Guatemala: Nature and Culture in the Jungle of Tikal

February 23, Tikal: What can anyone say about this place? We were up and out in the early morning fog, new birds coming at a bewildering rate even before the sun had risen. But what was most amazing, as every visitor must see, is the incredible juxtaposition of the natural wealth of the jungle with the cultural treasures of the ruins.

I’d expected that juxtaposition, but was still startled by its complexity. For it isn’t just that the grand park coincidentally preserves habitat for Crested Guans and Gray-headed Doves and Black-headed Trogons.

In many cases, the relationship runs deeper between the animals and the human aspects of their habitat. Take, for example, the most un-missable of Tikal’s avian ornaments, the abundant Ocellated Turkeys.

Their ubiquity and their absolute unwariness struck us at first as a bit absurd. But on reflection, these magnificent birds are probably behaving no differently from what they did a thousand years ago, when they no doubt wandered equally unconcered among the palaces and farmhouses of late Classical Tikal; just replace palaces and farmhouses with tent-campers and rental SUVs.

The confiding behavior of the Plain Chachalacas may be an inheritance from those days, too, when such tasty birds were not just tolerated but encouraged to partake of human leavings.

Symbiosis, though, isn’t always symmetrical. At Tikal, there is some comfort in the thought that no matter what we humans wind up doing, the jungle will return, eventually reclaiming us and our artifacts, even the vehicles junked by American archeologists decades ago.

And turkeys and trogons will continue to lord it over those of us just passing through.