Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, Guatemala

I’d really hoped that Arizona might get the ABA Area’s first, but who could begrudge Texas this bird?

It was hard to know where to look in the yard at Los Andes. Red-billed Pigeons competed for our attention with Social Flycatchers, Yellow-winged Tanagers with Red-legged Honeycreepers. And then there were the boreal migrants: Baltimore Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Indigo Buntings–birds I don’t see often in the winter.

This Orchard Oriole perched up for a good long time, probably drying off after a bath, and I took the opportunity to hone my digiscoping skills. (Love my camera, love my scope, but the twain don’t meet all that well in my hands.) Lousy as the photos are, they’re great material for a quiz.

This is an easy bird to sex: by late February, all males of whatever age should be showing black on the throat. This uniformly yellow-headed bird is a female.

The shape and state of the tail feathers allow us to age her. Orchard Orioles retain their juvenile tail through the first year of life; those juvenile rectrices are slender, pointed, and of poor quality, all features readily visible in this spread-tail shot. Some of the apparent feather shape may be due to dampness (she’d been bathing), but especially if we look at the outer pair of rectrices, we can see plenty of missing barbs; an adult’s tail feathers should be stronger and fresher, blunter-tipped and perhaps darker (though the backlighting here is severe).

So this is a female Orchard Oriole of the class of ‘08, a bird in her first plumage cycle, an “SY-F” in calendar-year terminology. I wonder where she was hatched and when she will get back to the breeding grounds from Guatemala.

Can you age and sex this one? The photo was taken at Los Andes in late February.

And what a situs!

Photo: Knut Eisermann.

And, of course, what birds. Eager as I’d been to get to Tarrales, I was glad, too, that we’d saved this magical place for last. Apart from a day along the coast at Monterrico, we’d spent our entire time at high, cool elevations. Tarrales, which reaches down to 2,300 feet (a bit lower than Tucson), is, at least at its lower elevations, decidedly more tropical than any place else we’d visited, and as a result, our last full day in Guatemala turned up a number of birds we hadn’t encountered elsewhere.

The birding started even before we hopped off the bus, with Cinnamon Hummingbirds and Common Tody-Flycatchers right along the driveway. The feeders just outside the cool, charming dining room hosted everything from Spot-breasted Oriole to Yellow-throated Euphonia; the snazzy adult male in the photo above was joined by a nice selection of immature males and females. Rufous-naped Wrens also enjoyed the fruit and the insects attracted to it.

But we couldn’t tarry all day–there were birds to be seen on the trails, too! After our days in the cooler highlands, it felt warm, and this desert boy noticed the humidity, but there was a light breeze that literally invigorated every time it reached us. I’d made the mistake of wearing shorts and tevas–I never do that in the tropics!–and the biting gnats that were a mild annoyance for the sensibly clad were fair reward for my foolishness.

But who cares? Orange-fronted Parakeets perched, uncharacteristically, in easy view along the trail.

Orange-chinned Parakeets flashed overhead in noisy flocks. A Violaceous Trogon and a couple of Blue-crowned Motmots gave us better views than we’d had all week, and by trailing behind the group, I had the best study ever of Yellow-olive Flycatcher, a bird I’d seen a number of times before and never really had a chance to get to know. And the same with Tropical Pewee: this time I resisted distraction and took the time to really watch one hunting from a low perch nearby.

Distraction was a real temptation, though. While the pewee flycaught in front of us, a cluster of fruit above our heads was drawing White-winged Tanagers and the day’s target bird, Long-tailed Manakins. We started hearing manakins not long after entering the forest, and had our first looks in a huge fruiting fig about twenty minutes in (apparently the place to be at Tarrales, hosting everything from White-throated Thrush to Slate-colored Redstart). Even seen just in bits and snatches, the manakin is a startlingly pretty little bird, but when a male perches out in the open to show off his powder-blue back, red crown, and wiry tail feathers, it’s almost enough to make you look away from a pewee.

Lingering over the manakins, I missed the group’s departure (and thus a bird I’d really wanted to see)–my own fault. We reassembled for lunch at the house, pausing for only a moment inside before carrying our laden plates into the yard.

Tarrales has large, comfortable rooms with private bathrooms, and the food more than held its own against anything else all week. There are Horned Guans on the higher slopes of the volcano–one of these days, I think I’ll spend a week!

The walk up San Pedro isn’t a long one–we did just a bit less, I think, than 2 miles up and 2 miles down; but in its close approximation to the vertical, it turned out to be one of the more challenging birding walks I’d ever made. I found myself needing to stop regularly, frequently, among the coffee plantations, cornfields, and 400-year-old trees–to admire the view and the birds, of course, never for anything so shameful as to catch my breath!

And the views were well worth the pause. The walk to the land of the guans is divided into two segments, marked by a delightful little halfway shelter where we paused for lunch (and, yes, to catch our breath).

(Only now do I notice that there must have been cell phone service up there!) Atitlan glistened far below us.

And Black Vultures, omnipresent whatever the elevation, floated–hopeful?–just over our heads.

We disappointed the elegant scroungers and headed up. San Pedro must be a staging site of global significance for Tennessee Warblers, and there were other, more exotic delights like Crescent-chested Warbler and Slate-throated Redstart hanging out with many of the flocks. At about 2,500 meters elevation (and just a little more than two kilometers from the visitor center), we started to look in earnest for cracids.

Hugo started showing us the individual trees he had seen the birds in on past visits–always a bad sign on a birding walk. We made a surprise detour at one point, walking across rather than up the steep slope, for a pair of staked-out Fulvous Owls.

These rarish strigids would have made any other birding day a great one, but we pushed on, leaving them perched lumpily in the canopy.

The question arises on every chase: When do we give up? At the remove of two weeks, I can summon back neither the lactic-acid ache of my thighs nor the mingling of disappointment and slightly ashamed relief at our decision to sit down for a while and ponder defeat.

And then Mel, just a few yards farther up the trail, waved. He waved with such vigor that I could almost swear I heard the hand motions before I saw them; and his face left no doubt about what he’d found.

Where’d all the energy come from? We were on our feet and up the hill in no time at all, and the gasps that issued from our lungs suddenly had nothing to do with the steepness of the trail. There it was–no, there are two–no, there are three–no there are five! Horned Guans stepped deliberately through the foliage, turkey-sized creatures with white sewn-on eyes and ludicrous senses of dignity.

The “horn” varied from rhinoceros-like on this individual to just an ill-formed scarlet bump on others–the counterpoise to the inconspicuous red gular patch. As striking and as weird was the feathering on the bill, reaching out to form a puffy frontal crest that made the ivory upper mandible look absurdly small.

The birds were slow and quiet up in the trees, and it would be easy to miss even these hulking beasts if you didn’t happen to catch one out in the open.

That odd white tail-band suddenly made sense as a piece of “disruptive” coloration, breaking the long tail into discrete patches of shade. Patience, though, gave us outstandingly good views as the birds walked and fed and, finally, vocalized in the trees just off the trail.

As we watched, the birds stood still for minutes at a time, whether in stolidity or a species of static display I don’t know; playing statue like this was usually done in pairs, or at least in twos, and was followed by slow stepping along the branches, only occasionally breaking out into flutter-flight to a nearby perch.

All this was in utter silence at first, but after several minutes we heard a few very low-pitched, slightly buzzy booms–the famous courting call, given with complete decorum. Only once did a noisy and brief squabble break out between two birds, their necks outstretched and heads lowered as they stared at each through felt-puppet eyes.

We had half an hour of this, and were even able to share the birds with the only mildly interested hikers on their way down from the summit. (One curious French family stopped–all I could think of was “poule cornu,” and I’m sure they’re still wondering what a crested chicken and its giddy watchers were doing all that way up on the volcano.)

Suddenly, for what seemed to us no reason at all, the birds pitched out of the trees, one at a time, truly massive in flight, and disappeared over the ridge. They did not return. But the afterglow was a chance for us to watch a stub-billed Emerald-chinned Hummingbird and to catch our breath for the walk back to the visitor center. It took us only about half the time as the climb up had, but as any mountain walker knows, it’s the down direction that’s dangerous. I kept my feet, but every few minutes someone else would skid out, and Hugo, pointing out the importance of seeking one’s center of gravity, would shout out his instructions: “Sit!”

Or at least I think that’s what he was saying. We all made it whole and happy, and celebrated with cold drinks in San Pedro before the trip back across Atitlan–and an early evening in San Lucas.

Hotel Los Pasos, Antigua.

As fond a birder as I am, I am still à fond a birder. And so on this latest visit, happy as I was to get to see Ana and Bitty and Irene and the whole generous gang, I still had a feathered target or two. Pink-headed Warbler fell on that happy morning at Rincon Suizo, and the Prevost’s Ground-Sparrow at Los Andes still brings a smile to my face. But there’s one bird that looms even larger for visitors to Guatemala: The Guan.

With the exception of a few tolerant chachalacas, nearly all the cracids–curassows, guans, and all that lot of strange primitive chickens–are in bad shape. The poster chick of them all, though, is the Horned Guan, a huge and bizarre cracid endemic to southern Mexico and Guatemala’s highlands. Unlike Highland Guan and Crested Guan, both of which we heard commonly (and in the case of Crested Guan, even saw a couple of times), Horned is rare even in Guatemala, and even at the most accessible sites, finding it requires some considerable effort. The vertical red line on this map of San Pedro Volcano pretty much tells the story: you are here, the guans are up there, way, way up there.

We started our morning early, with the drive to San Lucas Toliman, a beautiful and peaceful town on the shores of volcano-ringed Lake Atitlan.

For birders, the half-hour boat ride across the lake inevitably combines sad memories with the experience of the sublime. While there were plenty of American Coots, Laughing Gulls, Lesser Scaup, Ruddy Ducks, and hirundinids to enjoy against the picture-perfect landscape of volcanos and forests, it’s hard not to recall that had we made the trip a long generation earlier, we might have run across the endemic grebe, extinct now for some three decades.

Lugubrious thoughts were put aside as soon as we arrived in San Pedro, a bustling tourist town that serves as the jumping-off point for visits to the volcano above. I was amused to find the local House Sparrows building “natural” nests on the telephone poles in town.

A quick and adventurous twelve minutes later, and our pickup truck dropped us a the San Pedro Volcano visitor center, where we would begin our, ahem, stroll.

The hillside forest was the more beautiful the closer we got to it, and the weather was pleasantly cool. And the reminder at the bottom of the trail to say a prayer seemed just another bit of the local religion’s touching syncretism.

Like a fool, I told myself in my heart as we started up that this notorious trail was nothin’: I do more challenging walks every time I venture into one of southeast Arizona’s Sky Islands. Indeed, the San Pedro trail actually goes downhill from the visitor center, bottoming out beneath a dry cliff filled with White-throated Swifts. It was here, too, that a fantastically big and beautiful Stripe-headed Sparrow popped up in the vegetation–an Aimophila, a lifebird, and a good omen for the rest of our day on San Pedro!

The approach to the reserve took us through some warmish, humidish lowlands with White-throated Magpie-Jays and other open-country wonders, but by the time our trusty bus had gone up the hill to the house, it was once again cool and beautiful. We wandered the yard for a couple of hours after lunch, enjoying old friends and new faces among the birds. Yellow-winged Tanagers were abundant, feeding and posing in the trees surrounding the house.

A couple of Yellow-bellied Elaenias haunted the edges, too; I couldn’t remember ever having heard the species before, and enjoyed the chance to learn its breathy, burry calls.

The true prize of this incredibly birdy yard popped up when we were following a couple of male Painted Buntings bounce around under a magic orange-flowered bush. A nice Blue-tailed Hummingbird blew in, and while I was watching it, a Prevost’s Ground-Sparrow fluttered up to perch in the open! Like the other Melozone, this is a very secretive bird, and though we looked long and hard, it never reappeared in the two part-days we spent in the yard.

Because this is a birding b-log, I have to include at least one sewage pond, this (scentless) one just below the lodge at Los Andes and the happy hunting ground of a Green Kingfisher.

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.

It was a happy gang of birders that bounced back down the hill.

Quite apart from the statuesque statuary, there were birds. The hummingbird feeders were busier here than at El Pilar even, forcing some of the little buzzers to wait their turn on unaccustomed perches.

Some of us succumbed to the allure of coffee and hot chocolate, but the only thing that could tear me away from the feeders was the sweet trilling of the Rufous-collared Sparrows in the garden (exquisitely sharp focus on those pine needles!).

I’ve always liked Switzerland.

We spent a night at beautiful Molino Helvetia, then had a terrifically successful detour a couple of days later to Rincon Suizo, and one afternoon took a coffee-and-trochilids break at Cabaña Suiza. I kept waiting for Heidi to step out of the forest. Instead of pig-tailed blond girls with gruff grandfathers (not that I have anything against blond girls or pig-tails), we saw birds, birds, and more birds, all in scenery and weather that I suppose could remind you of that old European democracy (especially if you hadn’t been there for a while).

Molino Helvetia, as its name suggests, is an old flour mill; two charming (and vaguely European) houses on the grounds are now available to ecotourism groups. My group filled both, and we enjoyed the fine dinner we were served as much as the fireplaces and a delightfully bright and slightly chilly morning of birding (it was the only time I wished I’d remembered my gloves).

Just below the house was a fine brushy creekbed full of birds, including plenty of Crescent-chested Warblers and Tufted Flycatchers, along with the trip’s first views of Chestnut-capped Brushfinch and Buff-breasted Flycatcher: a fine mix of the Arizonan and the exotic!

Farther along, the trail entered the mountain forests, where Gray Silky-Flycatchers and Black-capped Swallows flew above and the charming tinkle of Rufous-browed Wrens issued from every tangle (I had to wait another day to actually see one of the little skulkers).

Our time afield was excellent, but the yards and gardens surrounding the houses were just as good. Rufous-collared Sparrows were in noisy residence, and a Blue-and-white Mockingbird was uncharacteristically bold as it fed, thrasher-like, among the specimen plantings.

This was certainly my best view ever of the sneaky creatures, unrivaled by any of the glimpses we had the rest of the week. Plus I got to watch this one while I was eating those wonderful Guatemalan sugar cookies.