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What an outstanding trip report. The bird photographs are simply superb. But what takes the cake is the battle between puff adder and the cobra. In India we have their counterparts in Russell's viper and spectacled cobra respectively.  Cobras are known to actively hunt vipers and eat them! The most weird thing is that I was discussing this with a friend who is a snake expert just an hour back!  Thoroughly enjoyed the report.  Looks like there will not be an Africa trip for me in 2020. But I am encouraged to plan it in early 2021 in green season after reading this!  Thank you for sharing.  Cheers Vikram

@GalanaI wasn't convinced that the bill was quite right for Anna's, so I'm not too surprised that was wrong, I will take another guess and suggest Calliope Hummingbird, if that's wrong, well at least I will have crossed another one off. 

Definitely not. Are you seeing a small dark throat spot like I think @inyathi is? I am not certain it is nothing more than a ruffled feather ( we get a few of those on this thread) but it could be anything. @inyathiWell that would shorten the magic 300 even more than @kittykat23ukdid. It is good to see deductive powers at work instead blind adherence to pictures. You got that bit right but sadly not Annas. I will look to see if I have a different angle photo. As you can imagine a fired off a few once I got to locate it better. Some photos show an empty nest so it must have nipped off for a comfort break without me seeing it. Don't you love narrow fields of view.

@GalanaI'm not sure how much travel you done in South America outside of Ecuador and of course you won't wish to reveal that, but the habitat as I said suggests somewhere quite dry and nowhere in Ecuador comes to mind, my gut so to speak, said it was a hummer, but I thought it prudent to rule out sunbirds, but I didn't really think it looked like one, the wing shape is classic hummer, so I was still sure it was a hummer, when you confirmed it. My gut is now saying that this is a North American species and my belief that the habitat looks quite dry, points to the Southwest and Mexico, if it is a US/Mexican species that cuts the options down very considerably, Ecuador has 123 different hummers, my North America book has just 21 in it, some of those have already been crossed off, one that's not been mentioned is Anna's.       I'm not at all sure, but I will suggest Anna's hummingbird. 

Ah, I see my preferred method has other devotees. 

How should I know? I was just going on the habitat I am not familiar with many hummingbirds and to be honest am just taking a wild stab in the dark based on nesting preferences, of which there isn't a lot of info on the Web. But I shall try Allen's hummer next.. 

Does it not look a bit too big for that? Remember   I don't think I am but you certainly merit a Mention in Despatches for that call and of course getting so close you have decimated that list of 300.

How about Costa's hummingbird? The habitat looks quite dry.. 

Not really. I merely gave reasons why I thought it should not be easy or you end up playing what I have coined "Longitude Lottery." You have got all the indicators that I have and yes the bird is partly obscured by the nest but that is no different to having its head behind a branch or otherwise out of sight. In my opinion, and I am on foreign ground with Hummers, I feel there are sufficient indicators to ID the bird. If the bird is not enough then maybe the nest may help. I don't know enough about them to be absolutely sure and that particular nest was found and photoed by me whilst on a walk. No helpful Guide to show it to me and give its name and no feeder for miles or kilometres. Heck. I might even be wrong, it's not unknown! As a novice I often approach ID in reverse and in Sherlock Holmes fashion. With 300 or so Hummers we can make a start by saying @kittykat23uk's Rufous is incorrect. It should not take  a scattergun but you will never know how close you came with the two you mentioned. So that's two more off the list!

@Galanaand @Soukous you are perilously close to putting words in my mouth with "easy".   I said nothing of the sort.  My assertion was that a photo needs to show identifiable features - and that one does not.   It could be any female Archilocus Hummingbird (Ruby-throated, Black-chinned) and also other genera based on the lack of separable features.   In other words, it could be any of a number of female hummingbird species and the photo contains insufficient info to narrow it down much further.   This game has been replete with difficult submissions that are a lot of fun - even images where the bird is partly or mostly obscured.  But they all had *enough clues to go on* - that is the fun of a good submission.   This one frankly does not.   So things will devolve into people guessing and waiting for a scattershot to strike home.