Un poco del Chocó

09/12/2025

In case you've been missing our colorful birds lately, you're now getting double the dose!

1 Purple Honeycreeper
2 Blue-necked Tanager
3 Cryptic Becard

10/03/2025

Bats! We’ve been busy here at Un Poco Del Chocó doing some bat monitoring! These mammals are essential in maintaining healthy and diverse ecosystems, due to their roles as pollinators, seed dispersers, in insect control and much more. Read all about their importance and the cool species we’ve found in the new blog post on the UPDC website!

An exciting new research project has started this year at UPDC!

20/02/2025

New Year, New Scientific Adventures! We’re expanding our research at the reserve with a new herpetological monitoring project. Check out the new blog post and stay tuned for exciting updates!

A new year brings fresh opportunities, new students, and exciting research projects. One area we aim to expand at the station is herpetology—the study of reptiles and amphibians. Two dedicated young researchers, Alex and Lauren, are conducting herpetological surveys within the reserve.Our trail sy...

07/02/2025

🌿 Exciting Updates from the Past Three Years! Discover the journey we've taken and the milestones we've reached in our reserve. 🌿

We've released a blog post with some long overdue updates on our work!
Check it out!!

This is a long-overdue update on our activities in the reserve in the past three years

07/05/2024

Durante la sesión de evaluación llevada a cabo en Un poco del Chocó por Holly Garrod y Nicole Büttner tambié logró su certificación nuestro miembro y amigo Julian Perez Correa. Muy buen trabajo💪

07/05/2024

06/05/2024

Another NABC bird banding workshop and certification session is in the books.
In the past 10 days, we trained six students in ethical and safe bird banding and certified three of them.

Congratulations to:
Christian Montalvo, our UPDC staff member who got certified on the ba**er level!!
Tatiana Santander , who passed the assistant (ba**er & extractor) level
and
Julian Perez , who got certified as assistant ba**er

We are proud that the NABC community in Ecuador is growing, and together, we will continue to promote good practices in scientific bird banding.

03/04/2024

Would you be able to determine the age of this White-winged Tanager?
If not, come join us for our bird banding workshop from April 26 to May 2! We still have two spots left!

Workshop instructors are NABC bird banding trainers and .ecology who will teach you all about safe and ethical bird research and scientific bird banding.
Learn how to use molt cycles and plumages to age birds!

For more information, visit unpocodelchoco.com/nabc-work

Link in Bio!

02/03/2024

The different shades of blue on a Blue-gray Tanager wing.

Despite its beautiful colors, this species is often considered a "trash bird" amongst bird watchers because it's very common and easy to see in the Neotropics.
Yet, we think it deserves a bit more appreciation 😉

28/11/2023

We're calling on the NABC community to help support ba**er training in Brazil!

Starting in 2012, Dr. Gonçalo Ferraz has hosted a series of banding workshops in Brazil and Colombia with the help of NABC trainers Jared Wolfe, Erik Johnson, and others. Participants in these courses have gone on to become NABC certified trainers, ba**ers and ornithologists working across South America.

The seventh Bird Banding and Molt Analysis course will take place March 17-24, 2024, at the Instituto Alto Montana, Minas Gerais, on the Mantiqueira mountains of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. This intensive field course aims to promote advanced-level bird banding skills while teaching analysis of plumage molt cycles and ageing of forest understory birds. Participating instructors include NABC Trainers Pedro Martins and Luiza Figueira from Observatório de Aves da Mantiqueira, Jared Wolfe from Michigan Technological University, along with Marcio Repenning of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Your contribution will help fund fellowships for Latin American students in need of financial aid, as well as travel costs for a fifth instructor. Tuition for participants is about $400 USD.

To donate, click here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=DZL44K5K2XSU2

For more information about the course, click here: https://ferrazlab.org/workshops

22/11/2023

🪶🐦Some overdue pictures of our banding workshop and the very first NABC certification session in Ecuador. 💫
1. Let's start with a highlight for most participants, a Lanceolated Monklet. We actually caught two individuals during the workshop. This one here was a new capture and got banded.
2. Our first morning in the field yielded an unusual capture of a Common Pauraque, one of the few species we capture that's covered in the Pyle identification guide, and a great opportunity for .ecology to teach students about the use of the "ba**er's bible" to age and s*x a bird in the hand.
3. Set up of our banding tables.
4. The "official" group photo at the end of the workshop.
5. teaching us about her work with the MOTUS network.
6. The all female NABC trainer team.
7. NABC trainers and students after the certification session. We now have three new certified assistants! Congratulations 🎊
8. The second Monklet individual was a recapture from this summer. It was caught next to a burrow with two baby Monklets and confirmed the second nesting attempt of this individual within six month.
9. Yuly checking out the Monklet's wing for molt limits.
10. Another stunning bird, a female Red-headed Barbet, captured during the certification session.

Thanks to my fellow trainers .ecology from and from , and for your help teaching and evaluating students.
Thanks to , and for providing some photos!

The workshop started off our monitoring season with MoSI, so also a big shout out to this wonderful network of banding stations and the collaborative research with .

12/11/2023

🐍 Incredible find in our reserve after 15 years! 🌿 On the last night of his herpetological inventory, discovered a Chocoan bushmaster on a trail behind our house.
The bushmaster is the biggest South American pitviper and feared by locals as the most mortal. Yet most encounters between humans and a bushmaster unfortunately end deadly for the snake. We are super excited (and a little bit scared) that a bushmaster calls our reserve its home.