Birding Volunteer Opportunity in South America

To all the adventurous birders out there,

A little off topic, but I though this may be of interest to some of the younger (or young at heart) birders out there.

I have just returned from an epic birdwatching experience; 2 months as a volunteer at Tandayapa Bird Lodge in the Andean cloud forests of Ecuador. I found out about this opportunity while birding in Ecuador earlier in the year, made some inquiries, and was offered the opportunity to volunteer in July and August. The lodge is located about an hour outside Quito, and the only costs I incurred were travel to and from Quito (you could do this for less than $2000). While volunteering at the lodge I didn’t spend a cent, and my only job, seriously, was to just go birdwatching every day, and occasionally help on the birding tours passing through the lodge. During my two months I recorded nearly 400 species, never travelling further than an hour from the lodge, including over 30 species of hummingbird, a variety of tanagers and toucans, Cock-of-the-Rock every other day, antpittas, antbirds, the list goes on. I also got to do a one week trip to the Amazon where I got another 240 species . In the two months my Ecuador list got to well over 600 species.

Anyway, the position is always open to keen applicants, and the lodge owners were happy for me to put the word out amongst Australian birders. If anyone is interested, or would just like to ask a few questions about volunteering, the lodge, or birding in Ecuador, please drop me an email.

Good Birding

Nick Leseberg ============================== To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au

http://birding-aus.org ==============================