More birds of Manduriacu

Two of our most beautiful birds perching together. Orange-breasted Fruiteater (right) and Crested Quetzal (left) in our Manduriacu Reserve. Photo: Edison Ocaña (Aves Quito).

Yesterday I wrote about the exciting discovery of the Choco Vireo in our Manduriacu Reserve. Now I want to add a few of the other special birds that have recently been found there by our staff member José María Loaiza Bosmediano and others.  Certainly the most beautiful find is the Orange-breasted Fruiteater (Pipreola jucunda),  a Choco endemic found from 600m to 1900m on the western slope of the northern Andes. Though it has a narrow range, it is not yet endangered.

Orange-breasted Fruiteater in Mindo. Photo: Francesco Varonesi

Another special Choco endemic found in Manduriacu Reserve during the last Christmas Bird Count was the Long-wattled Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger). This relative of the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (the bird on our banner at the top of this page) is one of Ecuador’s strangest birds. The males gather at leks to display from special perches to attract females, making a weird display and a low mooing sound.

Long-wattled Umbrellabird in our Manduriacu Reserve. Photo: Edison Ocaña (Aves Quito).

Here are a few random YouTube videos of the bird’s display:

This is one of three species of Umbrellabird in the world.  Another species, the Amazonian Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus ornatus), lives in our Rio Anzu Reserve, while the third species, the Bare-necked Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus glabricollis), lives in Costa Rica and Panama.

Another fancy bird found during the Christmas bird count in the Manduriacu Reserve was the Choco Trogon (Trogon comptus), also called the Blue-tailed Trogon though that name is also applied to an Old World species.

Choco Trogon in our Manduriacu Reserve. Photo: Edison Ocaña (Aves Quito).

The quetzals are fancier relatives of the trogons. The Crested Quetzal (Pharomachrus antisianus) seen with the Orange-breasted Fruiteater in the picture at the head of this post, is one of the most beautiful of Ecuador’s birds, though it lacks the long tail of the Resplendant Quetzal of Central America. It occurs on both sides of the Andes; here is a photo by Roger Ahlman taken on the eastern slope of Ecuador at San Isidro Lodge:

Crested Quetzal, from San Isidro Lodge on the east slope. Photo: Roger Ahlman.

Manduriacu also has the Golden-headed Quetzal, Pharomachrus auriceps:

Golden-headed Quetzal. Photo by Roger Ahlman.

There are several toucan species at Manduriacu; one of my favorites is the Crimson-rumped Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus haematopygus):

My painting of a Crimson-rumped Toucanet.

 

The Purple Quail-Dove, Geotrygon purpurata, below, is another of the special Choco endemics of Manduriacu.  This species, like the Choco Vireo discussed yesterday, is classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List criteria. It is found only between 600m and 1100m, a range of elevations which is also one of the most heavily exploited by local people for logging and agriculture. The world population of this species is estimated to be only 600-1700 adults, making it more endangered than even the Choco Vireo, and probably more endangered than any other bird found in any of EcoMinga’s reserves. Jose Maria is monitoring a nest with a camera trap (photo below), so we might learn more about the biology of this rare species.

Camera trap photo of the Purple Quail-Dove at its nest in our Manduriacu reserve. Photo courtesy José María Loaiza Bosmediano.

Jose Maria included this note about the discovery of the nest photographed above:

“El  17 de noviembre, encontramos junto con Alejandro Naranjo  y Galo Pantoja (ex y actual guardaparque respectivamente), un nido activo de Geotrygon purpurata Purple Quial-Dove y/o Indigo-crowned Quail-Dove.

Increíblemente el nido está a tan sólo unos ocho metros del sendero que conduce a nuestra casa-refugio. Ésta es una especie de alto interés conservacionista pues es endémica de la región biogeográfica del Chocó y se encuentra amenazada de extinción en la categoría EN PELIGRO (EN) a nivel global. Aparentemente se trataría del primer encuentro del nido de está palomita; sin embargo estamos buscando información relacionada para corroborar éste dato. Por lo pronto hemos colocado una cámara trampa para monitorear todo el desarrollo y estamos muy ansiosos por saber lo que ocurrirá, esperamos también que los depredadores ¡no lo encuentren!

Nos hemos percatado que sólo hay un huevo de color blanco y al parecer será el único de la nidada. La estructura del nido es sencilla como se puede ver en la foto y está a un metro de altura desde el suelo.

La especie es mayormente terrestre y propia del interior de bosques muy húmedos y lluviosos en buen estado de conservación. …en Manduricu, el nido está casi en su límite máximo de distribución altitudinal (1100msnm).

Pronto tendremos más noticias al respecto y esperamos obtener buen material fotográfico y videos.”

Here is a YouTube video of the bird from “Un Poco del Choco”, a cloud forest reserve near San Miguel de los Bancos in Pichincha province, Ecuador:

The Purple Quail-Dove is closely related to the very similar Sapphire Quail-Dove of the eastern lowlands of Ecuador, on the other side of the Andes. The two species are believed to have split from each other about 1.2 million years ago; there are slight differences in song, plumage, and habitat (the Purple Quail-Dove is found only in foothills while the Sapphire Quail-Dove is found only in lowland forest, at least in Ecuador). They had been lumped into a single species after initially being described as separate species; the recent decision to re-separate them is based on the discussion presented here.

The full list of birds seen to date in Manduriacu is available online here.

Many thanks to Jose Maria, Edison, and Galo for the great work they have been doing in Manduriacu!

All of these birds, with the possible exception of the Purple Quail-Dove, should also be found in our Dracula Reserve.

Lou Jost, Fundacion Eco Minga

Rare Choco Vireo discovered at our Manduriacu Reserve

Choco Vireo in our Manduriacu Reserve. Video by Edison Ocaña.

The Choco Vireo (Vireo masteri)  is one of the rarest and most local of the bird species endemic to the Choco bioregion of western Colombia and northwest Ecuador. It was not discovered until 1991, when Paul Salaman (now CEO of Rainforest Trust, one of EcoMinga’s major funding partners) spotted and mist-netted it in a cloud forest in western Colombia. It was officially described and published in 1996 by Salaman and Gary Stiles, a pioneering Latin American ornithologist who has worked extensively in Costa Rica and Colombia. Tjhe vireo was later found in nearby northwestern Ecuador (Esmeraldas province) by Olaf Jahn, Byron Palacios, and Patricio Mena Valenzuela, and in 2010 another population was found in Ecuador’s Pichincha province by Dušan Brinkhuizen and Alejandro Solano-Ugalde. Like the Black Solitaire and a few other species, it appears to be found only in the wettest cloud forests in a narrow band of elevations (1100-1600m) in a badly deforested and fragmented landscape. It is now classified as Near Threatened in the IUCN Red List.

EcoMinga’s community relations specialist and noted ornithologist José María Loaiza Bosmediano (whose position exists thanks to a generous donation by Felipe Villamizar) recently organized a Christmas bird count in our Manduriacu Reserve in Imbabura province in western Ecuador. In the course of this event, he and his companions Edison Ocaña (Aves Quito) and Galo Pantoja (our reserve guard) discovered and filmed two individuals of the Choco Vireo in this reserve, the first record for Imbabura province! They also made still photos and recorded its call.

Choco Vireo (Vireo masteri) in our Manduriacu Reserve. Photo: Edison Ocaña.

The Manduriacu Reserve was begun by Sebastian Kohn, who recently gave his properties (about 400ha) to EcoMinga to manage. Our management is partly funded by the government’s SocioBosque program, which pays private individuals (but not foundations) to conserve their forest; Sebastian has enrolled his properties in this program and gives us all the money he receives from it.  When the program ends we will be given full title to the properties. One of the vireo sightings was in one of these properties.

Last year EcoMinga began a joint project with the IUCN-Netherlands under their “Small Grants for the Protection of Nature” program, sponsored by the Dutch National Postcode Lottery,  to purchase an additional 132ha to fill a strategic gap between our present Manduriacu properties. The vireo surely occupies this property as well. In addition the Centro de Rescate Ilitío and the Fundación Cóndor Andino have financed EcoMinga’s purchase of a neighboring lot where the second vireo was sighted. We hope to eventually grow this reserve to cover 1000ha.

The vireo sightings in this area are important because there are very few Ecuadorian records of the species in protected areas (though it should also be present in our Dracula Reserve in Carchi province). This discovery increases the odds that the species might be able to survive in the country in spite of the ongoing deforestation at these elevations.

Lou Jost, EcoMinga Foundation

Andean toad, thought to be extinct in Ecuador, has just been rediscovered in our Dracula Reserve!

Rhaebo colomai, a critically endangered species of Andean toad. This is the first individual found in Ecuador since 1984. Photo: Carolina Reyes-Puig.

A few weeks ago, at a major herpetology conference in Ecuador, our reserve manager Juan Pablo Reyes presented his recent work. After the conference his sister, herpetologist Carolina Reyes Puig from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, led a group of herpetologists from the Natural History Museum of London (Jeffrey Streicher, Mark Wilkinson, Gabriela Bittencourt Silva, Simon Maddock), and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (María Torres Sánchez)  on a field trip to our Dracula Reserve in northwestern Ecuador. The Natural History Museum group was primarily interested in caecilians, strange legless snakelike amphibians that are very poorly known.

A caecilian found by this group of scientists in the Dracula Reserve. Photo: Carolina Reyes-Puig.

While they were exploring our reserve mosaic, they found a fancy toad which Carolina immediately recognized as a species thought to be extinct in Ecuador, Rhaebo colomai! This species had been discovered near Chical, the town closest to our reserve, in 1983. It was last seen in Ecuador in 1984. Another population was discovered two years ago in nearby Colombia. It is classified as Critically Endangered in the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Here is an excerpt from a news item about this discovery, which just appeared in the Amphibian Survival Alliance newsletter:

An expedition in July 2017 found a small population in the Dracula Reserve, in the northwestern Andes of Ecuador. The expedition was carried out by scientists from the Laboratory of Terrestrial Zoology of University San Francisco de Quito USFQ, the Natural History Museum of London, and the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad INABIO.

“We found these little toads near streams of crystal clear water with lush surrounding vegetation. When we saw the first individual, we immediately knew that we were in front of a species thought extinct”, said Carolina Reyes-Puig, professor and researcher at University of San Francisco de Quito USFQ.

The Dracula Reserve is the only protected area in Ecuador that could maintain populations of this threatened species today. This reserve is managed by the Ecominga Foundation and is key for the conservation of not only amphibians but also other rare and threatened biodiversity, such as Dracula and Lepanthes orchids and Spectacled Bear.

This toad is the closest living relative of another “lost” species, Rhaebo olallai, which was rediscovered recently in our new Manduriacu Reserve. These discoveries are exciting news for conservation—they prove that the current mass extinctions affecting so many tropical amphibian species can sometimes leave pockets of survivors. If those pockets can be preserved, perhaps the species will survive. EcoMinga now protects the only known Ecuadorian habitats for both these Rhaebo species.

Rhaebo olollai from our Manduriacu Reserve. Photo: Ryan Lynch

We’d like to thank the School for International Training (SIT) for sponsoring Juan Pablo’s participation in the herpetology conference!

Lou Jost, EcoMinga Foundation.

 

 

 

Manduriacu Reserve from the air

In my last two posts (here and here) I discussed our new Manduriacu Reserve and its inhabitants. Today I present Sebastian Kohn’s drone video which shows the reserve from above. Note the high misty ridgeline in the background at around the 2:40 mark– the reserve extends to that ridgeline at around 2000m.

Thanks, Sebastian, for making this video!

Lou Jost
EcoMinga

Reserva Manduriacu desde el aire

En mis dos últimas publicaciones (aquí y aquí) discutí nuestra nueva Reserva Manduriacu y sus habitantes. Hoy presento el video en dron de Sebastián Kohn, el cual muestra la reserva desde arriba. Tenga en cuenta la línea de la cresta alta y brumosa en el fondo alrededor de la marca 2:40 – la reserva se extiende hasta esa línea de la cresta de alrededor de 2000 m. 

Gracias, Sebastián, por hacer este video
Lou Jost, Fundación EcoMinga

Traducción: Salomé Solórzano Flores