A-Birding from a Balcony

Like I told Bill of the Birds, who felt bad each time he had to leave me to take another birding trip, there are far worse places to be stranded alone than Hotel Via Maya. The balcony made all the difference. And then there was the location--on the edge of a large lagoon patrolled by herons, jacanas, bat falcons; even host to sungrebes, which some were lucky enough to see. For Lynne and Mary: A Guatemalan stinker, lookin' innocent.
Closer by, tropical house wrens burbled and chattered. Zick , following with the telephoto, trying to get a clear twig window through which to shoot. Gotcha! you little sneak.
A magnolia warbler, doubtless beginning to think about the black spruces of its Canadian forest home. Goin' home to see Sara and Kelly.

A black-and-white warbler peers into some rootlets, or perhaps they're hyphae. One never quite knows in the tropics. Maybe there's a spider there he can eat before it jumps out at April.
I'd like to think this American redstart is planning to bring coals to Indigo Hill.
Wood thrush, will you bring your flute to our forest?
Our neighbor cut down all the big trees where you usually nest, but you can come over on our land.
Pretty bug, you can stay right here in Guatemala.
In the afternoons, a soft, accelerating whoop, ending in a growl, would sound from the trees off my balcony. I'd struggle up out of bed, knowing that this is the call of the black-headed trogon. Oh, so worth getting out of bed to see, I finally got a passable picture of him. He's 11" long--quite a bird, with his ice-blue eye ring, his white-tipped tail, yellow belly and contemplative gaze. A fine thing to see from one's sickbed. Thank you, trogon. Persistant high chirps, sounding like a tiny bird scolding, resolved into the display song of a rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl). Yes, hummingbirds often sing--our Anna's is a great singer! but not many of us stop to notice the song; it's like the voice of a Who.
His throat puffed, he gives it his all, which, if you're a female tzacatl, is just enough.

Shade Coffee Birds

On the moderate-elevation slopes and terraces of Los Tarrales, coffee grows in the shade of a largely intact forest. Trees of many different species provide the shade, and birds move between the canopy and the coffee shrubs unimpeded and apparently undisturbed. It's a beautiful conjunction of agriculture and useful habitat, foreign to those of us who associate agriculture with endless monocultures of corn, wheat, or soybeans, which are almost useless to native wildlife. This is a much happier land-use marriage.

I loved seeing birds that would soon be in my own yard, engaged in tropical doings. Here, a Baltimore oriole gorges on the strange fruits of a cecropia plant. They don't look juicy or tasty, but orioles and honeycreepers, euphonias and jays love to take bits of the strange, wormlike fruits.One of the things that strikes me hard in Guatemala is the difference in scale between temperate and tropical leaves. This oriole is dwarfed, lost but for his coal-bright orange.


Swainson's thrushes were everywhere in this disturbed, mid-elevation habitat. They looked strange to me against the odd forms of leguminous pods, but they felt perfectly at home.
A female ruby-throated hummingbird fed at the flowers of a tree-sized composite plant, perhaps a Senecio. Its perfume made me swoon.
Hurry home and see us, Mrs. Hummingbird. On second thought, wait a bit. The weather's still iffy. Wherever we went, black-and-white warblers combed the tree trunks, huge and small, for insectile delicacies. I'll see you in April, my dear, as you scour the oak limbs for sleeping spiders back home.
One of my favorite pictures of the trip is this little yellow-bellied flycatcher in the understory of a fishtail palm plantation at Los Tarrales, impatiens glowing in the background. I'll be listening for his plaintive chu-wee? in my backyard in May.
Enough on those Neotropical migrants, Ms. Zickefoose. Move on to the tropical residents. Start with me, the barred antshrike.
You are a fine birdie indeed, even though you and your mate skulk in the shadows. We'll talk about tropical residents next. Ah, sun, ah, exotica.