Ecuador 2026: WildsideNature tours' Western Andes photo trip
A 9-day Ecuador photo tour was led by Edison Buenano on behalf of WildsideNature tours. Three other attendees canceled a few days before the trip, so this turned into a private tour which made the logistics much easier. Eddy was an excellent guide from both birding and photography perspectives. Apart from the modern Hotel San Jose de Puembo outside of Quito, accomodations for the trip were based from several eco-lodges. All lodges had various feeders for hummers and other birds. The filtered water in most eco-lodges was safe to drink. Mosquitos were not prevalent at 8,000 and 10,000 elevations. But at 4-6,000 feet, mosquitos were more abundant. Details of the WildsideNature tours' Ecuador trip
Gear: For this trip, both micro4/3 and full-frame gear were used; but most images were shot with the Olympus OM1 MarkII + Olympus 150-400/F4.5 with internal 1.25x. The OMD 50-200/F2.8 lens was also used for some images. A few early morning sessions were shot with full-frame gear; Sony A1 or Sony A1 MarkII + Sony 300/F2.8 or Sony 70-200/F2.8 with either 1.4x or 2x extenders. The details of my image processing workflow are described in the footnote below^.
Below are links to various image-heavy pages of birds in a vertical layout with exif data displayed above each image. Each page contains 6-40 images, and each pic is 2000 pixels wide and ~1MB in size. Alternatively, at the bottom of this page, a grid-like 'contact-sheet' can be clicked to load individual images for the larger birds. Similarly, links are provided to other contact sheets for the 'smaller' birds and hummers.
 | 'Larger' birds: includes barbets, cock-of-the-rock, split-tail swift grasping a lizard, motmots, toucans, toucanets, trogons, and umbrella birds |
 | 'Smaller' birds: Barbets, tanagers, euphonia, flycatchers, honeycreepers, saltator, thrush, warbler, wood creepers, woodpeckers. |
 | Hummers: Andean emerald, blue-chinned sapphire, jacobin, coronets, violeteer, purple-bibbed white tip, rufous tailed, sylph, sickle-bill, sword-billed, woodnymph |
 | Antpittas: includes yellow-breasted, rofous, giant and ochre-breasted antpittas. |
