Birding Ecuador 2011 4k, Part 10: Yunguilla, Umbrellabird Lodge & Buenaventura NP (Feb 15 feb)

We left the hotel in Cuenca early, for a dawn arrival to Yunguilla. Target Bird there is the Pale-headed Brushfinch, and after some waiting one individual made very fast pop-up, before vanishing again.
Other birds spotted were Rufous-chested Tanager, Grey-browed Brushfinch, Slate-throated Whitestart, Golden Grosbeak, Dusky-capped Flycatcher, Crimson-mantled Woodpecker and a very distand Smoky-brown Woodpecker.
Of course I saw a handfull new butterflies as well :-)
We had lunch in Santa Isabel, then started an adventureous car trip towards Buenaventura, thanks to a large landslide area that had moved a long stretch of road to somewhere it wasn't supposed to be.
We made gingerly made it past the slide, and stopped for a short legstretcher, that added Peruvian Meadowlark, Vermilion Flycatcher and Dull-colored Grassquit to our birdlist.
Legstretcher over we contiuned along the road that wasn't totally untouched by landslide, but it was mostly OK albeit very narrow at some places. Since we transversed the whole stretch without any accident, we quite enjoyed the trip and I filmed a large part of it.
Anyway, eventually we arrived to Buenaventura appr 4 PM, thereby only 2 hours of daylight left of the day. Not that much, but we still added Fasciated Wren, Black-striped Sparrow and Yellow-bellied Seedeater to the list during the transport through the reserve to Umbrellabird Lodge. We checked in and settled in the restaurant for dinner, stakeouting the feeders while we waited.
New hummingbirds here are White-necked Jacobin, Brown Violetear, Long-billed Starthroat, Green Thorntail, Green-crowned Brilliant, Crowned Woodnymph (ssp hypochlora "Emerald-bellied Woodnymph"), Violet-bellied Hummingbird and White-vented Plumeleteer.
On the driveway up to our cabin we got a new warbler, as well: Buff-rumped Warbler. I even got a half-decent photo, which I didn't have before :-)

[@joanhuggett5164]

Oh my! This one was intrepid and I really did enjoy the ride through the landslide area. The hummingbirds at the feeder was a beautiful sight... gorgeous birds.
Thank you Pia for sharing all your trips on YT. What a lot of editing work, amazing really.

[@Hummingbirder1]

Hi Joan! I'm so glad you appreciate my re-edited Ecuador trip, I'm a bit proud of it, to be honest 🙂
When writing this it's Monday morning Nov 11 in Australia, and we're waking up in the motel room in Raymonds Terrace (close to Newcastle).
Today will be a tedious day of work, driving south to, and through, Sydney for our last night in Australia. There will be no birding done today, we had our last birding done yesterday, while driving south from Bellbrooke to Raymonds Terrace. We actually found one last Lifer! That was the Variegated Fairywren, which made us very happy.
We're a bit impatient to get the last leg of the trip done now, this is the tedious part. I'm also impatient to start the photo work and searching for ID on our butterflies and the few lizards we saw. No snakes...