Birds Mean Business in Ecuador’s Andes

Straddling the Andes and equator in northern Ecuador, Pichincha Province resembles a jagged swift gliding east across the map. In an area smaller than Connecticut, the province hosts over 850 bird species — more than recorded across either of the world’s two largest countries, Russia or Canada. The capital Quito sits at its heart, but another of Pichincha Province’s crown jewels, the Mindo Region, lies nestled in subtropical cloud forest to the west, in an area now considered one of the world’s top birding destinations.

by Howard Youth

There are many bird-rich places around the world, including others in the Andes. How did the rustic little town of Mindo come to rule the roost? It took the blending of a few key ingredients: a big dash of spectacular species, a dose of easy accessibility, and the X factor — a major, home-grown passion for birds. Mindo’s recipe provides a top-flight model for other regions around the world, to cash in on bird tourism while deepening environmental awareness and bolstering conservation efforts.

The Road to Success

“I would say that 50 percent of Mindo’s population is directly dedicated to [the business of] birdwatching,” says Vinicio Pérez, who has lived in the town 45 years, guiding professionally for 34 of those. Pérez estimates that the other half of the workforce is involved in other nature and adventure tourism (general guiding and ziplining, for example), farming, or small businesses in and around town.

It wasn’t always that way, although a bond between Mindo’s birds and people always existed. The area’s birds, from high-elevation forests around the town of Nono down to foothill level in San Miguel de Los Bancos, became known to ornithologists starting in the 1800s and early 1900s, when Ecuadorian bird collectors were active there. Later, a road snaked west from Quito, navigating this region’s forest-cloaked mountains on its way down toward the Pacific. This ribbon of road was a welcome mat for generations of small farmers, many of whom moved in and cleared patches of cloud forest for their homesteads.

Residents new and old knew their bird neighbors. Guans, pigeons, and some other large birds graced some dinner tables, while hummingbirds, the red-orange Andean Cock-of-the-rock, and a rainbow of tanager species dazzled residents and periodic visitors descending the highway from Quito.

Then, in the late 1980s, tourism to Ecuador’s famed Galápagos Islands skyrocketed, and Mindo popped up as a mainland add-on to some international travel itineraries. After all, this cornucopia of birding bliss sat just a two-hour drive from the country’s capital and airline hub. Visitors came looking for guides and some local farmers were happy to oblige.

Pérez recalls his first guiding experience at this time, when he was hired to take a few tourists around for a week in 1989. “Of course, then, I did not speak English,” he says, “and I did not know the names of birds in English, but I did know the songs and knew what bird and family I was seeing.”

The job was a dream come true for Pérez. “I was born in San Miguel de Los Bancos, a town very close to Mindo. I lived there until 1978, the year that my parents and I moved to Mindo to live on a farm that my father bought. By that time, I was already very interested in birds,” he says. The year after he first guided, Pérez opened the second hotel in the town of Mindo, called Birdwatcher’s House. “I started with three rooms and a shared bathroom,” he notes.

Julia Patiño, another veteran Mindo guide, had a similar start. She was born to the south, in El Oro Province, but moved to Mindo with her parents when she was five. She still lives there, and she and her cousins Natalia and Sandra are professional guides. “One of the main reasons why I started guiding in 1998 was because I liked nature, seeing the birds, looking at their colors, and listening to their songs,” Patiño explains. “All of this was very fun, and with that, being a guide became my job, a source of income for my family.”

Something to Count On

Mindo’s guides came to lead a movement that has since spread. “It all started with the Christmas Bird Count,” says Patiño, who has worked on this voluntary effort for many years. “From there, we have helped to carry out bird counts in other parts of Ecuador, being leaders of routes and sharing our experiences,” she says. “Now, Ecuador has 30 bird counts.”

Annual Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) started in the United States and Canada in 1900, when the Audubon Society established the winter bird tallies to counter traditional holiday bird hunts. Over the years, the number of counts grew, and they spread into South America. Ecuador’s very first CBC took place in 1994 in the Mindo area, four years after Pérez’s hotel opened. Then, a dozen birders racked up 250 species in and around town. Since then, the area’s count has often been a chart-topper. For example, 134 participants in the “Nature Guides of Mindo” team tallied 389 bird species on December 18, 2021 — the highest of all 2,621 CBCs that year.

Two years after the first Mindo count, Guy M. Kirwan and Tim Marlow published an article in the journal Cotinga that provided the first full species inventory for the town of Mindo and areas within a half-day’s hike — an important baseline list followed by guides and visitors. Of the 334 documented species, 41 percent were endemic to the Chocó ecoregion, which runs only from western Colombia to western Ecuador. (According to BirdLife International, at more than 50 species, the Chocó Endemic Bird Area, or EBA, “supports the largest number of restricted-range birds of any EBA in the Americas….”)

A map included in the article shows a far smaller town than exists today, with only a few trails known to birders, and with just one or two places to stay. But local guides were already busy leading birders through the misty