Hummingbirds of Ecuador

 

Sparkling Violetear (Colibri coruscans).
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador. 

Diane and I recently participated in a ten-day birding trip to Ecuador with a group of 8 friends. Our tour started in the capitol city Quito, went above the tree line in the Andes to the tundra-like paramo habitat.  It then descended the eastern slope of the Andes to the cloud forest, then montane rainforest and finally into the rainforest of the Amazon Basin.  

This trip was arranged by Holbrook Travel and our guide Freddy and driver Kevin worked tirelessly to show us the unique and varied birdlife of Ecuador.  One of the most impressive groups of birds we saw was the hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds are found only in the New World, from Patagonia in southern South America to southern Alaska. They are small, fast and often brilliantly colored.  Of the approximately 360 species of hummingbirds about one third are found in Ecuador. 

The paramo of Ecuador is a tropical grassland that occurs above tree line starting at about 10,000 feet.  The bird diversity there is relatively low, but several hummingbirds thrive there. 

Tyrian Metaltail (Metallura tyrianthina).
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador. 

The tiny Tyrian Metaltail (Metallura tyrianthina) ranges from rainforest, up to the lower edges of the paramo.  This hummingbird has a short bill and in addition to inserting its beak into flowers to sip nectar they can pierce the base of long flowers and rob nectar without pollinating the plant. Tyrian Metaltails get their name from the metallic iridescence on their rumps and tails. 

 

Shining Sunbeam (Algaeactis cupripennis).
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador. 

Shining Sunbeam.
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador. 

The Shining Sunbeam (Aglaeactis cupripennis) is another small hummingbird of the lower reaches of the paramo and upper cloud forest.  These are rather dull by hummingbird standards, light brown and dark brown.  But when a male turns his back, his rump flashes violet, green and gold. 

 

Ecuadorean Hillstar (Oreotrichilius chimborazo).
Antisana National Park, Ecuador. 

Ecuadorean Hillstar.
Antisana National Park, Ecuador. 

Ecuadorean Hillstars (Oreotrochilius chimborazo) are found only at high altitude.  The males of this paramo specialist have a brilliant purple head, green back and a pure white breast marked by a vertical black line up the center.  Ecuadorean Hillstars, like all hummingbirds have a very high rate of metabolism and must constantly feed to survive.  The cold nighttime temperatures are a significant challenge to the Hillstars,  Their adaption to make it through the night is to lower their body temperature, heartrate and respiration rate to conserve energy until the sun rises.   

 

Giant Hummingbird (Patagona gigas).
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador.

Giant Hummingbird.
Tambor Condor Lodge, Ecuador. 

Giant hummingbirds (Patagona gigas) are largest of the world’s hummingbirds. They are about the size of a Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinals) and their wingbeat is so slow the wings are easily seen in flight.     

Sparkling Violetear.
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador.

Lesser Violetear (Colibri cyanotus).
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador.

Going down in elevation we left the paramo and entered the cloud forest.  The trees were festooned with bromeliads and mosses as the clouds running into the mountains left some of their abundant moisture.  Sparkling Violetears (Colibri coruscans) and Lesser Violetears (Colibri cyanotus) are common in the cloud forest.  The males of both species are metallic green and blue with violet ear patches. 

Gorgeted Woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor).
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador.

Immature Gorgeted Woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor).
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador.

The Gorgeted Woodstar (Chaetocercus heliodor) is a tiny hummingbird just a little bigger than a bumblebee.  They are found only in the highland forest of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador.  Males have a brilliant violet throat, and a green back.  The immature birds are green on the back with rich brown on the breast and rump.

 

Chestnut-breasted Coronet (Boissonneaua matthewsii).
Cabanas San Isidro, Ecuador. 

Chestnut-breasted Coronets fighting. 
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador. 

Chestnut-breasted Coronets (Boissonneaua matthewsii) are green on the back with a rich brown breast. Males and females have similar plumage.  They are found in the cloud forests of the northern Andes.  

  

Male Peruvian Racket-tail (Ocreatus peruanus).
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador. 

Female Peruvian Racket-tail.
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador. 

The Peruvian Racket-tail (Ocreatus peruanus) is a small hummingbird of the cloud forests of Ecuador and Peru.  Females have a green back and white breast with green spots.  Males are green overall, and their tails have two long feathers equal to the length of the body.  These extended feathers have rackets on the ends giving this bird its name.  Both males and females have orange, puffy feathers on their legs.  

 

Tawny-bellied Hermit (Phaethornis syrmatophorus).
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador.

At lower altitudes rainforest replaces cloud forest and a different set of hummingbirds appear. Tawny-bellied Hermits (Phaethornis syrmatophorus) are brown hummingbirds with white stripes on the head, a long dramatically decurved beak and a long white tail.  They range through the montane forests of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.  The distinctive beak and tail make the Tawny-bellied Hermit unmistakable.     

Brown Violetear (Colibri delphinae).
WildSumaco Lodge, Ecuador.
Photo courtesy of Prof. William Garcia. 

Brown Violetears (Colibri delphinae) are the plain relatives of flashier Lesser and Sparkling Violetears.  They are indeed brown but when they turn their heads their brilliant violet ear patches shine in the sun.  

Male Black-throated Mango (Anthrocothorax nigricollis).
WildSumaco Lodge, Ecuador. 
Photo Courtesy of Dr. Richard Pockat. 

Female Black-throated Mango.
WildSumaco Lodge, Ecuador.
Photo Courtesy of Dr. Richard Pockat.

The Black-throated Mango (Anthracothorax nigricollis) is a large hummingbird found in lowland forests of northern South America. Male Black-throated Mangos are green on the back with a black throat edged in blue. Females are also green on the back, but their throat and breast are white with a black vertical line running from the chin all the way down to the belly. 

 

Gould's Jewelfront (Heliodoxa aurescens).
WildSumaco Lodge, Ecuador. 
Photo Courtesy of Prof. William Garcia.

Gould’s Jewelfront (Heliodoxa aurescens) is an amazingly beautiful hummingbird.  Both sexes are brilliant green with a glowing gold-orange patch on the breast.  It is found in low elevation rainforests across northern South America.

 

Glittering-throated Emerald (Chionomesa fimbriata) on nest.
Sacha Lodge, Ecuador. 

Glittering-throated Emerald nest.
Sacha Lodge, Ecuador.

The Glittering-throated Emerald (Chionomesa fimbriata) is found on forest edges, savannas and open woodlands across the Amazon basin.  We found one nesting in a small tree on the edge of an oxbow lake just off the Rio Napo.  This small hummingbird is green with a shining blue throat.  The nest was a cup of lichens and spider silk about an inch and a half across.  

Ecuador is a small country that would easily fit within the boundaries of Texas. Despite its size, Ecuador hosts about 1600 species of birds.  The United States has about 1200 birds.  The diversity of habitats created by the Andes and the tropical lowlands yield a stunning variety of life, including the hummingbirds described here.

Male Peruvian Racket-tail.
El Quetzal Bosque Protegido, Ecuador. 

The Rise of the Zombie Ants

 

A Chestnut Carpenter Ant (Camponotus castaneus)
infected with the Cordyceps fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

Picture if you will, a parasite invades the body, begins to replicate, and takes control of the brain and behavior of the host.  Then, after consuming its victim from inside, the parasite bursts out of the body, spreading spores to infect more unfortunate hosts.  This scenario from a science fiction horror film plays out on miniature scale right in our forests.  The parasite is a fungus called Cordyceps, and it infects insects including ants. 

After watching a David Attenborough nature documentary on the Cordyceps-ant interaction, a student at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina discovered infected ants in the college’s Ecological Preserve.  Dr. Carmony Hartwig, a biologist at Catawba College, led me to a site where the fungus had been killing ants.  These areas are called graveyards and dead ants decorate the trees with their bodies.    

 

A Chestnut Carpenter Ant with its jaw's clamped
onto a limb and the first sign of O. unilateralis 
emerging from behind the head. 
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

An ant becomes infected when a Cordyceps spore attaches to its exoskeleton.  The fungus spore germinates and a cylinder of cells, a hypha grows out.  It secretes enzymes that dissolve a tiny hole in the ant’s exoskeleton, and the fungal filament enters the body. Inside the ant the fungus consumes the internal organs of the ant and grows around the brain.  The Cordyceps then releases chemicals that control the ant’s behavior.  The infected ants are now walking dead insects controlled by the fungus.  They are zombie ants.   

 

Chestnut Carpenter Ant with an actively growing
O. unilateralis stroma.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

Chestnut Carpenter Ant with a stroma bearing
the spore producing perithecium.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

The fungus directs the infected ant to crawl up a tree and out onto a thin branch.  When the ant reaches a height of 4-7 feet it stops crawling, and clamps its jaws in a death grip to the bottom of a stem.  Then a fungal stalk, the stroma, begins to grow from just behind the doomed ant’s head.  The stroma produces a reproductive structure, the perithecium, that makes spores that are released into the air.  The spores fall to the ground and can infect other ants.  By making the infected ants climb onto a tree branch. the Cordyceps spores can disperse longer distances than if the ant stayed on the forest floor. 

 

A healthy Chestnut Carpenter Ant.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

The genus Cordyceps has recently undergone a revision and was split into three genera. The name Cordyceps is still used as a general term for these fungi but the ones I observed are probably Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. The infected ants with their jaws clamped to the tree branches are Camponotus castaneus, the Chestnut Carpenter Ant. 

There are more than 200 species off Ophiocordyceps and they can infect many species of insects and arachnids.  This drama of ant and fungus has been playing out for at least 99 million years.  Scientists in China recently found an ant preserved in amber with an Ophiocordyceps growing from it.  

A popular video game and subsequent TV series, The Last of Us is based on a Cordyceps infection that turns humans into zombies.  It is downright macabre seeing zombie ants in the trees a half mile from my house. 

A Cordyceps infected ant with a double stroma and two perithecia.
Rowan County, North Carolina.  

Skippers

Long-tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus).  

This large skipper has blue hairs on the body and the hindwing

has the long extensions that gives this skipper it its name.

Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina. 

 

Skippers are an unusual group of butterflies.  They are smaller than the more impressive Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) and Swallowtails (Papilio sp.).  Skippers have hairy bodies and many have short, triangular wings. They are usually subtly colored with brown predominant and can be difficult to identify.  However, they are a diverse group with about 275 species in North America and are abundant in many locations.  The name skipper comes from their rapid flight as they skip between nectar bearing flowers.  The antennae of skippers are unique in the butterfly world with a club on the end that bears a hook. This blog will examine a handful of the skippers found in North Carolina and South Carolina.   

Long-tailed Skipper.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

The Common Checkered Skipper (Burnsius communis) is strikingly patterned 

with black-and-white checks on the wings.  The antennae of the 

this butterfly continues the color scheme with

alternating black-and-white bands. 

Rowan County, North Carolina. 

Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus).  

The underside of this skipper's wings have large gold and silver spots.  

Rowan County, North Carolina

Horace’s Duskywing (Erynnis horatius) is a medium-sized 

skipper with mottled brown wings.  The forewings have

 five white spots near their ends. 

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  

Horace's Duskywing.
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

The Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) is a small, and quite common skipper.  

It is brown with bright orange on the wings.  

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

Fiery Skippers mating.  

This slipper has small brown spots on the underside of their wings.

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

Rowan County, North Carolina.

Delaware Skippers (Anatrytone logan) 

are bright orange with dark brown on the wings. 

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.   

The Sachem (Atalopedes campestris) is yet another 

orange skipper with brown on the wings.  

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

Dun Skippers (Euphyes vestris) are small and plain 

brown with white patches on the wings.

Rowan County, North Carolina. 

The Ocola Skipper (Panoquina ocola) is another brown skipper
but in this one the forewings extend past the hindwings.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

Eufaula Skipper (Lerodea eufala) is still another 

small brown skipper with white spots on the wings.  

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

The Zabulon Skipper (Lon zabulon)

 is one more small orange and brown skipper.

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  

While skipper butterflies can be difficult to identify, Americans of a certain age have no trouble identifying The Skipper, Alan Hale Jr.  He starred in Gilligan’s Island, perhaps the silliest sitcom of the sixties, wherein a group of castaways are stranded on a tropical island.  Alan Hale Jr. was a journeyman character actor and the son Alan Hale Sr., a journeyman character actor of a previous generation.  Alan Hale Jr’s Skipper was the straight man for the zany Gilligan and the glue that held the show together.  So, all hale the Skipper and all the little skippers flying around out there. 

Alan Hale Jr. The Skipper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hale_Jr.#/media/File:Alan_Hale_Jr._Gilligans_Island_1966.JPG

Thanks to Ron Clark for assistance in identifying skippers. 

Rainbows, Moon Halos, Fog Bows and Sun Pillars

 

Rainbow.
Lake Otto, Alaska

Rainbows, moon halos, fogbows and light pillars are striking sights and have been the basis of stories, myths, legends and religious symbols for millennia.  Sun pillars were symbols of divine guidance, moon halos were predictors of rain, and the great rainbow was a covenant between God and the ancient Hebrews or the actions of the goddess Iris to the Greeks.  Science has a different take on these optical phenomena. Water drops or ice crystals in the atmosphere refract or reflect light to make these impressive displays in the sky.

Rainbows appear in the sky opposite the sun.  Rain droplets refract light like a prism and break it into its constituent colors; red, orange yellow, green, blue and violet, the visible spectrum.  The refracted light is bent back toward the observer and makes a ring in the sky.  Sometimes part of this ring is below the horizon and only a part, a bow, is visible.  The angle of the arc of a rainbow is 42^o from the line between the sun and the observer, so a complete rainbow covers 84^o of the sky.  The spectrum visible in a rainbow has red on the outside of the arc and violet on the inside.     

Double rainbow. 
Tongariro National Park, New Zealand. 

Sometimes a secondary set of refractions produce a secondary rainbow outside the primary rainbow.  This is called a a double rainbow.  The second rainbow is at 50^o from the line between the sun and the observer.  The colors of the spectrum are less intense than the primary rainbow and their order is reversed with violet on the outside and red on the inside.  Double rainbows are considered omens of good luck. 

Moon halo.
Rowan County, North Carolina. 

A Moon halo is a ring around the moon caused by refraction of light through hexagonal ice crystals at high altitude.  A moon halo is 22^o from the line between the observer and the moon and is often white, but sometimes the spectrum is faintly visible. Moon halos are most common in winter, but they can appear in any season of the year. 

Fog bow.
Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. 

Fog bows are similar to rainbows.  They are opposite the sun and form at a 42^o angle. As their name suggest they form in fog rather than rain and the refraction is from fog droplets that are smaller than rain droplets.  Fog bows are usually white but red on the outside and violet on the inside of the arc can sometimes be seen.  

Sun pillar.
Hatteras, North Carolina. 

Sun pillars occasionally appear when the sun is close to the horizon.  A sun pillar looks like a beam of light shot straight up into the sky.  Sun pillars are usually red or orange, the same color as the rising or setting sun.  Sun pillars are produced by horizontally oriented hexagonal ice crystals reflecting sunlight, so it appears as a column of light. 

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the melancholy prince says to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy”.  While the physical properties of refraction and reflection account for rainbows, moon halos, fog bows and sun pillars, I think their very existence falls under Hamlet’s admonition.