Ecuador, in Search of Natural Balance

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On the world’s waistline, the trees drip not only with rain but with treasures in feathered form. Like a kaleidoscopic plasma, a mixed feeding flock expands and contracts through the treetops— 40 or so green gold, red, blue, purple, and yellow birds flipping, flitting, then doubling back through patches of dense foliage. Neither steady rain nor parasol-sized leaves slapping to the ground distract them from their quest for small fruits, insects, and nectar. Scanning steadily back and forth with his binoculars, Sam Woods sifts through the flock until he zeroes in on a busy, pencil-length bird that appears to have been dipped in tomato juice. “There it is! Get on this bird. That’s the scarlet-breasted dacnis. It’s found in few other places in the world,” he quickly whispers, jabbing his finger toward a bustling tree crown.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, the dacnis and its flock mates vanish down a slope. “They’ll be back,” Woods tells me. He knows the program: Throughout the day, the restless flock does laps around the 71-hectare Río Silanche Bird Sanctuary in northwest Ecuador. This swatch of lowland rainforest…