I have only birded outside North America once, in 2006. I had just finished a winter ski-bumming in Aspen, Colorado, and I was flush with cash from a winter spent hustling vacationers as one of those on-mountain photographer guys. My friends were also flushed, and we decided to go on a trip.
One of my friends knew a guy in Ecuador, and tickets were cheap, and so we went.
My friends were not birders, and we were not going to a particularly birdy part of the country. In fact, although it sounds unbelievable for a country containing more than a thousand bird species, I came home after ten days in Ecuador only identifying 56 species.
I bought the enormous Ridgley Field Guide to the Birds of Ecuador before I left, but had not nearly enough time to really get a handle on what birds I might see in my travels. Plus, the book weighs like 10 pounds and was too much to carry around with me. Instead, when I'd sneak off to go find birds, I'd bring along a little notebook and make quick sketches of things I saw, returning home to figure out IDs later (I didn't have a camera, did I mention that?).
I expected to be frustrated by my lack of knowledge, but this kind of birding was far and away the most fun I've had birding maybe to this day. I didn't know what to expect, I wasn't jaded to anything. Every bird needed to be examined for possible differences from other, similar birds. It was birding again for the first time.
I recently found my notebook in a box of old things and wanted to share the crappy little drawings I made. They're a far cry from the detailed, shaded, dog-bottle watercolored (!) images that real artists can produce, but I think there's a certain charm in my rushed scribbles. The pictures didn't scan very clearly, sorry, but click to enlarge.
