THE



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BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. VI. —No. 64. All rights reserved. FEBRUARY, 1900.



A NATURALIST’S NOTES IN ECUADOR.


By Wai/ter Goodfeleow.


Perhaps there is no country in the world where birds

abound in such numbers and varieties, as in Ecuador. At least, so I

think who have just returned from spending two years there, and

after wandering about among almost all other “ birdy ” parts of

the globe. It is not the numbers alone that make it so interesting

to the ornithologist, for it is also the home of the mighty Condor,

the largest bird on the wing, to the smallest species of Humming¬

bird known, no larger than an ordinary sized bumble bee. Between

these range endless varieties of birds of prey ; the strange and

little known Umbrella-birds ; some ten or more representatives

of the Trogon family ; the two most beautiful of the three'known

species of the Cock of the Rock, Rupicola sanguinolenta and

R. peruviana; Toucans galore, and bewildering numbers of

Tanagers, Hangnests, Tyrants, and other birds strange or

beautiful. So Ecuador is one vast museum of natural history,

and the chief reason of this is its geographical position and its

formation. Here we have a country situated right on the

Blquator, and divided down the centre in its entire length by the

mighty Andes, embracing every variety of climate from perpetual

snow to the sweltering heat of its unhealthy lowlands. Thus

birds of some kind or another, find a congenial home at every

altitude between these two extremes. And again, it is so in¬

accessible and thinly populated, that bird life holds undisturbed

sway in its vast mountain solitudes, and its primeval forests,

which reach from the coast, to an altitude of 10,000 ft. or more

on the western side ; then, skipping its immense central table¬

lands, start again on the eastern side of the Andes, and cover

almost the whole of Brazil and tropical South America.


Myself and Mr. Claud Hamilton travelled from the Pacific

coast, and, after crossing all the mountain ranges, journeyed for

weeks on foot down through the damp, uninhabited, virgin



