Birds!

For all the birders (and everyone else!)

COTOPAXI
Andean Lapwing
Andean Teal
Andean Gull

MINDO
Quetzel
Cock-o-the-Rock
White-capped Dipper
Masked Trogan
Golden Olive Woodpecker
Cinnamon Peccard
Squirrel Cuckoo
Choco Toucan
Ornate Flycatcher
Black-cheeked Woodpecker
Wood Creeper
Spotted Wood Creeper
Palm Tanneger
Lemnon Rumped Tanneger

NONO
Southern Yellow-Grosbeak
Rufous-naped Brush Finch
Rufous-collared Sparrow
Glossy Black Thrush
Lots and lots of hummingbirds...still trying to figure out the species. Could somebody send me binocs? =)

The Parentals Visit Ecuador

“It’s like you live in a musem! The old wooden floorboards, the holes in the windows, the doors themselves…”
“I know. I´m part of a living history museum!”
My parents and I were sitting at my kitchen table, enjoying large mugs of hot tea while trying to keep warm from the cold breeze that filtered through the gaps in the window and doors. It had been just one day since we had arrived in my town, after spending two days in Quito. Having my parents actually step foot in the house where I had lived for one month, and where I would be living for the next two years made my experience here more concrete, and I knew that this was real, that I was acutally living in Ecuador, and not just dreaming the whole thing.
My parents had arrived in country three days before, after 12 hours of flying and waiting in airports. I couldn’t believe they were actually here… the anticipation for this moment had made the past month, and especially the past week, pass by at the speed of one of the slugs that habitually takes an evening stroll around my kitchen every night. Five months had passed since I waved goodbye from the Omaha airport, and they looked exactly the same, though slightly more disheveled given their journey. However, one night´s rest proved enough of a recovery, and in typical Thacker-Lynn fashion we climbed, amid sleet and wind and not even a full day after arriving in Ecuador, the highest active volcanoe in the world: Cotopaxi. This was achieved with the company of the Hammers, a family of four who had coincidentally planned a tip to Ecuador at the same time as my parents.

As their 13 year old son bounded up the steep slope as if it were nothing, I realized that at 24 I was not in peak physical form. This was reinforced four days later while I wheezed my way up an interminable hill while my parents appeared as if they were out on a Sunday stroll to Diary Queen. But that week I had little time to dwell on my lack of fitness. We biked dirt roads winding through the Andes mountains,



we discovered the delights of street food,



we waded in water flowing from the glaciers of the high Andes peaks while watching Quetzals fly among the cloud forests of Mindo,



we wandered among families enjoying the sunshine in the parks of Quito,



we enjoyed the generosity of my neighbors in the form of a plate full of choclo, habbas, mellocos, and aji.




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And as we watched Nono disappear behind the mountains from the window of our bus (while trying not to watch the dropoff just inches from our bus wheels), we wondered at the inconsistency of time. Those moments when you just want to put on the brakes are when time throws you a grin and shifts up a gear, usually without letting you put on your seatbelt first. One minute you´re waiting at the airport anticipating the week ahead, and the next you´re standing in a Quito street in your pajamas, watching the taxi carrying your parents drive away. But you have a camera full of memories, proof that in that blink of an eye was time well spent.



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