Flowers and Butterflies at Jorupe Reserve

Although the wonderful birds claim most of our attention, I'll admit that the butterflies and flowers are just a little distracting.

Cracker butterflies live only in the Neotropics. The males make a cracking sound with their wings as part of their territorial display, thus giving the name "cracker" to the genus Hamadryas. They are well camouflaged against their usual perch on the trunk of a tree.

One of the crackers, possibly Brownish

Of these flowers, the only one I know anything about is the first, a species of milkweed. Our guide Leonidas confirms that he has seen banded caterpillars, likely of Monarch butterflies, on the plant. The other flower photos are purely for your enjoyment!

Tropical Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica

I suspect that this butterfly is one of the tigerwings, likely in the genus Hypothyris. Others in that group show a similar orange patch on the thorax.

 A probable tigerwing 

Rather more earthbound than the butterflies, this big snail is nonetheless quite attractive!

Birds at Jorupe Reserve

Jorupe Reserve, small as it is, protects endemic species of the Tumbesian tropical deciduous forest in southwestern Ecuador. A number of the region's birds are globally threatened because so much of their habitat has been cleared or degraded. The Jocotoco Foundation stepped in to buy this patch of high-quality forest and create Jorupe Reserve.

We rise early for our day of exploring this gem of a reserve.

White-tailed Jay (Photos by Narca)

Along the path to the dining area, stunning White-tailed Jays are having their breakfast too, as they search out hapless moths that were attracted during the night to lights along the path. These jays live in western Ecuador and northwestern Peru, and they are very like the celebrated Tufted Jays of montane Mexico.

An impressive moth, soon to be jay food

The feeders here at Urraca Lodge have their own clientele. Handsome Guayaquil Squirrels are chowing down. This squirrel, like many of the birds, lives only in a small region of southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Peru.

Guayaquil Squirrel

A Plumbeous-backed Thrush joins the feeder birds. We'd met it earlier, in Vilcabamba.

Plumbeous-backed Thrush

A couple of fine orioles live here –– the White-edged and the more widespread Yellow-tailed. We see both, but only the Yellow-tailed cooperates for the camera.

Yellow-tailed Oriole

After breakfast, Leonidas is our guide for the day. He's very experienced, and his knowledge of the reserve and its wildlife is impressive. After a quick walk along a trail to see a calling Pale-browed Tinamou, we spend the morning walking down the reserve's road toward the highway below.

The road through Jorupe Reserve

A bounty of highly-sought-after birds makes the walk exciting. We hear, but fail to see, an Ochre-bellied Dove and a number of Watkin's Antpittas (their call sounds to me like "hey, hey, hey, whatcha doin'"). The other birds are much more cooperative, and before long, we've seen Gray-backed Hawk, Gray-cheeked Parakeet, Red-masked Parakeet, five Guayaquil Woodpeckers, Rufous-necked and Henna-hooded Foliage-gleaners, Blackish-headed Spinetail, and Slaty Becard –– all of these are considered globally vulnerable, threatened or endangered!

This male One-colored Becard, working on his monumental nest, is one of three becard species we see today

Other, less vulnerable species are quite fun too. We flush a Pauraque from her nest. I quickly photograph the egg, and when we return past the spot, she is sitting tight again.

A Pauraque's egg and nest scrape

The female Pauraque has returned to her nest

In addition to the big Guayaquil Woodpecker and the beautiful Scarlet-backed Woodpecker, little Ecuadorian Piculets are show-stealers.

The Ecuadorian Piculet, a tiny woodpecker

The Blue-crowned Motmots here sound different, and indeed they are one branch of the whole Blue-crowned Motmot complex. This superspecies is likely to be split once taxonomists have finished researching the group. If this split happens, the motmot at Jorupe will likely be called the Whooping Motmot.

A Blue-crowned Motmot (for the time being)

No day in the tropics is complete without a trogon. Here the trogon of choice is the Ecuadorian Trogon, once considered a subspecies of Black-tailed Trogon. We hear and see several of the gorgeous birds, and although they don't cooperate well for the camera, you may be able to make out the white iris in these photos.

Splendid male Ecuadorian Trogons (above and below)

Heading for Jorupe

Deciduous dry forest, Tumbesian style, at Jorupe Reserve

(Photos by Narca)

Jorupe Reserve in extreme southwestern Ecuador is only a stone's throw from Peru. One of the reserves under the aegis of the Jocotoco Foundation, Jorupe protects tropical deciduous forest, a habitat that has nearly vanished. Only about 1% of Ecuador's tropical dry forest remains intact.

The reserve is tiny (only about 2 square miles) but very important, protecting an endemic-rich habitat only found here and in neighboring northwestern Peru: the Tumbesian region. I find differing reports on the number of globally-threatened birds that occur in Jorupe, but it's about 20 species.

The reserve's boundaries are all too clear

The Jocotoco Foundation has its sights set on expanding the reserve a modest amount, and on regenerating degraded habitat within the reserve. Tropical dry forest can be more easily regenerated than tropical rainforest, as long as the seed bank is intact and the soils haven't completely washed away. (The regeneration of tropical dry forest was first demonstrated in northwestern Costa Rica.)

Recovery of degraded lands around Jorupe is being achieved through an ambitious project of revegetation. Within a 5-year period, more than 110,000 new trees have been planted.

Two of Jorupe's characteristic trees are these:

A muscular and much-admired ceiba tree, Ceiba trichistandra

Cecropia trees as a group are distinctive. There are more than 60 species of cecropias, and the northern Andes Mountains are the center for their diversity and evolution. Fast-growing, many of them pioneer both natural and man-made gaps within neotropical forests. Their fruits are highly sought by birds. Many of them harbor Azteca ants, which protect their host cecropia from herbivores.

A species of silver-leaved cecropia

Community outreach is part of the conservation effort at Jorupe, and it's winning staunch supporters among the local people. Ecotourism is also benefitting local communities like nearby Macará, a border town. The now-protected watershed also delivers clean drinking water to Macará.

If you wish to help the Foundation at Jorupe or any of its other reserves, you can make tax-deductible contributions to their work through the World Land Trust in the UK, the Rainforest Trust (the US partner of World Land Trust), or the American Bird Conservancy.

The Jocotoco Foundation has an on-site ecolodge, Urraca Lodge, which is beautifully constructed, and allows visitors to be right in the thick of the action.

The balcony of our cabin at Urraca Lodge; 

mixed flocks search the trees all around the cabin.

(Here's a tip, from our very fine guide at Jorupe, Leonidas: if you want to stay in Macará, the recommended hotel is Hotel los Arrozales. We spent a night in the reserve itself, and two nights at los Arrozales, which offered breakfast and air conditioning, and seemed to cater to businessmen.)

Birds like this Comb Duck may be found in the rice fields that occupy the short distance between Macará and the Peruvian border.

Now, against the background of this important conservation work, let's go birding at Jorupe!