Blessed with birds

One bird’s distinctive voice punctuated the morning’s natural soundtrack. It sounded like a rubber ball dropped onto a hardwood floor: bop bop bop bop bop bop bop-bop-bopbopbopbopbop and a sometimes barely audible final ahhhhh, as if the bird expelled (or inhaled) one last segment of air.

For weeks, I had wondered what bird made the unique sound — often quite close yet undetected by my novice eye. Orange-fronted Barbets often appeared at the same time, but they seemed mysteriously silent when foraging nearby.

“What. IS. That. Bird?” I wondered.

With childlike curiosity and a quest to learn about this protected tropical humid forest, I tuned into the surroundings that cocooned my home and began the task of identifying the new-to-me species.

How did I start? Where did I start?

One bird at a time.

It’s a lesson I took to heart; it would be useful several weeks later, when a completely unexpected bird walked into my life.

Before I get to that story, I admit to being one of the luckiest people in the world. Immersed in wrap-around nature just a few minutes of latitude south of the equator, I live where temperatures never dip to freezing and rarely reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The site is near the Poza Honda Reservoir in western Ecuador’s Manabí Province.

Ecuador is one of the most bird-rich countries on Earth; more than 1,640 species have been tallied. According to eBird, 557 bird species have