January 7-16, 2025 with Jesse Fagan & local guide Oscar (and Wilson)
This was an enjoyable tour filled with lots of birds and critters, plus exceptional accommodations and food in a “remote” Amazonian lodge. It is hard to beat tours with so many birds where you can stay in one spot. This tour has some unique experiences, too. Sacha Lodge has four 40+ meter towers for canopy birding, creeks to explore by canoe, and the Napo River with several active clay licks. Every day offered something different!
Our group met up in Quito at our comfortable hotel located near the international airport. We headed off the next morning on a short flight to the energetic town of Coca located in the Amazonian lowlands. We rendezvoused in the Sacha office in town where we organized our gear and grabbed life jackets for the 2-hour boat trip down the Napo River to Sacha. The Napo River is one of the largest Amazonian tributaries, and the largest river in Ecuador, so there was a lot of commercial activity on the river to begin with, but this slowly quieted as we descended further. We eventually disembarked and hiked approximately 25 minutes to a small dock where we loaded into small canoes for the 20-minute paddle to our destination. As the lodge came into view, we heard the barks of Giant River Otters and Lesser Kiskadees called from the edges. This pattern of loading into canoes for short forays into the forest would be a common theme for us over the next week.
On our first full day we hiked to the towers with a canopy walkway and spent nearly the entire morning at Tower 2. There are very few birding experiences like this one, dawn over the Amazonian rainforest and most birds at or below eye level. We quickly ticked off new birds like Plum-throated Cotinga, Pied and White-necked puffbirds, White-eared Jacamar and Golden-collared Toucanet. The tower was perfect for those large canopy birds where we could properly scope them and take lots of photographs. We lunched like royalty along the lakeshore (the buffet meals were a big hit), had a nice siesta during the heat of the day, then went back out in the late afternoon to enjoy Anaconda Creek. The canoe trips down Anaconda and Orquedia creeks were a fun way to enjoy interior forest birds, while keeping to the shade and cooler temperatures. We did find a couple of Green Anacondas, coiled up and not doing a whole lot, and killer looks at Orange-crowed Manakin, a limited range species, Black-banded Woodcreeper, and Dot-backed Antbird. There was also a cool Cordyceps silk spider frozen in place; indeed, it was white like ice!
Another day we headed down the Napo River to visit several of the famous clay licks, most of which are located within the Yasuni National Park. The first clay lick was typical of licks found throughout many of the large Amazonian tributaries: a muddy exposed clay embankment. As we arrived in our boat, we could see the surrounding trees full of parrots and parakeets. The dominant species was Mealy Parrot with a good number of Yellow-crowned and the smaller Cobalt-winged Parakeets mixed in. There were hundreds if not several thousand individuals all cackling and screeching from their perches. There was a sense of building urgency as a few birds and small groups came down to inspect the clay. After 20 minutes or so, and without warning to us, the birds began to descend and cover nearly the entire embankment. Other species arrived, like Dusky-headed Parakeets and Blue-headed Parrots, and it was nearly impossible to tell the forest from the embankment, the green continued all the way down to the river’s edge. The second lick we visited was very different, but equally impressive. The second lick is tucked deep within the forest and managed by the Ananga Community. The community has constructed a covered viewing area where we could comfortably sit and wait for birds to visit the water drip. In this case, the two prominent species were Cobalt-winged Parakeets and Scarlet Macaws, with a few Orange-eared Parrots thrown in for good measure. Eventually, all three species dropped down, feeding together and drinking from the rich mineral waters.
We returned to the Napo River to visit one of the larger river islands where a special group of birds has adapted to living in natural second-growth habitats that are continuously changing due to flooding events. These are species that are found in deep saw grass, small forest patches, edge, and along sandy riverbanks. Birding this type of habitat is tough. It involved some machete work, getting our boots muddy, swatting small sand flies, and sweating in the exposed sun, but it paid off. After a full morning here we headed back to the lodge having seen several of the targets including Gray-breasted Crake, Black-and-white Antbird, Parker’s, White-bellied, and Dark-breasted spinetails, and Fuscous Flycatcher. In the afternoon, we visited another tower located in the crown of a giant Ceiba tree (or Kapok). The “Kapok Tower” is over 40 meters tall and has a 360-degree view of the surrounding forest canopy. While here we had some of our best views of Cream-colored Woodpecker, Chestnut-eared Aracari, Opal-crowned Tanager, Yellow-bellied Dacnis, and Bare-necked Fruitcrow. We stayed until sunset on our final evening, watching the sun dip below the distant horizon as the first stars, moon, and planets began to appear, Venus and Jupiter shining brightly in the night sky. Just at dusk we heard the first chortles of a Short-tailed Nighthawk and watched it dance around the Kapok tree before settling on a large horizontal branch just within feet of our heads. It sat for some time here, calling occasionally, and eventually was joined by its mate on the branch. Together they angled off into the darkness. It was a new experience for all of us, including the guides, and it ended up being the perfect way to cap off our visit here in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Check out the CRITTER LIST:
MAMMAL LIST
Northern Black-eared Opossum (Didelphis marsupialis)
Proboscis Bat (Rhynchonycteris naso)
Northern Pygmy Marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea) = Very cool seeing this species a short distance walk from the lodge. The biologists here had been monitoring them for some time, and we lucked out seeing them feeding on tree sap on the side of a large tree.
Black-mantled Tamarin (Saguinus nigricollis)
Guianan Squirrel Monkey (Saimiri sciureus) = The dominant primate species in the forest around Sacha, sometimes in large troops of dozens of individuals.
Spix's Night Monkey (Aotus vociferans) = Hanging out in a tree cavity near the mariposaria.
Red-bellied Titi (Plecturocebus moloch) = We eventually spotted them in the scope from Tower 2, but hear them quite frequently.
Colombian Red Howler (Alouatta seniculus)
White-fronted Capuchin (Cebus albifrons)
Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus) = Mostly just balls of hair in a Cecropia tree.
Black Agouti (Dasyprocta fuliginosa)
Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) = At least one family group was a regular visitor to the blackwater lake in front of the lodge.
OTHER STUFF
Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus)
Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) = A lifer critter for most everyone in the canoe. We saw two relatively small ones (2 meters?) coiled up along the Orquedia Creek bank.
Northern Caiman Lizard (Dracaena guianensis) = The large “monitor” lizard we saw along the creek.
Yellow-headed Sideneck (Podocnemis unifilis) = The small turtles in the pond in front of the dining area.
South American Common Toad (Rhinella margaritifera)
Yellow-banded Pinktoe Tarantula (Avicularia juruensis) = A large one was hanging out inside a banana plant near the mariposaria. Jesse also had a smaller one behind the numbered sign on his door!
Cordyceps fungis = We saw two examples of this: one zombie spider and another zombie bullet ant (Paraponera clavata).
Tityus bastosi = The scorpion we found along the trail during our nightbirding.
Thanks again to this group for choosing Field Guides. I really enjoyed my time with you in the field and hope to see you again on another trip very soon. All the best birding in 2025 and beyond.
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/323267
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/sac25aTRIPLIST.pdf
Jesse Fagan (aka Motmot) from Lima, Peru