ECUADOR: Sacha Lodge - away from the forest trails.

It's not just all flogging the forest trails at Sacha either. We sent a whole morning out on the Napo visiting river islands of varying maturity. The first we visited was a mature island covered in big Cecropia trees and had no trouble finding our target species: Amazonian Umbrellabird.

The youngter, more open islands had many Oriole Blackbirds, Dark-breasted and White-bellied Spinetails, Black & White Antbird and a Grey-breasted Crake amonst other things.

This Striped Cuckoo was a bit of a surprise on the islands as they mostly occur west of the Andes in Ecuador. They are however spreading to the Amazon, though very scarce there.

Another option was a canoe trip down one of the channels through the flooded forest. Sungrebe, Boat-billed Heron, Green & Rufous and American Pygmy Kingfishers and Orange-crested Manakin all frequent this habitat.