For now, though, let’s head
back to the main highway. Beyond
the Mindo turn-off on the main
western highway from Quito
to Puerto Quito, we move a bit
beyond our two-hour limit from
Quito. Here the land starts to dip
down toward the distant coast.
Just before you reach the bustling,
worn-looking town of Los Bancos, you can turn off onto a dirt
road that quickly brings you to
the Mindo Cloudforest Foundation’s (MCF’s) Milpe reserve.
This protected area offers a large
dose of foothill species at its feeders, among them green thorntail,
green-crowned brilliant, green-crowned woodnymph, and white-whiskered hermit.
If you return to the highway and
continue traveling west a few min-
utes, you reach Los Bancos. Make
sure not to blow past the Mirador
Río Blanco. This small restaurant
and hotel is a favorite stop for
visiting birders, who lunch while
watching the birds dine just outside
the windows. Tanagers, black-
cheeked woodpeckers, and some-
times crimson-rumped toucanets
and pale-mandibled araçaris pick
at bananas skewered to wooden
feeding tables. The hummingbird
feeders attract the thorntail, bril-
liant, and woodnymph also found
at Milpe. Another hour down the
highway, the MCF reserve Río
Silanche protects remnant lower
foothill forest. Hummers you can
see here include stripe-throated
hermit and blue-chested and pur-
ple-chested hummingbirds.
North of Quito
Now let’s head about an hour
north of Quito. Here the landscape
is dry and remains high. Mesquite-like trees, giant agave, and cacti
predominate, the trees strangely
festooned in moss nurtured by
nightly mist. Bosque Protector
(“Protected Forest”) Jerusalén sits
not far off the Pan-American Highway, and is perhaps the country’s
largest remaining high, dry forest.
This place reminds me of my past
adventures in southwestern Texas.
Vermilion flycatcher and Harris’s
hawk are common here, and some
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