Cloud Forest Explorer
A 7 night photographic journey visiting the best bird photography sites in the Cloud Forest of the Andes lowlands in beautiful Ecuador. Every day is packed seeing and photographing stunning colourful species. Highlights will include fun hummingbird gardens that are literally buzzing with activity, busy lodge feeding sites, cock of the rock leks, friendly toucans including the Yellow Throated and the stunning Mountain Toucan plus all manner of colourful birds. We will stay in rustic comfortable lodges with great food and top guiding. All under the tuition and inspiration of Andy Rouse and his expert local team.
Safari Overview
Dates: June 3rd to 13th 2024
Price: £6995
Availability: 7 / 7
Cloud Forest - This tour is for those clients who do not have the time for the full tour but want to get great pictures and a flavour of the wonderful country of Ecuador. We will spend our time at three lovely lodges in the Cloud Forest, a stunning habitat that is just dripping with moss and lichen everywhere you look.
We will concentrate on the local toucans / toucanets / hummingbirds / flower piercers and numerous colourful Tanagers that visit local feeding sites and our lodge platforms. We may get Trogons, MotMots, cuckoos and all manner of extras as well. We will also visit at least one and maybe two Cock of the Rock lek for an experience you will never forget, check the image out below of this magnificent bird. Our Ecuador tour has no fixed daily itinerary so we will go where the best species are at the time, we have multiple choices of places to go for each day.
Flexibility - the thing that I love about Ecuador is the flexibility. We have no set plans at any of the lodges. Instead we have a variety of things that we can do, depending on the weather, the fitness of the group and the feeding behaviour at the time. So the ideas above and throughout this brochure are some of the exciting options that myself and my guide team will choose at the time, thus ensuring you have the best possible chances of great photos and experiences.
Guides - You will have Andy with you at all times to help you use your cameras to the best of your ability. He will both challenge and inspire you. Suzie will be there too as a superb spotter, another camera assistant and to provide her LightRoom processing expertise to anyone that needs it. Working alongside Andy will be his superb local birding guide and lodge owner Luis, who will handle all the fieldcraft elements of the trip. In short you have a very dynamic team!!!
Fitness Rating - This tour is as easy or as hard as you want to make it. All of our lodges have spectacular birds visiting them from special observation decks so if you want to then you can stay right here and get awesome pics. We have had several clients do that in the past and it works out great. For the excursions, they range from a slight 100m uphill walk to the mountain toucan site, or a 20 minute downhill walk to the cock of the rock site to a more difficult 1 hour walk to the Umbrella bird lek. All tours outside the lodges are optional and can be managed by anyone with average fitness. You will carry your own kit throughout.
Health - it is essential that you read carefully the Health and Fitness / Who Should Come on this Tour sections below as this tour will not suit everyone. As always we tell you the truth about everything ahead of time with no flannel!
Hummingbird Gardens
Hummingbirds are simply adorable and you will fall in love with them. The usual problem is that they are tough to photograph, well not with us! We will have many opportunities to photograph beautiful hummingbirds at multiple locations, all of them are completely relaxed and exclusive to us on the day.
All of our hummingbird photography will use natural light, there will be no flash setups. At some sites we will be photographing the hummingbirds feeding on clumps of flowers, at others we will provide naturally occurring flowers so you can get some iconic isolated feeding images.
Trust me you will come away with amazing hummingbird images!
You will love your interaction with hummingbirds, I could list all the species but it's pointless here as there are so many, the highlights will be the Swordbill, the Sylph, Trainbearer, Booted Racket-tail and Sparkling Violetears. Just know you will get a LOT of beautiful hummingbirds as I will be there to help you every single second!
Lodges and feeders
So that is hummingbirds covered. Now in the Cloud Forest we will be spending a lot of time photographing the species that come to the lodges. That's right, we don't have to move. All the lodges have custom built photography decks where you can literally have breakfast and take pictures without moving location! It means you can have your laptop setup there too and shoot in a very relaxed way. It's so much fun. One lodge has three different decks for photography which are amazing.
So what kind of species visit the decks? Well all kinds of toucans, toucanets, lots of Tanagers and other colourful jobbies plus lovely coloured birds like the toucan barbets you see here. There will be combination of perches that we supply and natural perches too, everything will be shot in natural light.
For some special species, like the plate billed mountain toucan and toucan barbet we will use local friends that have great feeding sites, plus we have a host of plan B options too as we have a large network. So you will always have great choices.