This morning I visited the RV Griffin Reserve, another one of the properties owned by Southwest Florida Water Management.  It is located off of Kings Highway in DeSoto County, about 5 miles north of I-75.  The entrance is on the left.  The size of this Reserve is 6,000 acres, but only 2,485 acres are open to the public.  The closed off area has two reservoirs that provide water to the public when needed.

There are 21 miles of multiuse trails for hiking, bicycling, and equestrian use.  I walked the outer trail labeled number 1 on their map.  I walked for about 1.5 miles (about half the length) and then turned back.  I did not see many birds along the trail, only 11 different species and several of those were fly-over.  Following is the list of birds seen and reported on eBird.

I made another trip to Eucador with a small group of amateur photographers, leaving on Monday, October 26^th.  We visited three different locations doing our visit.  After spending the first night in Quito, we traveled by van to the Guango birding Lodge, which is about a two-hour drive southeast of Quito.  We stayed there from October 27-29.

Our primarily objective at Guango Lodge was to photograph Hummingbirds using high-speed flash set-ups.  Unfortunately, there weren’t quite as many hummingbirds as we expected and they weren’t attracted to the feeders in our setup.  However, we were able to obtain many good images using hand-held cameras with a flash attachment.  Twelve different species of Hummingbirds were seen and photographed.

On Thursday, October 29^th, we returned to Quito for an overnight stay.  The next morning, we flew to the small town of Cocoa, about a 30 minute flight east of Quito, arriving there about noon.  At the Cocoa Marina, we boarded a large motorized canoe for a trip down the Napo River.  We reached the mouth of the Anangu Creek about 3:00 pm.  There we transferred to a smaller canoe that was paddled by two natives from the Napo Wildlife Center and our guide, named Andres.  The ride along the Anangu Creek was interesting and we slowed down occasionally to take pictures of the local birds and monkeys.  We arrived at the Lodge around 5:00 pm.

The Napo Wildlife Center was built and is operated by a local tribe that is descended from the Incas.  They started the project in the year 2000 and was able to obtain financial help through an outside non-profit corporation.  Two years ago, they took over complete operation of the center.  The Wildlife Center is in the Amazon rainforest, so it was quite hot and humid.  There is no air conditioning at the Lodge, although each hut had an overhead fan.

Early Saturday morning, we traveled back the Anangu Creek to the Napo River.  Our objective was to visit two clay licks where parrots and parakeets come to eat the clay. Until recently, the thinking was that the clay helped their digestive system.  But after realizing that clay licks are only found on the east side of the Andes, which is quite far from the ocean, the current thinking is that they eat this particular clay for sodium.  We visited three different clay licks, two of which had about 100 parrots and parakeets each feeding on the clay.

Early Sunday morning, we traveled across the lake by canoe than hiked along a trail to an observation tower, whose platform is about 125 feet above the ground and above most of the tree canopy.  We spent the morning observing birds flying around and into the tree canopy.  We saw about two dozen species of birds; unfortunately, most of them were located quite far from the platform, making photography difficult.  Later in the afternoon, we took a slow canoe ride on the Anangu Creek again to observe and photograph local wildlife.

On Monday morning, we took the canoe back the Arangu Creek to the Napo River, where we transferred to the larger motorized canoe and traveled back to the town of Cocoa.  There, we caught a return flight to Quito.  From the Quito airport, we boarded a van for our trip to the Tandayapa Birding Lodge, arriving there about 3:00 pm.

At Tandayapa, we spent Tuesday and Wednesday around the lodge shooting hummingbirds.  We set up two high-speed flash systems, which enabled all of us to spend a good amount of time with the setups.  We also walked around taking pictures of perched hummingbirds.  We saw 16 different species of hummingbirds here, only one of which we saw at Guano Lodge.  We are saw 8 other species of birds around the lodge.

On Thursday morning, after a few hours of shooting, we packed our gear.  We rode the van over to the Mindo Loma Lodge, about 30 minutes from Tandayapa Lodge for lunch.  After lunch, we spent about three hours shooting hummingbirds.  We saw nine species of hummingbirds, only one of which was new.  We also saw 6 other bird species here.  We then departed for an overnight stay in Quito.  On Saturday, we departed for home.