The Last Guatemala Post

This lousy photo of the only bat falcon I saw in Guatemala is symbolic for me. The bat falcon is a bird I'd always wanted to see well, to luxuriate in for a little while. Thanks to some bad beans, I didn't get to see the bat falcon BOTB and Jeff Bouton digiscoped in Flores. I didn't get to go to Tikal, or take two other birding excursions on the schedule. But I did get to sit on my balcony and see what was going on with a pair of white-fronted Amazons, to watch a Guatemalan golden-fronted woodpecker excavate its nest cavity, to sneak up on a ringed kingfisher, to listen for the black-headed trogon and see his powder-blue eyering, to watch a rufous-tailed hummingbird sing his love song. It was terrific. Would I have traded it all for Tikal, for the company of husband and friends? Well, I couldn't, so I wouldn't. The moral: Lingering is sometimes just what we need (even if dysentery isn't!) Taking in one small scene (especially in lowland Guatemala) can be more rich and fulfilling than walking miles and ticking off bird after bird, but never getting to know any one bird for more than a moment. Lingering suits me fine.

A baby basilisk bites off a hibiscus flower.
He swallows it down, then poses in the sun. Who knew they ate flowers? Basilisks, or "Jesus lizards," are able to run over the surface of the water, light as the Holy Spirit.
A giant oncidium floops over with bloom.
A black-crowned tityra grunts, letting me know he is there. What a pretty little cotinga he is.I find the black-crowned tityra more elegant and cleanly beautiful than the more common masked tityra, with its beefy-red face. Here's another view of the male masked tityra. It's pronounced tit-TYE-rah, even though I thought they were tittyrahs as a freshman in college, before I heard anyone say the name.
A blue-gray tanager thinks about biting into a succulent fruit.
A pale-vented pigeon pants in the afternoon sun.
I was surprised to find a lone red-lored Amazon hanging out by the macaw enclosure, idly clipping off leaves and branches as it whiled part of a day away. I wondered if it was a refugee from captivity, since parrots almost always travel in pairs. Or perhaps, like the white-fronted Amazons of an earlier post, this is a male whose mate is incubating, and he's passing the time until the eggs hatch. I like that theory better. He's got a nice clean tail, undamaged by the interior of the nest cavity, which bolsters the evidence that he might be a mated male, batchin' it for the day. If only he could talk! but then he'd be somebody's pet.Continuing the psittacine theme, a gorgeous white-crowned Pionus fetched up in a treetop. I found myself wondering if all these lone soldiers were males, since it was the start of the nesting season and females were likely to be on eggs all day.

Just look at the color combinations in this glorious bird. Pink eye skin, steel-blue head and neck, bronzy shoulder, leaf-green wing coverts, sea-blue primaries, all underpinned by pink panties! and, I'd note, a perfect tail...
Hey, hon! Happy to bedazzle y'uns!

I most like my parrots on the wing.

As I made my slow way along a gravel road, a smallish buteo swept up and over my head. A roadside hawk! (Buteo magnirostris).
Roadside disapproval. Hey, Mr. Magnirostris, I'm just livin' my life, takin' pictures.

Yes, I was having tons o' fun. A steady pecking near the forest floor resolved into the same lineated woodpecker I had tried to photograph from my balcony--this time in subdued, but better light. Stealing beauty:We'd have to return to the States soon, and while I was sad to have missed the last few days of hanging out with everyone else, I didn't feel the least bit cheated or sad. The birds of Guatemala had stepped in to make sure I had a glorious time. Until next time, pajaritos. Hasta luego.
To all my dear friends in Guatemala: Ana, Marco, Hector, Kenneth, Hugo, Hilda, Claudia, Olga, Irene, Bitty, Estellita, Andy, Monica...thank you once again. I hope birdwatchers from all corners of the world treat themselves to some time in Guatemala with you. No finer people on the planet!
photo by Lisa White

This post is for my DOD, who never left the United States, but knew how to linger, and appreciate what he'd been given. He was born on June 18, 1912, two months after the Titanic set sail, and died April 10, 1994, the same date she sank. I planted snap peas and four kinds of greens, gladioli and tuberoses in his honor today. Called my mom from the cordless phone while standing out in the garden and told her I loved her.

Huevos for Breakfast

Huevos del Toro, if you're refined, and bull's balls if, like me, you're not. Named for the way it hangs in pairs, they're one of my favorite Guatemalan fruits, even though I've never, um, eaten them. They're hugely popular with birds. Last year at Tikal, I took some delightful pictures of a wild red-lored Amazon parrot making his sticky way through an unripe fruit, intent on seed piracy. Naughty parrot, you're going around the plant's divine plan for its own dispersal, tearing through unripe flesh to eat its seeds, and you're getting all gummy, too. Yes, parrot fans, this is how parrots should live--free to be themselves in all their irascible, sociable, messy glory. And yes, I tear up whenever I see them living, foraging, quarreling and flying as they were meant to. 

Ah, parrots...Given time, huevos del toro fruit ripen and split open (ow!) to reveal rich orange flesh, and that's when the fun starts.

I had a blast photographing a queue of birds feeding at a newly ripe huevo del toro. First were a little troupe of red-legged honeycreepers. Female and immature honeycreepers are dull green. Sweet little birds they are, but I never photographed them without longing for an adult male in good plumage. Naturally, the dull immatures gave me terrific opportunities. I was reminded of the relative difficulty of shooting photos of white-tailed does and fawns versus trophy bucks. I have lots of doe and fawn photos.  My buck photos are all distant and blurry. Here's a doe red-legged honeycreeper. And the prize: mango-red fruit.
Sorry to say, the best picture I was able to get of a buck red-legged honeycreeper appears below. Oh, they are beautiful, clothed in ultramarine satin, with a glittering turquoise coronet and red legs that look as if they're made of wax or plastic. I tried, but it's a pale simulacrum of the bird. At least you can see inside the bull's ball.
 Dominant at the breakfast bar was a pair of rufous-naped wrens (Campylorhynchus rufinucha). This gorgeous big wren is in the same genus as our big, bold cactus wren, C. brunneicapillus, and I think it shows.
The wrens, which travel in pairs, were busy probing in the fruit, bending themselves almost double to get the sweet flesh.
Yum!Here's the rufous nape that gives the wren its name. Tropical birds have the most prosaic common names, hard to remember and sometimes hard to divine. A bird with a glowing orange belly might be described as "slate-throated," because there's another closely related bird with a brilliant yellow belly and a yellow throat. So this gorgeous wren's most distinctive characteristic in contrast to its congeners turns out to be its rufous nape. Which results in a common name that's eminently forgettable. That's what happens when you have hundreds upon hundreds of similar-looking birds to name.

With each bit of fruit secured, the foraging bird deserted its post and flew off. I like this picture, taken just before the wren departed with its prize. I could have stood beneath this tree all day, watching the parade, but I had to report back to the mess hall for my breakfast, which involved huevos revueltos y frijoles refritos.

Thanks to all of you who checked out the NPR parrot commentary and emailed it to friends. It's Sunday, and it's still a-settin' on NPR's list at #1 Most Emailed, since sometime Friday afternoon. I suspect I have you, and the peculiar appeal of pets and parrots, to thank for that.

 And me without my big, foam, "We're # 1" fake finger. Where do you get those things, anyway? Stadiums?I would like to get one, so I can dance unseen around the meadow, pointing it at the sky and yapping like a coyote.