Mar

Guatemala: On the Quetzal Trail

Twenty minutes’ dusty drive above the comfortable lodge at Los Andes is the Quetzal Trail, a spectacularly beautiful walk through mountain forest inhabited by a couple of pairs of the eponymous trogonid. We heard Resplendent Quetzal on both our evening and our morning walk here, but for me at least, this wonderful forest offered so much more that I didn’t even mind not seeing Guatemala’s national bird this time around.

For those of us who dared, the ride in the back of the truck was nearly as much fun as the walk once we got there (you can also sit inside the cab, but I nearly doubled my life tally of Pauraques by standing in back).

The drive passes through the tidy housing settlement of the people who work, live, and go to school at Los Andes. Everyone was very nice, sweet and welcoming as only Central Americans can be, but the municipal officials revealed a distressing lack of irony in one roadsign (no photo, alas), which reminded anyone involved in an accident to go to the clinic. Well, yeah, ok.

Los Andes grows coffee, tea, and macadamias. Much of it is said to be under shade (like 98% of all Guatemala’s coffee!), but the road to the quetzals passes through some open plantations with not a whole lot to see (this is tea).

It changes rapidly up top.

The trail goes gently, if unrelentingly, uphill through a deep forest of enormous trees.

At dawn and at dusk, Highland Guans whistle and whoosh and Spotted Wood-Quail chant, invisibly, from just a few feet away. Blue-crowned Motmots and Emerald Toucanets are the constant voices of the woods, and occasionally let themselves be glimpsed. Blue-hooded Euphonias and Blue-crowned Chlorophonias are common, joining the mixed flocks of warblers as they pass along the trails.

All of that was expected, if wondrous. Entirely unexpected was Hugo’s whisper from the front of the line: antpitta. And sure enough, a Scaled Antpitta bounced down the trail ahead of us, an animated football on tiny pogostick legs, giving the best view I’d ever had of any antpitta away from a feeder. We heard their soft tremolos a number of times during our walks, but never again did we see this secretive species. Watching the bird “follow ahead” of us on the path, I swore then and there that none of us would complain about not seeing quetzals, clunky show-offs that they are!

Easy-going as I was determined to be, there was one target species I did not want to miss. Just before the high point of the trail (geographically just before: emotionally just at), the first of a half dozen or so Azure-rumped Tanagers appeared for leisurely scope views, the soft blue of its body and back nicely setting off the odd black patterning of face and breast. We’d been warned that this bird could be hard to see as it worked the canopy, but several times we had individuals and pairs perched in bare branches, patiently tolerating our gaze.

That should have been enough. But Jorge, sharp of eye and of mind, discovered a tiny speck high on a dead twig in a small forest clearing. That speck was a hummingbird, and from its head protruded ridiculously long plumes, swaying in the breezes like, well, the streamers of a quetzal. A male Black-crested Coquette let us drink our fill, then (no doubt sensing my camera’s focus) took off for parts unknown.