For an informative overview of all our Ecuador birding tours, see Ecuador: Field Guides Tours.

Tiny Ecuador, covering only 1.5 percent of South America's landmass, supports more than half its avifauna--about a sixth of the Earth's bird species! Its incredible avian diversity, totaling nearly 1600 species, is a direct reflection of its habitat diversity. Its two Andean cordilleras transect the equator and stretch from the humid Colombian Andes in the north to arid foothills and semi-desert in the southwest and to the upper Maranon valley in the southeast. The complex climatological interaction of the Andean massif with the cold Humboldt Current to the west and the moisture-laden trade winds to the east has fostered an incredible diversity of habitats in a very small space. Cactus-clad desert in the southwest gives way to some of the wettest of the world's rainforests just 200 miles to the north. Vast Amazonian rainforest of the Oriente lies but a few tens of miles from paramo grassland and glaciers at 20,000 feet!

Centered around the lush, forest-cloaked slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes, the world's stronghold for tanagers, hummingbirds, and antpittas, this birding tour visits both outer slopes of Ecuador's cordilleras, from paramo and treeline down to the rich upper tropical zone along the eastern base of the Andes and the tropical Choco lowlands in the northwest. We fly south to include fabulous Podocarpus National Park, itself spanning habitats from treeline to the tropical zone; El Cajas National Park in the paramo near Cuenca; and a nice sampling of the geographically restricted Tumbesian avifauna in the arid intermontane valleys near Loja.

A few of the 500 or so species we hope to see include Bearded Guan, Dark-backed Wood-Quail, Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, the rare and local White-necked Parakeet, Colombian Screech-Owl, the "San Isidro mystery owl," both Lyre-tailed and Swallow-tailed nightjars, Coppery-chested Jacamar, two quetzals, Lanceolated Monklet, three species of mountain-toucans, an amazing six to ten species of antpittas, including Yellow-breasted, White-bellied, Moustached, Giant, and Crescent-faced, Ocellated and Chusquea tapaculos, Elegant Crescent-chest, Club-winged Manakin, Scaled Fruiteater, Andean Cock-of-the-rock, Tit-like Dacnis, Giant Conebill, and Olive Finch. But the real showstopper is the almost constant procession of tanagers and hummingbirds (more than sixty species of each are realistically possible!), a truly dazzling array of gemlike beauties, some very scarce or threatened.

Would you like to extend your Ecuador visit with a day or more of additional birding or cultural options with a local guide? Check out the various possibilities on our Ecuador: Add to Your Tour! page.

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Combo Tours
If you would like a longer birding holiday, some departures of this tour may be combined with:
AMAZONIAN ECUADOR: SACHA LODGE