What, over with so soon? It hadn’t helped that I’d been under the weather those couple of days, but our week in Guatemala went by far too rapidly. It seemed like we had just arrived when it was time to say goodbye to everyone and to thank Ana Cristina and her colleagues for all their work.

I didn’t take many photos this year, but the few I did bring home all recall an especially good moment during the week.

This snazzy male White-collared Seedeater was feeding in a weedy ditch in the Peten; I had some of my best views ever of this common but sometimes flighty species this year in Guatemala.

Northern Royal-Flycatcher is one of those tropical birds we all grow up fantasizing about; I remember with great vividness the first time I saw Roger Tory Peterson’s painting of one in full exploding-head display–and recall with equal clarity my disappointment in reading Hugh Land on just how rarely that is seen, a proviso repeated almost verbatim in Peterson and Chalif. But then I got to see the bird, and there’s no cause for disappointment even with the crest furled.

The subtle tail pattern, the neat white dots on the wing coverts, and that bizarre hammerhead always make this a bird worth looking at, headdress unfolded or not.

Now that I’ve been to the American tropics a couple of times, Gray-breasted Martin is a reasonably familiar bird; but I can never resist good views of them. This distantly photographed male and his consort were nesting in a metal box on the side of a telephone pole in Flores, and they weren’t the least bit shy about taking the first vital step towards the new generation right out in plain view.

Howler monkeys were equally assertive at many locations, and I came to look forward to their roaring as I fell asleep and woke early in the mornings.

If I had to choose one single site from all the great locations we visited in Guatemala, Finca El Pilar would come out on top. This coffee plantation just outside of Antigua was among my favorite places last year, and it more than lived up to my eager expectations this year, too.

The hummingbird feeders were just as spectacular as I’d remembered them, with great views of Purple and Rufous Sabrewings, Azure-crowned Hummingbird, and another half dozen species, but on this visit, it wsa the upper stretches of the finca that impressed me most. Not only was it cool and dry up there–a welcome change from the wet heat of the Pacific Coast–but the trees were full of birds, including large numbers of singing Crescent-chested Warblers and Red-faced Warblers on their way (it pleased me to imagine) to Arizona for the summer. As dusk fell, Swainson’s Thrushes materialized all around us, plinking from every bush. Black-capped Swallows and the occasional Vaux’s Swift filled the sky, and all was right with the world!

Pacaya Volcano, with its hot lava flows and vast fields of  fantastically curled sharp basalt, is a wonder, and the views of other volcanoes nearby nearly as good. This one, I believe, is called Fuego, suitably enough, and it spat smoke and steam every few minutes while we watched it from the slopes of Pacaya.

The birding was not overwhelmingly exciting on Pacaya, but who can complain when the characteristic avian voices belong to Rufous-collared Sparrows and Gray Silky-flycatchers by the hundreds?

Here, too, we saw our only Eastern Bluebirds of the trip, and the occasional flock of smaller passerines included most of the common gleaners and bugeaters of the area.

We were able to spend two generous half-days in the mangroves around Monterrico, where far and away the most impressive sight was provided by flocks of up to 150 Ruddy-breasted Seedeaters in the grassy vegetation along the open channels. And it was here, too, that we came across the most disturbing sight of our week: a slaughtering ground for Wood Storks, skulls and wings and long bony feet piled up along the trails where hunters had killed them. Our boatmen told us that the silly birds had just blundered into trees and wires, but it was only too obvious that these birds had been clubbed, field dressed, and taken home to the stewpot. We saw more dead storks those two days than we saw live ones the entire week.

More heartening were roosts of Boat-billed Herons, allowing close approach in the dense mangroves and making us hope out loud that their flesh was fishy and tough. Other herons were abundant on the open water–there’s nothing like a slow cruise on a Central American river to convince you of the astonishing abundance of Green Herons! A slight disappointment was the scarcity of kingfishers; we saw a grand total of one Green Kingfisher, and just a few Belted; only Ringed Kingfisher was anything like common.

A stop at a dry cleared woodlot was surprisingly birdy, with Spot-breasted Oriole and Turquoise-browed Motmot the stars. And while we’d enjoyed superb looks at Pale-billed Woodpeckers in the north, here, in this more recently cleared landscape, it was Lineated Woodpeckers that stole the show.