I’m an unabashed Guatemala fan. After three visits, the birding, splendid as it is, is almost incidental; when I think of Guatemala, the images that flood the mind are of people, architecture, landscapes, food–I’m quite simply fond of it all, and the birds are a wonderful bonus.

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!

Los Andes, one of Guatemala’s finest Private Nature Preserves, is one of those rare birding destinations that cater to all tastes. There’s hiking in the uplands, puddlewatching on the grounds, and a temptingly comfortable dining room and reading corner from which one can look up from a book or a cup of coffee to enjoy, oh, White-collared Seedeaters and Blue-tailed Hummingbirds just off the porch. Unbeatable! I’m giving serious thought to devoting our latest lottery winnings to a long weekend here (Guatemala is a lot closer to Tucson than is central New York, for example).

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.

Ana Cristina swore to me that I’d been there before, but I had no memory of visiting Cabana Suiza before. And the place was good enough that you’d think it wouldn’t have slipped my mind!

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.

The human mind is eternally in search of themes, and mine at least relies on commonality and coincidence even more than usual when I’m traveling. A thousand red threads ran through my time in Guatemala this year, but one of the oddest was, of all things, 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.