Custom and Set-Departure Bird & Wildlife Tours Around the World
Ecuador: Quito - Single Day Tours
Tour Overview:
Many people arrange their own trips to Ecuador, to visit the Galapagos, Amazon or Andes, and then find themselves with single days to fill. These day trips have been designed to fill in those gap days. Tropical Birding have a series of guides based in Ecuador and are connected to a network of guides in country, so usually have people available for these single day tours.
These day trips from the Ecuadorian capital Quito highlight some of the key sites that you can visit in a single day tour. The sites can be visited for birders, looking to see the most species, for Birders With a Camera, looking to see plenty of species and photograph them too, or Photographers looking to focus on shooting a selection of photogenic species only. If you are interested in any of these, please contact the office and we can doctor the day to suit your individual needs. They can be taken by advanced and beginner birders/photographers alike. All of the trips, except trip 5, include visits to sites with hummingbird feeders. It should be noted, if you have more than one day, it is recommended that you spend a night or more at Tandayapa Bird Lodge, where some of these and others sites can be covered better over several days, in order to expand the possibilities of what you can see or photograph. If you wish to see some of the options for several day tours in Ecuador, please check out the Tandayapa Bird Lodge packages.
Tour 1: The High Andes - Antisana
This is one of the most popular day trips, as it combines easy birding in the open grasslands of the high Andes, with some of the most dramatic landscapes close to Quito. While the birding is at high altitude, at around 3800m/12,470ft, this is done along paved roads, at slow pace, with only short walks from the vehicle, and is therefore not physically challenging. Birding will be in high grasslands, known as paramos, and lunch will be taken at a local café with hummingbird feeders in the garden, and views of the Andean Condor roosting cliffs nearby. On clear days, amazing views of the 5,753m/18,875ft-high Antisana Volcano are possible too. This day trip offers some of the easiest birding of all the day trips, and along with Papallacta some of the best scenery of them all.
Target Species:
Andean Condor (this is Ecuador’s most reliable site for the species), Variable Hawk, Black-faced Ibis (one of the only sites in the country for this species), Carunculated Caracara, Andean Lapwing, Andean Gull, Silvery Grebe, Andean Teal, Andean Duck, Ecuadorian Hillstar, Giant Hummingbird, Shining Sunbeam, Tyrian Metaltail, Black-tailed Trainbearer, Chestnut-winged and Stout-billed Cinclodes, Plain-capped Ground-Tyrant, and Plumbeous Sierra-Finch.
Tour Information:
Pick-up Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30am - 6:00am)
Drop-off Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30pm - 6:00pm)
Included Meals: Lunch
Also Included: Bird/Photo guide (with spotting scope for birding trips), transport with a local, licensed tourist driver, checklist to keep track of your records.
*Note: If focused on birding (over photography), then BINOCULARS are an essential item. If you do not have a pair, then please contact the Tropical Birding office in order to hire a pair for the day.
Tour 2: Papallacta and Guango Lodge
Our second high Andean site, Papallacta combines a visit to the wet high Andean paramo grasslands around Papallacta Pass with a visit to a cloudforest lodge lower down for a heady selection of hummingbirds. Lunch will be taken at Guango Lodge, surrounded by hummingbirds. Even though the altitudes reached on this day are high, they can all be reached by car, and little walking is required at the highest points. Altitudes between 2700-4200m/8860-13,780ft may be reached on this day (the higher parts are optional). This reaches wetter and higher altitude paramo than at Antisana, offering some alternative species, like Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, Blue-mantled Thornbill and others not possible/unlikely on the Antisana day trip, and a different selection of hummingbirds. On clear days, this Papallacta day trip offers some awesome views of the surrounding volcanos and high Andean landscapes.
Target Species:
Rufous-bellied Seedsnipe, Torrent Duck, Blue-mantled Thornbill, Tourmaline Sunangel, White-bellied Woodstar, Chestnut-breasted Coronet, Collared Inca, Sword-billed Hummingbird, Long-tailed Sylph, Tyrian Metaltail, Tawny Antpitta, Many-stripe Canastero, Andean Tit-Spinetail, Turquoise Jay, Mountain Cacique and White-capped Dipper.
Tour Information:
Pick-up Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30am - 6:00am)
Drop-off Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30pm - 6:00pm)
Included Meals: Lunch
Also Included: Bird/Photo guide (with spotting scope for birding trips), transport with a local, licensed tourist driver, checklist to keep track of your records.
*Note: If focused on birding (over photography), then BINOCULARS are an essential item. If you do not have a pair, then please contact the Tropical Birding office in order to hire a pair for the day.
Tour 3: Tandayapa Bird Lodge and Valley
This tour visits one of the longest established cloudforest lodges in Ecuador, the Tandayapa Bird Lodge, situated within the rich cloudforests of the Tandayapa Valley, a mere 90-minute drive from the capital. Over 400 species have been recorded in the valley, with tanagers, hummingbirds particularly well represented. This is one of Ecuador’s most popular birding sites, with variation in species mix from the lodge, situated in the lower valley at 1750m/5740ft to the upper valley at 2300m/7545ft, even though they are only 6 miles apart from each other. We will spend time birding the lower and upper sections of the valley to gain a varied species mix, taking lunch at the lodge alongside hundreds of individual hummingbirds of a dozen or more species.
Target Species:
Violet-tailed Sylph, Purple-throated Woodstar, Andean Emerald, Buff-tailed Coronet, Brown Violetear, Booted Racket-tail, Purple-bibbed Whitetip, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Fawn-breasted Brilliant, Masked Trogon, Crimson-rumped Toucanet, Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan, Toucan Barbet, Rufous Motmot, White-tailed Tyrannulet, Slate-throated Redstart, Blue-winged Mountain-Tanager, Golden, Black-capped, Golden-naped, and Beryl-spangled Tanagers. This day trip offers the highest number of species of any of the day trips, and is the longest of the day trips offered here.
Tour Information:
Pick-up Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30am - 6:00am)
Drop-off Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30pm - 6:00pm)
Included Meals: Lunch
Also Included: Bird/Photo guide (with spotting scope for birding trips), transport with a local, licensed tourist driver, checklist to keep track of your records.
*Note: If focused on birding (over photography), then BINOCULARS are an essential item. If you do not have a pair, then please contact the Tropical Birding office in order to hire a pair for the day.
Tour 4: Zuroloma and Yanacocha
Just an hour or so out of Quito are the Andean cloudforest reserves of Zuroloma and Yanacocha. Set at higher elevations (at around 3500m/11,480ft) than the Tandayapa Valley cloudforests, the bird list is very different from there. These two sites both have hummingbird feeders and fruit feeders, which add to the birding experience, which will also involve some trail walking within the cloudforest on a flat trail, searching for mixed feeding flocks of Andean songbirds. Lunch will be taken at the small café within Yanacocha Reserve, run by a local NGO, the Jocotoco Conservation Foundation, which has been working tirelessly, and successfully, to preserve many forested birding areas throughout Ecuador.
Target Species:
Andean Guan, Buff-winged Starfrontlet, Shining Sunbeam, Great Sapphirewing, Sword-billed Hummingbird, Tyrian Metaltail, Sapphire-vented Puffleg, Golden-breasted Puffleg, Brown-bellied Swallow, White-banded Tyrannulet, Black-crested Warbler, Spectacled Redstart, Superciliaried Hemispingus, Yellow-breasted Brushfinch, Masked and Glossy Flowerpiercers, and Scarlet-bellied and Black-chested Mountain-Tanagers.
Tour Information:
Pick-up Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30am - 6:00am)
Drop-off Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30pm - 6:00pm)
Included Meals: Lunch
Also Included: Bird/Photo guide (with spotting scope for birding trips), transport with a local, licensed tourist driver, checklist to keep track of your records.
*Note: If focused on birding (over photography), then BINOCULARS are an essential item. If you do not have a pair, then please contact the Tropical Birding office in order to hire a pair for the day.
Tour 5: JERUSALEM, LAGUNA SAN PABLO AND OTAVALO
This the most relaxed of our day trips combines visits to sites within the InterAndean Valley that divides the two chains of the Andes Mountains that run north south through the country, with a visit to an Andean market in Otavalo. If you are looking for a mix of culture and birds in a single day, this is perfect. At Jerusalem reserve, there is a strange mix of moist trees draped in lichen, with cacti in the same semi-arid area. After an early morning in this fascinating reserve, we shall After a few hours of birding here, we will carry on north to the town of Otavalo. We’ll break for lunch in a restaurant and visit its famous outdoor artisan market, one of the largest in the world, where locals sell handicrafts, sweaters, weavings, leather items, jewelry, artwork, and much more. In the afternoon, we’ll stop by the reed-fringed Laguna San Pablo in the shadow of the 19,000 ft Cayambe Volcano for some Andean waterbirds, and reed-dwelling species.
Target Species:
Yellow-billed Pintail, Andean Teal, Andean Duck, Purple-collared Woodstar, Slate-colored (Andean) Coot, the Ecuadorian subspecies of Virginia Rail, Sparkling Violetear, Black-tailed Trainbearer, Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, Vermilion Flycatcher, Subtropical Doradito, Scrub Tanager, Golden-rumped Euphonia, Band-tailed Sierra-Finch, Hooded Siskin
Tour Information:
Pick-up Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30am - 6:00am)
Drop-off Location: Any Quito hotel (usually around 5:30pm - 6:00pm)
Included Meals: Lunch
Also Included: Bird/Photo guide (with spotting scope for birding trips), transport with a local, licensed tourist driver, checklist to keep track of your records.
*Note: If focused on birding (over photography), then BINOCULARS are an essential item. If you do not have a pair, then please contact the Tropical Birding office in order to hire a pair for the day.
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