Birds of Cerro Cahui

After our twilight birding adventure at Ixpanpajul, we were really ready for some daylight birding. So when the sun came up, we were ready and waiting at Cerro Cahui for whatever winged treasures it could offer.

A ruddy-tailed flycatcher was pretty darn cute, stub-tailed and puffy. He's giving a squeaky call every few seconds. He looked like an Easter chick cartoon.
There are a LOT of flycatchers in Guatemala. This is one of the more distinctive ones.
A commotion of birds heralded the approach of an army ant column. When army ants are on the march, insects and animals of all stripes and sizes flee madly from their carnivorous jaws. Lots of bird species specialize in hunting out and following ant columns for the invertebrates they stir up. Many of those species have "ant" in their names. Antpitta, antbird, antwren, antthrush, ant tanager. They're all cool birds, and they get the birdwatcher's heart pounding, because you have to be in good humid lowland forest to see many of them. This is a red-throated ant tanager. Apologies for the photo, but I hate flash, preferring to open the shutter and up the ISO instead.
I loved shooting the birders, too, twisted into lots of back-wrenching poses as they strained to catch glimpses of a hidden keel-billed toucan. The toucan was yelping like a puppy somewhere in an emergent tree, but it took us quite awhile to find it. Hmmm. It's got to be up there somewhere.I have it!
Can that bill be possible?? Blood red, sky blue, apple green and tangerine orange??
Oh yes, oh yes. It is a keel-billed toucan, and it is looking right at me.

Where?? Right there!Oh! How could we have missed that? In a land that explodes with color, even the gaudiest toucan disappears against the brilliant leaves and sky. His black plumage reads as a negative space; his sulfur breast as just more vegetation. Green parrots are just about impossible to pick out, even with their flashes of color. It's all so bright and colorful, they blend right in.

Farther up the trail, another humid forest denizen--the rufous-tailed jacamar. Related to kingfishers and bee-eaters, it sits quietly on a perch, then sallies off after katydids and lizards--whatever it can subdue with its knitting-needle bill.
But my favorite bird of Cerro Cahui was the gray-throated chat, another hopelessly misnamed jewel of the tropical forest. Are you ready? I think the last thing you'll remark on is the bird's gray throat, but the ornithological powers seem to think it's a good name. Never mind all the carmine pink spilling down its front like strawberry jam:
Liam, looking over my shoulder. "Isn't that a pretty bird, Boom Boom?" I ask.
Liam: "Oh yes, but he's kind of blurry."

"Yeah. I know. Doing my best."

Beauty at Every Turn

Dull name, beautiful birdlet: the slate-throated redstart. These little tropical warblers forage for flying insects along trails, perching predictably on fallen logs as they sally out to catch their prey. They are flashy as all get-out and pretty easy to photograph, being confiding and always ready with a fabulous pose.As if deep slate-blue upperparts weren't enough, they have this ruddy crown, like our ovenbird. I find their color combinations captivating. Fierce, as Christian from Project Runway might say. This bird is workin' that little red Mohawk.
I found the slate-throated redstart on the way up to find a roosting black-and-white owl in an enormous strangler fig at the top of a long hill above Los Tarrales. The black-and-white owl is a prize of tropical birding, rarish and hard to see, unless there's a stakeout like this one. I'd never have known to look for him unless our guide, Josue, had pointed him out. We'd made a long climb and Josue asked if we were game to climb another 5 km to see the owl. Without hesitation, Liz, Jeff, Lisa and I said, "Sure!" Josue smiled and led us another 100 feet to the shade of the strangler fig. We looked up and there it was, the beautiful strange owl we'd been hoping to see. Understand that this is a horrible photo, because it was pitch-dark in the canopy of the fig (as an owl would have it), and I had to burn everything out to get any detail at all. This is a sharp owl, barred black and white with burning red eyes and corn-yellow bill and feet. I'll never forget watching a family of them catching moths under a light at Las Ventanas de Osa in southwestern Costa Rica. What a privilege to have seen a handful of black-and-white owls.

Just beyond the owl tree, an endemic blue-tailed hummingbird taunted me by sitting close and still in terrible light. It seems ever to be thus with iridescent hummingbirds in the tropics. The light is usually tough, and they're usually between you and the sun. You'll remember the photo in my last post--blurry with decent color. Well, this one is sharp, with no color. Take my word--he's bronze, green, and violet-blue, and very beautiful, except here. Hummingbirds are fan dancers; they only give you a peek and then cover it up again.
Water poured from a weir. Rushing water, in canals and chutes, is everywhere at Los Tarrales, watering the plantations of flowers and bananas. It was such a balm to my soul to hear running water, having been frozen into our iceblock in Ohio for so many months.
As I came down from fairyland, I was reminded that everyone else was working around Los Tarrales. This elderly man was bent almost double under probably 100 pounds of firewood. Still, he had a bright smile and a soft "Buenos!" for me.
Beauty peeks out of every corner here. A nameless vine, clambering over a chain-link fence near the coffee processing plant. Needless to say, the cinnamon hummingbirds were working it.I'll leave you with a tree that completely blew me away. This is a rainbow eucalyptus. Its trunk was smooth and cool and damp, striped with the most perfect Martha Stewart colors. Andy Burge's grandfather planted several of them decades ago, and only two remain, because as Andy put it, "Lightning likes those eucalypts."The thought of having a yard full, an allee, perhaps, of rainbow eucalyptus trees is almost enough to make me move to Guatemala. I could lose myself in these colors. As I moved around the tree, moaning in delight, I saw that I was not the first to admire it.

Tarrales Regulars

Many of the more cooperative birds in Guatemala were Neotropical migrants, like this least flycatcher. Well, they were cooperative about having their photos taken, but none of them would call for us, so we were left with trusting our instincts and the range maps in the field guide as to their identities. The tapered, elliptical eyering and overall grayness of this little Empid pointed to least flycatcher for me.

In blogging about Guatemalan birds, remember that I'm limited to writing about the ones for which I got decent pictures. They tend to be the commoner, easier to see birds. No matter: they're fabulous enough for nature-starved folks like you and me. Because I always had the blog in mind, getting pictures of even a fraction of the birds we were spotting became a neurotic quest for me. I came back with gobs of pictures that are no good at all, a few that are at least identifiable, and a tiny handful that are worth looking at twice. The white-winged tanager here is a good example. You can tell what it is, but even with sharpening and cropping, it doesn't come close to doing a terrific little bird justice. Overall, they're snapshots, just me trying to bring you something to look at, struggling against the nocturnal shadows and blinding sun of the tropical forest. In this modest quest, I felt well-matched to my camera rig, which is a Canon Digital Rebel XTi with 70-300 mm. zoom lens. It's fairly light and easy to carry, and ready to be swung up at a second's notice. I've developed a rudimentary understanding of what I have to do in difficult light conditions (and they all seem to be difficult in deep tropical forest). Picture me madly spinning dials, opening up f-stops and speeding up ISO. It's cool to get at least some souvenir of a memorable sighting. So let the parade of mediocre bird pictures begin!

Chachalacas make more of an aural impression on the landscape than a visual one. Drab brown, with a white vent (this is the white-bellied chachalaca, a nice regional endemic that lots of birders like to tick off their lists in Guatemala), the white-bellied chacha cuts the air with its grating chorus of cha-cha LAC! cha-cha-LAC!, given in groups of five to ten. It's very loud, a classic sound of the tropics. Chachas, as we liked to call them, are related to guans and currasows, and are generally quickly hunted out unless protected, as they are at Los Tarrales.An unfortunate shot, with the branch obscuring his nice red wattle. Oh well, you take what you get, and not all of it is National Geographic caliber. It's a chachalaca. The dark band on the breast is a branch shadow. Here, a chacha sings out the day as the tropical night falls like a cloth. He's the tiny fleck in the left center of the picture.One of the cutest little characters of mid-level tropical forest is the common tody-flycatcher. An Andy Gump chin, long, flat bill, staring white eye and gnatcatcher-like tail characterize him. The best thing he did I couldn't capture in a picture. When it's excited, the common tody-flycatcher raises its long thin tail up over its back and slowly swivels it in a circle, like he's waiting for a pitch. I found myself chanting, "Hey, batter batter Hey batter!" and talking to him as if he were a pet parakeet. He didn't seem to mind. The whole affair is maybe 4" long. Tiny, cute Todirostrum cinereum, we could use some of you up here in the Ohio woods.

Perhaps the most striking bird to inhabit Los Tarrales is the white-throated magpie jay, Calocitta formosa. Those of you who've done a bit of global birding know that any bird with "magpie" in its name is going to be well-endowed in the gee-whiz department. White-throated magpie jays do not disappoint. I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on one, in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. Lee-ord. It was like a giant blue jay that had gotten into the dress-up trunk in the attic. What's that they say about a picture being worth...This creature is loud, raucous, tame and inquisitive. It is also 18" long. It's about what you'd get if you scaled a blue jay up by 200% and gave him a good stiff mojito to remove his inhibitions.
Gotta love the hairdo. Just a little fillip to add to his general impressiveness. In flight, they're unmistakable, always breathtaking.Imagine living in a place where such sights are commonplace; not even giving an 18" long crazy beautiful magpie jay a second glance. We all take for granted that which is common. The jays seemed to enjoy being gasped at by the greenhorns draped in optics.

As I write, the first fox sparrow of spring is feeding on the greening lawn. And the woodcocks sang and danced last evening. Bill raced home to catch the end of their act, and we grilled lamb and asparagus in a welcome-spring, welcome-home celebration.