The road that goes up into the hills is actually called San Lorenzo Road but it is also called the Waterfall Trail because of the hikes in the area to various waterfalls. There is also a zipline company operating here. You can walk from Mindo town if you are fit and keen, otherwise a taxi can drop you at the birding place and you can walk down the hill. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the drop off place but there is a fork from the side of the road about 2-3km up the hill leading to a farm.
We birded this area twice. The first day was with one of the best bird guides in Mindo – Alex Luna. The second day we went back on our own as Alex was booked that day to try again for Rose-faced Parrots.
The weather plays a huge part in how lucky you will get. So you can imagine I wasn’t thrilled with this kind of fog!
This is the entrance to San Lorenzo Road. Keep driving a few km, look for a fork leading to a farm on your right, then jump out and start birding.
Here’s some shots from Day 1. Alex tried his best but the weather was working against us. We did get some Red-billed Parrots, Bronze-winged Parrots, Collared Aracari, Choco Toucan and some beautiful Tanagers but the photos didn’t come out.
Here’s some shots from Day 2. This time the weather was slightly better, the fog lifted earlier and we hung around until 9:30. The Rose-faced Parrots finally did show up but it was closer to 9am when they did and they hung around quite a while so we got to spend some quality time watching them. We also saw Red-billed Parrots, a quick fly-by of Maroon-tailed Parakeets and a lot more! I tried to keep the photos together but we were using 2 cameras – a Canon 60D & a Nikon Coolpix P900 (the one with 83x zoom).
This is Alex Luna, the wonderful birding guide in Mindo. You can contact him by email ayalu_82@hotmail.com if you would like to organize a trip with him. He speaks English very well, knows all the birds and if you have target birds, he will do all he can to make sure you see them (though he can’t do anything about the weather)!
