Day 2: Milpe Bird Sanctuary (Mindo cloud forest) - Tuesday January 23rd 2018
We had another dawn search for birds around the lodge before breakfast. We met our guide, Iris, who would be with us for three days. After breakfast we set off on the Naturetrek planned excursion - it turned out that this was a 2 hour drive to the western lowlands. Having stated that we wanted to bird the cloud forest, this is not what we were expecting - and we did not want to spend the best birding hours of the day in a car. I had given Iris a list of cloud forest birds I had not previously seen and she realised that we were not going to see them in the lowlands. Fortunately, there was a good alternative 20 minutes from Sachatamia and soon we arrived at the Milpe Bird Sanctuary (km91 on E28, altitude ~1100m). Here we found some fine cloud forest and good walking trails with lots of birds.
After a long morning of birding we had our box lunch and spent the afternoon driving and birding through some remote open country, before returning to Sachatamia late afternoon. We found 87 species of bird today - this being the highest day total of the trip. However, perhaps due to the later than ideal start, only 4 of these were new for me: Rose-faced Parrot, American Striped Cuckoo, Brown-billed Scythebill and Esmerelda's Antbird.