Cotopaxi

This friday I went to the Cotopaxi volcan, which is the highest active volcan on earth and birding wasn't the priority, eventhough I didn't spend too much time with the girls, because it was just impossible to go this slowly for me, when we climbed up to the 4800m. There we could have been a bit, but I just had to go to the snow at almost 5000m, so I went with Rafael, one of the Xplorer-"workers" (I don't find the right word). And when we were together in the bus, the girls slept, but we still had some nice time together with very cool landscapes. There were only two remarkable animals on this trip, since we didn't visit the lagoon where we would possibly have encountered Noble Snipes and more common stuff like ducks, gulls and Andean Lapwings.
Okay, even without going I saw Andean Teals and Andean Lapwings but those are very common here. New for me was the White-browed Ground-Tyrant and this time I could be sure of having seen the Ecuadorian Hillstar.
But really remarkable were the two Paramo foxes we saw, of which one let us get very close, like 5m distance only. They are incredibly beautiful with their long bushy tail and the shining grey back.
Do you think the same as I do, that this is a very beautiful animal?
We got very, very close to it...
The other more remarkable animal was a bird, which in my list of "50 Most wanted birds of Ecuador" is on position number 2. It is the worlds biggest flying bird and it is estimated to be very rare, as there are only 70-80 pairs estimated in all of Ecuador.
You pürobably already know, to which bird I'm referring: To the Andean Condor. It is the national bird of Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile.
We noticed it when we saw a group of people pointing to the sky. Following their looks we saw 5 Andean Condors high above us. On eperson of the group it had been 8 Condo in the beginning that had come from the Antisana. I was so happy that I saw it...
The Condor didn't come down, so this is the best picture I got. But you can see its unique shape...
Well that's it...