Mindo Cloud Forest, Ecuador

Mindo is one of the most concentrated hummingbird-watching sites in the Americas, with dozens of species recorded in a compact stretch of protected mid-elevation cloud forest. A single morning at one of the local feeder stations or along the main trails routinely turns up the sword-billed hummingbird — the only bird in the world with a bill longer than its own body — alongside the Andean cock-of-the-rock, whose bright orange males gather at communal leks to display for females.