I enjoy learning and teaching and I am more interested in figuring things out rather than being right. Birds and plants in Ecuador are what I know best. Where I live and have called my home for 20 years: Ecuador. I started as a naturalist guide in the Amazon of Ecuador about 20 years ago and I lead natural history and birding trips across most of Ecuador, assist with logistics and instruction for university courses (Tropical Ecology, Evolution, Conservation Biology), plus lead occasional tours to Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. Please have a healthy skepticism of anything I ID to species, and be sure I will do the same for your IDs. I organize and lead educational natural history trips, with a special emphasis on plants and/or birds. Group size varies from as little as one and with plant trips can be as many as 10 people. If you are a botany lover in an orchid society, contact me and let's talk shop. Advice for any visitor interested in orchids of Ecuador: bring a camera and lens for macro photography (right now my favorite is the Olympus Tough). Ecuador has roughly 20,000 vascular plant species. One in 5 are orchids. In January 2021, iNaturalist has just over 1000 orchid species (of about 4000 orchid species here based on herbarium specimens) observations for Ecuador. An important part of all of my trips is citizen science: go outside, take photos, share and learn. We have several field guides to our ca. 1600 bird species and no decent sense of orchid ID as a community. Time to get to work! Something you won't appreciate if you aren't paying close attention to my observations: I get a lot of ID help from many people around the world from a variety of platforms, and within iNaturalist I give these generous people credit for their IDs.

Estoy muy feliz de colaborar. Me encantan las buenas criticas. Una de las murallas que se va a caer con el uso de iNaturalista es la que se encuentra entre los cientificos y el resto del mundo.

links and website useful for ID:

butterflies of the americas: https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/Neotropical.htm

butterflies in the Amazon: http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/Amazon%20-%20Charis%20anius.htm

butterflies of cotacachi: https://www.cotacachi.eu/en/

best for line drawings of all orchids: https://orchid.unibas.ch/index.php/en/database-search/advanced-search?reset=1

orchidspecies.com great for pics, plus often synonymy and more

florula of nearby maquipucuna: https://maqui.ucdavis.edu/

orchids of maquipucuna: https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/sites/default/files/rapid-color-guides-pdfs/166_Maquipucuna_orchids_1.pdf

vascular flora of ecuador, outdated but nice to see thousands of herbarium specimens' locality data: http://www.tropicos.org/ProjectAdvSearch.aspx?projectid=2

2-face book groups: REIVINDICANDO A LAS ARAÑAS (Vindicating SPIDERS)--one of my favorite groups; admins strictly control postings and fear and idiocy; Faceplant, mostly in Spanish, superb for botany; planet pleurothallid; epidendrum; American Orchid Society;

great website for ctenids: https://www.wandering-spiders.net/ancylometes/gallery/

youtube videos of Mindo project during pandemia: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCio0RKTvh0nkvh5nLvW-csA/videos

A lot of, as yet, undescribed orchids. Here are some pleurothallids:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/93105968
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/105578362
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/78760189
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/124143807
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/78732168
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/78649096
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/74985599
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/74969764
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/66934815
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50493299
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/48500207
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/46770731
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20162594
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13223555
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38845475 maybe same as : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/153568460

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/88763051
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/47932423
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14540000
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/117760489
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16171687
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36306195
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35582622
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20285096
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/123624576
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141018598
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/118702915=148855612

To be on the lookout if exploring far from home: Epidendrum
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107868273
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/105030838
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107868271
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/93105929 nearer to home

A world record in birding:

1) an interview of me talking about the Big Day: https://vimeo.com/142512940
2) an interview with a Viking about the Big Day: https://vimeo.com/142393810
3) an interview with a Dutchman about the Big Day: https://vimeo.com/user13440845
4) scouting and dunking a basketball for the biggest day in birding history: https://vimeo.com/144011883
5) dawn chorus of the Big Day, 08 oct 2015: https://vimeo.com/143055241
6) random clips from scouting for the Big Day:
https://vimeo.com/143878885