In Search of the Torrent Duck
I don’t know how our guide José did it, but from his seat in the front of the minibus—as it’s moving at 60 km an hour up the mountain—he hollered, “Torrent Duck!” Manolo, our driver, slammed on the breaks and pulled over to the side of the road.
How did he see that?
I followed José’s finger, pressed my nose against the window and there it was: a blur of a duck slipping off the rock into the river rapids, upstream. And then the white duck’s body torpedoed into the rapids.
The four of us passengers jumped out of the van while Manolo stayed in the driver’s seat, and stood at the edge of the road that dropped off to a wall of boulders that wrapped around a river 10 meters below. I put my camera up to my face waiting for the duck to reappear, hoping to get a photo that would prove I saw it. But the duck was nowhere. Gone.
Gosh, is that it? Is that all I’m going to see of the Torrent Duck?
Back into the mini bus with my husband, Steve, and Bill, another birder on our trip who we just met the day before. We each had our own seat on this minibus, since we were the only three on a seven-day bird tour of the Andes in Ecuador. It was only a flash, but I wanted to get a good look. Seeing just a glimpse of the duck didn’t count. It’s like driving by the Louvre in Paris. You can’t say, “I went to the Louvre.” It not only would be a lie, but you didn’t actually experience it. I wanted to experience the Torrent Duck, not just kind of, sort of see it.
We saw more birds that day–impressive birds, like the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock with it’s name that suffers giggles every time I say it, and the Sword-bill Hummingbird with a bill twice the length of its body–but no more Torrent Duck. Every day for the next six days in the Andes I’d ask Steve, “Do you think we’ll see the Torrent Duck today?”
“We’ll have a really good chance once we get to Guango Lodge,” was always his response.
So I waited and worried.
AIN’T NO ORDINARY DUCK
The Torrent Duck lives among fast flowing rivers of the High Andes at 3,600 meters (around 12,000 feet). If you’re a duck the Torrent Duck would be your cousin who loves the adrenaline rush of white water rapids. They not only live among the rivers, nesting in high cliffs above the tumultuous waters, but they swim upstream into fast, torrent rivers. Even Torrent ducklings know how to swim fearlessly upstream in the fast water, busting through the rapids.
Unlike most every other bird species in the avifauna world, the female isn’t the drab-looking partner. Typically male birds are colorful and spectacular, designed by nature to attract a mate. But not the Torrent Duck male. He’s white while the female is the colorful one with an orange breast so that her young can see her in the water.
Before this trip the more I had learned about this duck the more I was determined I was going to see it. Big, colorful toucans? Pfft. Parrots? Yawn. I wanted to see this extraordinary duck come hell or high water.
DAYS WERE RUNNING OUT
After six days in the Andes we still had no real good look at a Torrent Duck. We had moved around every few days in Ecuador and our last night we settled in at Guango Lodge, a small property in the temperate forest of the Andes, just about an hour from San Isidro and only 11 kms down the main Interoceanica Highway from the town of Papallacta.
As soon as we arrived I asked José if we could find the Torrent Duck. He looked positive. “Someone saw it today,” he assured me. “It’s just down the path.” My heart began to race. The duck. I get to see the duck. We zig-zagged our way down a trail to the river. The sound of the water was like a fire house. The forest was still thick, even near the water. I pushed branches out of the way, and navigated slowly through the mud. Occasionally there were wooden steps with old bottle caps nailed upside down into the boards to help create traction to avoid slipping. We arrived at the river and all of us pressed our binoculars to our eyes. A group of birders means more eyes on the lookout. But there was no duck. We moved to another area further down stream and still no duck. We walked over to a foot bridge to get a good look both up and down the river and still no duck.
LOOKING FOR A UNICORN OR LEPRECHAUN WOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER
This is how birding goes most of the time. Serendipity and chance rule the agenda and while local bird guides have a good idea of where a bird may be spotted, there are no guarantees. It’s exciting to have birds fly in to a bevy of feeders you’ll find at most lodges, whether they be seed, suet, nectar or fruit, as if parading and showing off for you. But it’s the ones that allude you that you want to find. These nemesis birds haunt birders for years. Decades. Whole lives. And it’s worse if some other guy in the area saw it the day before. Or that morning.
There was only one night at Guango Lodge and then we were back in Quito to catch our flight back to the US. The thought of leaving Ecuador without a good look at this duck pained me inside and I knew it would haunt me after the trip and perhaps the rest of my life. Over dinner in the lodge I began plotting in my mind a return trip so I could focus just on the duck.
ONE LAST CHANCE
Early the next morning we ate our final breakfast in the High Andes and José, who usually ate with us, was nowhere to be found. It was a cruel joke to come all this way and not get a good look at the duck. After finishing up we loaded up the van with our bags and then I heard a voice just over my shoulder. “Hey, want to see the Torrent Duck?” It was José.
“Where?” I asked, wondering if it was worth getting excited about. It was too much like a Hollywood ending to expect to see the duck on our last day.
“Just down the hill.” José explained. “I was just there and saw it.” He didn’t even wait for me to answer yes or no. He turned down the hill. He knew well enough that I would follow.
I was right behind José and Steve and Bill followed. Manolo was even there because he, too, wanted a look at the duck. The trail somehow seemed shorter, perhaps because I knew it, or because I was hiking downhill at a little faster clip. The branches I carefully moved out of my way the day before seemed to have parted for me as I navigated the hill downward. I moved fast but I worried that the duck would be gone. Just my luck as always, I thought.
José slowed down and walked carefully in order to not startle, and then I knew. He crouched down behind some branches and pointed.
And there was my duck.
When not working her corporate job as a communications director, Lisa Boice and her husband travel the world in search of birds. She doesn’t tell her mother that she’s looking for birds like the bushtit, cock-of-the-rock and booby. She blogs at The Accidental Birder.