Belize! Part II: Birding Around Bird's Eye View Lodge and The Crooked Tree Pine Savanna

Yucatan Jay was one of the first species of the trip to really get the pupils dilated. This was one of the main target birds at Crooked Tree - in Belize, they are restricted to the northern part of the country - and we had no problem finding them once we got into the right habitat, the pine savanna on the west side of the village.

Yucatan Jays cruise around in big, noisy groups, and are not at all retiring like some tropical jay species. We saw flocks several times. Immature birds are easily identified by their bright yellow bills and yellow eyerings, which makes one constantly think of a Yellow-billed Magpie head attached to the body of another exotic bird. This pretty stationary group was working a modest antswarm and gave great looks, but were oddly the only bird species attending them.

Yucatan Jays have obvious similarities with some birds I have seen before - Purplish-backed and San Blas Jays - which are both in the same genus and generally follow similar design templates. On the other hand Green Jays, which we also saw here, are in the same genus but look nothing like them and were much less enthusiastic about perching out in the open. They were quite unlike the U.S. birds  that make up such a crucial component of South Texas Geri Birding in both behavior and appearance (different subspecies).

Mmmmmm so lifery...these were gripping birds. I hope to greatly expand my nascent relationship with Cyanocorax jays in the coming years. I think getting to know that intriguing genus will furnish a lot of good memories.

Yucatan Jay pro tip...Leonard, one of the BEV guides, told me they regularly come to roost in the evenings in the big trees at the campground next to BEV (where the Woodcreeper Trail starts), so although the light could be challenging they can potentially be found there without venturing out to the outskirts of the village.

Typically, when I go on birding trips to tropical places, I end up owing my friends a number of hjs. Owing other people a bunch of hjs is potentially awkward, but since they are my friends, we usually can enjoy the hjs and laugh about it later. I owe Billy an hj for Yucatan Jay and another for this Tropical Pewee, which was my first. This was one of the handful of lifers I got that I would go on to see regularly and didn't require putting in much effort.

I missed multiple opportunities to crush Roadside Hawks into oblivion due to the comatose camera, but at least I did get a photo that was reasonable enough to share here. Belize turned out to be great for raptors, and predictably Roadside Hawk was by far the most hawk common species, but not having seen them for a few years I was happy to be in their midst again.

Another target species of the Yucatan Peninsula flavor was Yellow-lored Parrot, which (in Belize anyway) have an affinity for pine savanna, much like Yucatan Jay. This species was admittedly a BRAIN BIRD only a few months ago but I was all about getting a lifer parrot. Billy, Annie and I all  took a shortish guided trip to the pine savanna for a morning to look for this and other area specialties. It was a quiet morning for some reason - even Leonard thought so, but we were able to find a young Yellow-lored parrot. They are aptly named, as the yellow lores are the best field mark, but otherwise look similar to the more widespread White-fronted Parrots.

Leonard was a solid guide and generally knew his shit. Another lifer for me that morning was Yucatan Woodpecker, which the BEV guides refer to as "Red-vented Woodpecker". It conveniently dropped into a tree I was already watching because it was filled with Yucatan Jays. Additional nice birds found in this area, which we birded both with and without Leonard, included Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Barred Antshrikes, Olive Sparrow, and Grace's Warblers. There was also an alarming abundance of Acorn Woodpeckers, which made me wonder if I was caught in some portal to my own 5MR...the verdict is still out on that. I think Black-throated Bobwhite is possible here as well but we had no joy with them.

The Pine Savanna tour is pretty cheap if you are interested in having a guide take you out there, but I should warn that the way the trip is priced in the BEV trip list is per person, when the price they charge is actually per person per hour...this seemed deceptive but since this was only supposed to be a two hour trip (which we exceeded by a bit) we didn't feel royally ripped off or anything. A couple lifers always take the edge off.

You can walk there from BEV in less than 45 minutes if you don't stop and bird too much, or if you have a car you can drive out to the habitat in just a few minutes. This habitat is very different than what is near the lagoon and is worth checking out. You can access it by taking the helpfully named "Yucatan Jay Avenue" west out of the village and passing Beck's bed and breakfast, around 17.773495, -88.548095. You can also access this habitat from the main road that goes west from the village to the Western Lagoon, roughly at 17.777639, -88.552676. Note that a drivable sandy track connects these two areas.

I was beside myself when I found this American Pygmy Kingfisher on the Limpkin Trail, quietly sitting in a wooded area low over a tiny ditch that no other kingfisher would deem a reasonable place to be looking for food. This was one of those times where I was just looking where I hoped a certain bird would be...one that I had never seen before...and it actually was there. I probably would not have noticed it otherwise - it is humorously small and never budged or made a peep. I guess being the #7 U.S. birder does have some benefits in other countries.

As advertised it turned out to be pretty confiding...it was sitting in deep dark shadows but this is still probably a better picture than almost anything I've ever gotten of a Belted, which I can see from my backyard...how embarrassing. Anyways this turned out to be the only pygmy I saw and one of my favorite lifers of the trip.

My first trogon in Belize was a Black-headed, near the beginning of the Woodcreeper Trail. Black-headed Trogons are pleasantly common and widespread and will readily cripple any seekers. As trogons are wont to do, this one was simply surveying its domain. They look a lot like Gartered Trogons, but the blue eye ring is one good way to tell them apart from this angle.

And yes, for the record, I could have crushed this species flat later in the trip if the camera wasn't in paperweight mode. Life is pain but looking at confiding trogons will always bring your serotonin levels up.

One bird I really wanted to see again was Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture, which I'd only seen previously at one place in eastern Mexico a number of years ago. Luckily, I escaped the irony of having my photos of them taken from me again (a cartel stole my camera that trip)...while my camera was doomed on this trip as well, it survived long enough to capture the soul of this LYHV.

While we were eating lunch, Billy pointed out a Great Egret that caught a huge fish on the shoreline, but eventually it decided that it was too big to swallow and simply left it on the shore. An hour or so later, this giddy vulture arrived on the scene, flew right by me with the fish, then landed at the start of the Limpkin Trail.

Just look at this thing bellowing. It was very focused on picking apart that fish and let me get all close and snuggly. I'm crazy about the head of this bird. So similar to a Turkey Vulture in structure, wildly different in color.

Full zombie mode.

Though an easy ID close up, that isn't the case with birds further away. A really useful field mark is the conspicuous white primary shafts on the upperwing, which you can see well here and may be visible when head color is not.

If the bird is soaring high enough - LYHVs often stay fairly low to the ground - the shape of the tail can be helpul as well. LYHV doesn't have quite the prominent wedge shape that are so classic on TUVUs.

Creatures of second growth and disturbed habitats, we saw Plain Chachalacas near BEV and at a great number of other places during the trip.

I was impressed by the abundance of warblers wintering in the country - we had 23 warbler species on the trip, not including Yellow-breasted Chat of course. Magnolia Warblers (above) were particularly abundant Neotropical migrants, along with Least and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Wood Thrushes, American Redstarts, Northern Waterthrushes, Hooded Warblers and Black-and-white Warblers.

Melodious Blackbird is the blackest of blackbirds, and a more accomplished singer than many of them as well. This is one of the true generalist species in the region and seem to be present anywhere there isn't a completely closed forest canopy.

Up next, the Crooked Tree boat trip!

September Sickness

September and October in the bay area means GET YOUR ASS TO THE COAST. I feel bad for birders who don't live near the coast in this crucial time...the window is wide open for rarities. Most of the year, it's just cracked, and sometimes it's even closed. Light south winds on September 11 meant it was a day to be out on Point Reyes, and we were rewarded with some juicy birds...American Redstart, Canada Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, and a flock of 3 Clay-colored Sparrows. Clay-colored is rare but regular here, but three together was a bit on the bizarro side of things.

The next Saturday it was nice and overcast, so it was out to San Francisco this time. Across from Lake Merced, the continuing Magnolia Warbler made for a fine county bird (thanks Aaron) and a Black-and-white Warbler was very satisfying as well. This female Bicolored Blackbird did a good impression of a female Tricolored, but was too warmly colored. Approach with caution.

It's always good to be checking listservs constantly in September, you never know when the news of the next MEGA will come. Checking the listserv as I was about to leave Lake Merced proved to be timely, and I quickly abandoned the rest of my plans and went straight to Golden Gate Park for another vague runt that had just been found. While waiting for the tasty eastern warbler, I kicked it with this Brown Creeper, a bird that apparently has never made it onto BB&B before...weird. Welcome Brown Creeper!

This is another common denizen of forests and parks (like tweakers, but creepers and tweakers are unrelated, despite what you might think), and accompany many a mixed flock. They're ain't confiding or abiding though, which I guess explains why I have so few photos of them.

Brown Creeper fact of the day: You probably know the northernmost reaches of their range are in Alaska, but you can also find them as far south as Nicaragua. I'd like to see some of the mixed flocks they travel with down there, Jesus.

Ugh, I just looked at an eBird checklist with Brown Creeper in it from Nicaragua...there's some gnarly stuff in there.

Eventually I refound the Canada Warbler, which much like the Point Reyes bird was relatively easy to keep track of but exceedingly difficult to photograph (I failed entirely with the other bird). I have some kind of nostalgia with blurry rarity photos for some reason, so I am forcing you to see this awful image. It stayed in the same tree for a whole hour, and I couldn't do any better, but I never claimed I was a photographer. Ahhh...getting Black-and-white, Canada and Magnolia in the same morning in California is what September is all about.

September actually isn't all warblers and rarities though, it's also cuddling Bushtits.

I love eastern wood warblers. I absolutely adore them, no matter the time of year. I spend a lot of time looking for them, whether it is in Florida or California or Mexico (not Midway though). However, California gives you the opportunity to see more than wood warblers...we get warblers as well.

Sibes...I fucking love Sibes. This Dusky Warbler was the undisputed highlight of September, not just for me but for pretty much everyone else who saw it. It sounds like the bird was much more cooperative the first day it was found (when I saw it) than subsequent days; the Dusky Warbler found recently in Orange County disappointed pretty much everyone who chased it (sorry Justine). Speaking of Sibes, the Bird of October might just be the Lesser Sand-Plover Matt Lau found yesterday south of Abbott's Lagoon, but we'll see if sticks around or not.

The day after the great Dusky Warbler Victory of 2016, Billy and I went up to Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands to check on some other kinds of migrants. This resident Red-tailed Hawk had no intentions of migrating anywhere, but chose a nice lichenized outcrop to perch on.

It's always so much easier to find Sharp-shinned Hawks at Hawk Hill than anywhere else locally. Not that they are rare here by any means, but if you spend a morning birding and you don't see one, that seems perfectly normal. Spending a few hours at Hawk Hill and missing them would be, well, bizarre.

Here's another one, with a deceptively-shaped tail. Note the barred flanks and "pigeony" expression. Or don't, you're welcome not to.

September 30 is generally a day you must be out birding in California. If the vague runt window is open in September, then by September 30 the window is completely shattered and rare just comes blowing through at will. With this in mind Abe Borker and I went back out to Point Reyes...except it wasn't rare birds we found blowing through, it was the goddamn wind. With strong northwest winds, our chances of landing a huge migrant harvest were quite low. Even this coyote seemed perplexed at the lack of rare birds around.

Our efforts were not in vain, however. This Magnolia Warbler (county bird!) was at the lighthouse, and stayed still just long enough to get brutally crushed. Nice to see one in San Francisco and Marin in the same month.

We got brief looks of the bird below the park housing in the lupine patch, then the bird came around the parking lot and foraged right beneath us. The wind taketh away, but in this case the wind giveth a very sharp, mid-level rarity.

See? Fucking windy. American Redstart was the only other eastern-flavored bird of the day, but who knows maybe it had just cruised down from northeast Washington, where they are not an uncommon breeder. That said, Magnolias aren't a strictly eastern bird either; they breed in eastern British Columbia.

Almost every patch on the Outer Point has Great Horned Owls, where they probably are out terrorizing the Barn Owls every night. This one was down in New Willows, were I had not seen one before. If it is indeed a resident bird, it has probably seen more rarities than you could possibly imagine. It may have even eaten some of them.

A Breast of Bay...Where is the DICK?...#failurethrush

Many years ago, as a young and stupid birder (not #7), I went out to California's Kern County to check the desert oases for migrants. We ran into some birders who directed us to a singing male Black-throated Blue Warbler. That was pretty sick. Then we were told there was a male Bay-breasted Warbler over at Butterbredt Springs, so we cruised over there. And there it was, hopping around the shore of a pond like a goddamn Song Sparrow. And then someone found a Prairie Warbler, which was easy to relocate. How fucked up is that?

That was my introduction to spring vagrant hunting in California; it was an accidental discovery. No one really understands why we get almost all our spring vagrants at the end of May and beginning of June, but that is when they decide to come through. But that is not the point...the point is that I have not seen a breeding plumage Bay-breasted again until this spring, when a handful could be found on South Padre Island, Texas. Stoked.

Acadian Flycatcher was a bird I had only met briefly, on a nest somewhere in Missouri back in 2009. I was only able to find one this spring, but one is all it takes. It was confiding as fuck, and didn't even bother me with demands of pizza.

It's a pretty distinctive bird, if you ask me, and I am ready to find one in California. We are overdue. Photographed on South Padre Island, TX.

Dickcissel is a fun name. It's a name people can get behind. I think "dickcissel" is a horrible way to describe it's song, but it's a great name. For all those people who are thinking about making shirts or stickers that consist of simply a bird's banding code, I can't fathom why I haven't seen any DICK in production yet. It's the best. Photographed at South Padre Island, TX.

After seeing hundreds this spring, the plumage of an adult male in spring still doesn't make any sense to me. There is nothing like it north of Mexico. Hidalgo County, TX.

I don't think I've posted any Magnolia Warblers this year. Birders would be more aware of their facemelt abilities if they weren't hella common in a lot of places. This fully black-backed bird has reached a crippling peak of spring finery. South Padre Island, TX.

This one has the facemelt turned down a notch, but is ultimately a gratifying bird to be around.

This horrible, haggard thing that bears a faint resemblance to a Magnolia Warbler is not at all gratifying to be near. Sorry. South Padre Island, TX.

Bell's Vireo was one of the "best" self-found birds I had at South Padre Island this year. Unfortunately, when I posted it on eBird, I found out that someone had found it earlier that day. Don't you hate it when that happens? Oh well, it was a nice year bird and the only one reported from the region this spring.

And now we come to The Thrush of Failure. This Hermit Thrush spent a couple weeks at the convention center on South Padre Island. Hundreds of people saw it. It was quite comfortable foraging on a small stretch of lawn, and was not shy. The number of people I watched misidentify it was staggering. Many birders suffered a blow to their Global Birder Ranking System scores when confronted with this very typical member of it's species.

Granted, the other Catharus species are all more common here at this time of year, but this bird was practically begging to be identified correctly. The complete eye ring, extensive spotting, and a red tail all scream Hermit Thrush, and there were often Veery, Swainson's and Gray-cheeked Thrush all present at the same site to provide convenient comparisons. Does this thrush stand as a hopeful monument for the number of new (aka inexperienced) birders out there? Or is it a testament to the dismal future of birding?

Much has been said about female warblers....mostly stuff along the lines of "males are better looking, but females are ok". I don't have much to add to that conversation right now. Obviously, there is no species of warbler with distinct sexual dimorphism where one would actually prefer to observe a female over a male. Here is a female (perhaps first spring) Black-throated Green Warbler. South Padre Island, TX.

A male Black-throated Green Warbler is almost obscenely attractive, in comparison. South Padre Island, TX.

Let's face it...Empids are a bitch. It's not their fault...but it kind of is. Here is an unassuming Least Flycatcher, the most abundant Empidonax that migrates through south Texas (Traill's and Yellow-bellied were also easy to find this spring). South Padre Island, TX.

Here is the same bird, doing something that approaches an Alder Flycatcher imitation. Pardon my grain.

You don't have to pardon my grain for this one. Here is a Common Nighthawk. As you may know, I have beef with animals being called "common", and this one is no exception. Yes, it is the more widespread nighthawk species in the U.S., but you know there is no such thing as "Greater Nighthawk", right? So why does Lesser Nighthawk even exist? Right...Common Nighthawk should be called Greater Nighthawk, although I admit "Bullbat" would be pretty sweet. Willacy County, TX.

There is nothing like a good Caprimulgid crush, is there? I love all the different patterns these duders sport. It seems like they would clash, but the nighthawk pulls it off.

Isn't birding funny? I can remember when I first saw Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks in southeast Arizona, back in the 90s. It was a Really Big Deal for me. They were flighty and more than happy to keep their distance from us. Now in 2014, I crush them at point blank range, and don't raise an eyebrow when I drive by one perched on a roof or a powerline. Familiarity breeds contempt. South Padre Island, TX.

Everyone loves Least Bitterns, and I am no exception. They are relatively common in parts of south Texas, and don't require much effort to find at places like the convention center and birding center on South Padre Island, where this photo was taken.