Belize! Part VI: Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, Mayflower Bocawina National Park, Hopkins

Morelet's Seedeater (formerly White-collared Seedeater) is one of the most abundant and widespread birds in Belize. I was hoping for a Morelet's Seedeater-Morelet's Crocodile combo but it never happened. Photographed at Hopkins Bay Resort.

After Black Rock Lodge, it was time to head over to the coast for the last part of our trip. We made the semi-long drive (by Belize and/or driving with toddler standards) over the Hummingbird Highway without any birding stops, as it rained most of the time...which the Black Rock army ant swarm had correctly predicted, for the second time. We made it to Hopkins in the afternoon, where we checked in to the Hopkins Bay Resort at the very north end of town...this was the first time I've ever stayed at a typical beach resort, and while it worked for our family purposes I wouldn't recommend it to birders visiting here. It's expensive, the birding on the grounds is mostly poor, they spray the beach sand with pesticide every morning (!) and rake up any sargassum on the beach, and they try to claim to be all sustainable despite clearing out large swaths of mangrove forest...not going to be staying there again. On the flip side, I will say I did have a couple great cocktails there, and the resort is right across the street from the old cemetery in town...this is where I lifered Yucatan Vireo, which I was super stoked on, and I also had my first really good looks at Mangrove Vireos a little further north.

Tropical Kingbird are, as one might expect, dirt common in Belize. It's still a nice looking bird though. There were Couch's Kingbirds at several sites but Tropical was generally much more abundant. Photographed at Hopkins Bay Resort.

Hopkins has a lot of visiting foreigners but is also pretty mellow...it's certainly not overrun by tourists and not dominated by sky-scraping mega resorts or anything. There is a great deal of good birding within 45 minutes of town, and with many lodging options it is a sensible place to be based out of for birding in the area if you don't opt for staying at the lodge in Mayflower Bocawina National Park or the rustic Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary cabins. Bordering the west side of town is a huge marsh, which provided some trip birds but more importantly got me my first Ruddy Crake...it was a heard only, but I'll take it!

No matter how many of them you have seen, if Brown Pelicans are plunge-diving next to you, you must stop what you are doing and watch. Or crush. Photographed at Hopkins Bay Resort.

While our lodging sitch in Hopkins wasn't super productive for birdlife, I was able to get out for multiple ace mornings of birding while staying there. One morning I went out to Mayflower Bocawina National Park, just 20 minutes or so up the road. Of course the camera was out of comission at the the time so I've got nothing to illustrate my time there, but the birding was very entertaining and I would definitely recommend a day or two here. Within the boundaries of the park is the Bocawina Rainforest Resort, which gives you excellent access to the area and no doubt has good birding right there on the grounds...I would definitely consider staying there if I return to the area. As for birding the park itself, I was impressed. Highlights included looks at Gray-headed Dove, Blue Ground-Doves, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, and Stub-tailed Spadebills. Here is my eBird list from my visit, if you're interested.

The last birding spot of the trip turned out to be the very best - Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, where I was lucky enough to spend two mornings. Billy had been here before and recommended it highly, and she was right to do so. In doing my research before this trip, I found Cockscomb listed in surprisingly few trip reports despite the blood red pin it sported in eBird's hotspot map...why birders overlook this gem while birding in Belize is a mystery to me. This place is fully legit. Visitors have the option of staying the night here at some rudimentary cabins, but I suspect you have to bring all your food/water/supplies in with you. This was the one place we visited where both diversity seemed very high and bird abundance was staggering at times, and I was super impressed with the quality of birding both days I was there. The place is huge and there are lots of trails to choose from...I totally could have birded there a third day and probably seen a grip of birds I missed the previous days. The entrance road alone is probably worth a whole morning, and the one place I pulled over yielded the only Green Honeycreeper of the trip.

Shockingly, my camera worked one of the days I was at Cockscomb, so here are some more pics!

Northern Waterthrushes are one of the commonest neotropical migrants that winter in Belize. This one would not get out of the path I was walking down so I took its picture.

White Hawks were easy to find on the trip...huzzah! Back before I saw my first White Hawks in Costa Rica some years bak, this was a neotropical bird that really stood out in my imagination...difficult to fathom a bird like this without seeing it with one's own eyes. Like a handful of other prominent birds, I literally dreamed about seeing these (as opposed to just fantasizing about it, like usual) before I actually did. Easily one of the coolest raptors I have ever seen.

While not abundant, Pale-billed Woodpecker is another widespread, fairly common woodpecker...but they are huge, exotic, and are in the same genus as the iconic Ivory-billed and Imperial Woodpeckers. The day after I took this photo, I came back and got a glimpse of it (or its mate) almost get taken out by some kind of large, black raptor that went plunging through the trees after it..it was livid.

One of the many idyllic creeks that run through the preserve. I was unsuccessful, but Agami Herons are regularly found in Cockscomb in places like this.

Ruddy Woodcreeper was a lifer back at Black Rock, but I was able to get a few identifiable photos of this bird here in a nice mixed flock.

While not exceptionally scarce, Slate-headed Tody-Flycatcher are notoriously difficult to actually see...so they say. I had no such misfortune with this tiny todyish tyrant of the tangles, a true trip target. Luckily I had the prescience to memorize their song and found this shrub friend (shrub-friend) relatively easily instead of walking by it obliviously as it sang away, which I've probably done with dozens of other neotropical would-be lifers in the past. How embarrassing. 

One of the wildlife highlights of the trip was seeing this tayra! I only knew what it was because we had seen them close up at the Belize Zoo the week before...way to go Belize Zoo for successfully educating a dumb tourist. A tayra is like a giant mega weasel, a wolverine-otter looking thing. Megawolverotter. It paced back and forth across the trail in front of us a few times for good looks before trotting away.

From this angle it looks more like a bear-weasel combo. This was a very high quality lifer mammal - we also saw brocket deer, which the zoo had prepped me for as well. No jaguar sign (Cockscomb is famous for jaguars) but those were two sweet lifer mammals.

Pretty sure this was a lifer creature as well, white-lipped mud turtle (right?). It was crossing the entrance road during a rain storm. I know I am GBRS #7 in the U.S. and all that, but did you know my first real love of wildlife was herps? 

Billy and Annie in action. Billy's action was probably scanning for a Gray-headed Tanager I failed to get her on before it flew away (sorry Billy). Annie's action was sleeping.

Some unphotographed highlights from Cockscomb: absolutely stunning views of a confiding Black-faced Antthrush (the first I've seen, rather than just heard), lifer Yellow-tailed Orioles and Royal Flycatcher, getting the Leptotila hat trick (seeing White-tipped, Gray-headed and Gray-chested Doves in the same morning), and mixed flocks and concentrations of birds of such quality that I was beside myself.

I'll do one more post to kind of summarize the Belize trip for anyone who is thinking about going, but this will about wrap it up! You can thank Nikon for making a shitty product - the lack of photos to sort really enabled me to actually blog the whole trip in an almost respectable amount of time.

Outer Point Migrage

By the second weekend of October, the fall of 2016 had already been a good one...year birds in the right year, county birds in the right counties, acceptable numbers of migrants around, a state nemesis had been vanquished (Northern Gannet), I found a solid Siberian vague runt at my patch (Bar-tailed Godwit), and had a Sibe *MEGA* give good looks (Dusky Warbler)...if I had to quit birding right then for the rest of 2016 it would have been a pretty good year...but why the fuck would I do that? So I tried to bird someplace else besides SF or Point Reyes, but all I had to show for it...literally...was this Ridgway's Rail at Arrowhead Marsh. I'll take it.

The day after was forecast for decent weather, so I predictably went back out to the Outer Point...it's hard not to be there in October. As I rode a bristling caffeine high past Drake's Estero, a wall of fog appeared just west of the RCA patch, so I turned around to bird RCA in hopes that the fog would lift in the meantime. Hermit Warbler and Lark Sparrow were nice birds, and a couple ultra-confiding Hutton's Vireos dropped down to forage beside me.

This young male Anna's Hummingbird was holding down a flowering shrub next to my car, so I gave it a quick but punishing crush.

A couple miles down the road I got stuck in a birder traffic jam, but that worked out well because I may have just blown by the flock of 20 Greater White-fronts that were grazing next to the road. It's a nice bird to run into on the coast, as most of the big migrant flocks are just flyovers and don't put down too often.

Much of birding the Outer Point, probably 40%, consists of looking at White-crowned Sparrows and hoping that they are not White-crowned Sparrows. This was just a White-crowned Sparrow, so I crushed it and tried to move on with my life. Crush, move on, crush, get on with it...such is the rhythm of birding some days.

I walked over to one of my favorite micro-spots, where I am guaranteed to see nothing but White-crowned Sparrows, but for once there was something I didn't expect at the Zonotrichia stronghold. Here is a Western Bluebird-Tropical Kingbird combo for Caroline, Frank, and Jen. Dan, this would be for you too, but I know how much you hate combos.

Ah, a nice refreshing Mexican rarity. This was a good sign, but there turned out to be little else at the lighthouse (a few getting-late Violet-green Swallows) and Fish Docks was dead.

Using some of the Global Birder Ranking System's data collection tools (I have access to those, being #7 in the U.S.), it is obvious that there has been a statistically significant uptick in the last couple years of West Coast birders thinking they might have a Couch's Kingbird, not a Tropical. While Constant Vigilance is always good, birders should not let themselves get too worked up...Tropical Kingbirds are an expected fall migrant, albeit not a common one. There is no reason to suspect Couch's unless the bird really sounds or looks like one.

Fun with Tropical Kingbird cropping.

The Fish Docks are haunted by the ghosts of many Vague Runts that have dropped in over the years seeking food and shelter. On this day, migrants were few and rarities only lurked through the cypresses in spirit. A Say's Phoebe ominously watched over the birders making the rounds.

My traditionally horrible luck at Nunes was reversed when some other birders got me on this Black-and-white Warbler. Though Black-and-whites are a low-level rarity in much of the state, on Point Reyes they are seen much less frequently than other "eastern" warblers like Blackpoll, Chestnut-sided, Palm, etc. Considering this was a county bird and a far better looking bird than most other fall migrants, I had a nice mellow birdbuzz going after spending time with this bird.

The real avian highlight of the day though was the Tree Swallows. Yep, I'm going with Tree Swallow as Bird of The Day over Tropical Kingbird and Black-and-white Warbler. By early afternoon there were Tree Swallows pretty much everywhere you looked - while this is normal for some places in the east during fall migration, this is not the case in the bay area...it can be rather difficult to actually get to see a bunch of passerines migrating. Migration (landbirds) is just so much less visible here than on the eastern half of the continent, it's difficult to detect birds coming and going, especially large concentrations of them. I walked around in the middle of a huge feeding flock of swallows at Spaletta Plateau, it was a lot of fun.

One of the reasons I had even been out on the point on this day (aside from the obviously great time of year) was because the winds had been forecast to shift during the morning to the south, and south winds takes rare birds out of the sky and put them on the ground. The Black-and-white Warbler may have dropped in for this very reason. The prevailing winds here are out of the northwest, but for the entire following week we had south winds, and the coast was getting absolutely pummeled with rarities. It was hard to withstand...I was stuck in an office gnawing my lower lip to bloody shreds while rare shit just seemed to be raining down everywhere. Luckily, those south winds also brought some rain at the end of the week, which prevented some of these vague runts from continuing their migrations and allowed me to see a Yellow-green Vireo and Black-throated Blue Warbler out at the Fish Docks the following Saturday. Shit conditions and no photos, but those were some damn good birds. Yellow-green Vireos are not even Bird Police birds in California anymore, but I hadn't seen one anywhere since 2010 so I was stoked. And who knows when I will see those two species in the same place again...talk about a good combo.

South winds...how I long for your gentle, overcast touch. Until next fall.

Winter Ends Icily...Not Your Golden Guide's Swallow...Screech...Carnage at Heather Farm

It was the end of February. Winter Vague Runt season was drawing to a close, and March loomed large...March is traditionally not a particularly rewarding month in the bay area, unless one can squeeze out a juicy amount of pleasure from returning swallows and Selasphorus hummingbirds. Rare birds are few and far between, and the bulk of spring My Grunts have yet to arrive. But I feel like I go on and on about this every year so I'll leave it at that.

The end of winter (as North American Birds defines it) was ushered in by a ponytailed visit to Stafford Lake in Marin, where a Tufted Duck had stopped in. I like year birds, particularly Siberian ones. After walking around a bit and spending time with the drake Tufted, it was off to Lucchesi Park in Petaluma, a famed gull spot. I hadn't been there before so thought it could be a good time to squeeze in some gulling at the close of the season. Turns out Lucchesi Park is a pretty shitty place, but it did cough up one interesting bird for me...a bird that bore more than a passing resemblance to a first cycle Iceland Gull (kumlieni of course, one of the most hated subspecies on Earth). It wasn't a white, no-brainer of an Iceland Gull, but a very convincing bird nonetheless. More photos are here...its fate is in the hands of the Bird Police now.

At Coyote Hills in Fremont, the Glaucous Gulls that occasionally show up were predictably nowhere to be found, but a large swarm of newly arrived Tree Swallows were fun to hang out with.

Tree Swallows...are they the Blue-and-white Swallows of the north? Or are Blue-and-white Swallows the Tree Swallows of the south? These are the questions that keep no one up at night.

A gaggle of Barn Swallows tripped the eBird rarity alert. This is usually something birders brag about. Make no mistake, seeing Barn Swallows is not worth bragging about. I did enjoy getting to see so many different plumages at once though...standard model adults, intermediate birds, and a young brown and white bird that ignores the field guides.

That bird on the right is not what people think about when they think of a Barn Swallow. Note the new dark blue feathers coming in on the wings and head.

The best bird in March, for me, was not a Vague Runt or a newly-arrived My Grunt, it was a lowly permanent resident...this Western Screech-Owl. I haven't seen one of these in a long time...a long time. And never in daylight. And never at don't-give-a-fuck range, which is my preferred range for viewing birds. My luck with owls, which is traditionally terrible, has really turned around since Mexico...lifer Great Gray, lifer Saw-whet, successfully ignoring a Snowy Owl, and now my first look at WESO in years. Chuffed I am, just chuffed.

This confiding bird had been using this hollow as a roost for many weeks. I dipped on it a couple times, but on the third try the bird was right where it was supposed to be. Fantastically, I did not have to endure the company of other photographers in order to hang out with the bird. It mostly slept (shocker), but did some enthusiastic scratching and preening. If you have not seen the ears of a screech-owl before, this is what they look like. If you have not seen the underside of a screech-owl foot before, this is what that looks like.

Owls are goofy. For a moment, ignore the less-than-inspiring look on the bird's face. Note the lack of any thick horizontal marks on the breast...that is meaningless here in the bay area, but is a very good field mark to look at when in places where Whiskered Screech-Owl is found.

Occasionally a birder will make the always questionable decision of betraying an owl roost or nest to the public...which is how I got to see this bird. Questionable because birders, and especially photographers, will often show up in masses. People love owls. Attention often does not bother the birds very much, but sometimes it does, and can lead to a bird choosing a new roost site, or abandonment of a nest. What is a constant in these situations nowadays is that someone will publicly condemn whoever reported the bird, which is what happened to this screech-owl. While I think the concern is valid, it was not justified in this case...the bird's roost is right next to a paved trail, and hundreds of people walk, jog and bicycle past the bird every day.

After leaving the peaceful screech-owl, I found myself birding Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek. I'd never been here before and didn't know what to expect. The last thing I expected was a Black Phoebe cutting loose an unearthly bellow directly above my head. Enduring such sonic power is not something the human body is built for...I thought my brain was beginning to seep out of my ears. No worries though, it was just blood.

You wouldn't think that a Black Phoebe is a bellower, but check out the width of that bill. Built to bellow.

The carnage continued after the phoebe. Here is something all you hybrid fetishists can get off on. That is not fighting. That is fucking.

Eventually things subsided when this docile Cackling Goose distracted me from the brain seepage and large fowl raping.

If you don't live in a place with many Cackling Geese, here is a crush to hold you over until next year.

While walking around the pond, I heard a foreign but familiar twitter in the distance. Could it be? Though the bird didn't call again, I listened to my instincts (Obi-Wan has taught me well) and eventually tracked down the source...a Tropical Kingbird! Not a bad bird at the end of March, especially at a relatively inland site.

TKs are a low-end Vague Runt in the region in fall and winter, but they typically don't linger this late into the spring. I wonder where the bird is now...Mexico? El Salvador? Let's say Guatemala and call it a post.

Destiny Is A Little Green Goober

Nerds.

Back in the day, I used to blog hella, with multiple posts a week. I'm not doing that these days, and for that I am truly sorry. It's not you, it's me. Being a bird wizard, I know in my heart of hearts that I have a sacred duty to get the good word out there...and of this I feel like I am failing you.

But fear not...BB&B will not be abandoned by any means, and between Felonious Jive (the Great Ornithologist), myself, and our squadron of suffering and unpaid interns, we will continue to strive to take the Birdosphere by storm. We will do whatever it takes...except for post as much as we used to, apparently.

One of the reasons I haven't been posting as much is a very good reason...I've been birding hella, and we have a lot of catching up to do.

Fall Vague Runt season seemed to have a bit of a late start here in California. For a while I was afraid that we would have another fall of 2013, which sucked, generally speaking. But at the end of September things really turned around, and the massive staff of eager and oft-abused interns here at the BB&B campus were suddenly working overtime, keeping track of incoming rarities and trolling birders on the internet...which they do all year, frankly, but that is not the point.

I've only been out to Point Reyes once this fall...I'm not exactly sure why that is the case, and I'm kind of embarrassed about it...may have to rectify that soon. On this day at the end of September, this Tropical Kingbird at the Fish Docks was a pleasing Vague Runt and county bird. Tropical Kingbirds are a low-level rarity on the California coast, we get quite a few of them every fall, but it's one of only a handful of Central American species that come up this way with much abundance, if you can call it that. It would be fascinating to know where they are all coming from...Mexico, or points further south?

Speaking of county birds, this roadside Burrowing Owl was also a pleasant thing to gaze upon. There were two of them at this spot; this bird was acting very much like a migrant, using a culvert for cover and being extremely wary of all the raptors in the area (a wise thing to do if you are a Burrowing Owl in transit). The other owl seemed much more settled in, with just the top of its head sticking up from a nice burrow.

Burrowing Owls are all but extirpated as a breeder on the California coast away from south San Francisco Bay, but can still be found in low numbers as migrants and wintering birds.

The Burrowing Owl was not stoked when this Ferruginous Hawk flew directly overhead. I was quite chuffed, however.

There are many reasons to be content as a birder living in California; Ferruginous Hawks help provide this contentment for about 5-6 months every year. They are grand birds.

Spaletta Plateau is one of the legendary hotspots out on the outer point, though I've never seen a whole lot out there until this day. A short walk out from the road produced a big roosting flock of Black-bellied Plovers, with a number of Pacific Golden-Plovers sprinkled in. This is what looking at golden-plovers looks like.

I've said this before here many times, but the outer point is a magnet for Tricolored Blackbirds. Here is a female displaying all the typical field marks; long bill, dull "cold" coloration, mottled underparts.

No one should go to the outer point in fall and miss seeing Tricolored Blackbirds. They are everywhere out there, it's a unique and special situation.

Upon returning home from birding Marin County that day, where I actually dipped/missed a number of tasty birds, I found out that a Painted Bunting had been found in San Francisco. This is a bird I have longed to see in California...one of those birds where if you tell someone else you haven't seen one in the state, they raise their eyebrows and say "really?".  Much like Scarlet Tanager, it has been a source of great shame and frustration for my family. So with low expectations and high hopes, I ventured forth to Golden Gate Park the next day to see if I would meet my destiny.

Behold my destiny.

This little green goober brought me much joy. Back in the day (in this case, the 90's), California's Bird Police were very skeptical of Painted Buntings, suspecting that many were just escaped cage birds. Adult males were beyond suspect, more like just plain guilty. A distinct pattern of occurrence has emerged since then, and the Bird Police don't even review them anymore, so birders can enjoy them here without suspicions or hangups.

Not great photos, but who cares? This is the first one I've seen west of the Rio Grande in Texas, and only my third state bird of 2015. It's so easy to fall in love with fall migration out here...anything can happen!