance of spotting Ecuadorian white fronted capuchins – we’ve seen them twice near the house this week. The trees here are home and life for those primates so they don’t think about the validity of their relationships with tropical forest!

Red-spotted glass frog

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.