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.

Dipped and Gripped, A New Hope

The Common Ringed Plover liked to associate with this group of Snowy Plovers during its stay at Abbotts Lagoon, but not while I was there. This flock is acclimated to people but a beach person (as opposed to a bird person with a camera) still managed to walk right through them and put them in the air.

By now many of you have heard about the Common Ringed Plover at Abbotts Lagoon in Marin County, or have seen it for yourselves. This is a MEGUH bird and only the 2nd ever properly identified and documented in California. I was out of state when California's first was found, so this would not only be a savory state bird, it would be a lifer. When the so-so photos first came out of the bird as a candidate Common Ringed Plover I thought it was fully legit (The Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder is usually right about these things), but not living anywhere nearby had to pray someone would be wise enough to follow up on it and be able to confirm if it was refound - which is exactly what happened. Loads of birders then saw it Thursday and Friday and I resolved to make the pilgrimage to Abbotts on Saturday...but by Friday night I was feeling QUITE shitty due to a cold and wondered if I could even make it out of the house.

Long story short, I felt well enough for the chase on Saturday and chase I did. I managed to feel something approximating normal until noon. However, on this day, unlike the previous AND following days, it went missing for most of the day. By 1PM I was really going down the tubes and couldn't maintain the vigil for much longer. Of course, after I left (and got cell phone reception again) is when I found out it was seen right around sunrise that morning....and oh big surprise it ended up being seen later that day as well. I finished the day feeling physically like ass, and emotionally like ass as well. Though some other heartwarming birds (Red Knot, Pectoral Sandpipers, Burrowing Owl, Red-throated Pipit) did their best to blunt the piercing impact of the missed plover, it was nonetheless a resounding birding defeat, my worst of the year.

My heart was filled with hate.

My body had betrayed me, but other factors were in play....no reason to go into that now though. In the end, it doesn't matter. A bunch of woulda coulda shouldas do not a life bird make...they make for an ugly, shameful DIP.

This one cuts deep. Myopathy of the soul has set in, not to mention a weird rash. Spirit? Broken. Talk about getting gripped off. I love seeing life birds. I love seeing Old World birds in the New World, especially here in my home state. This dip ranks right up there with Citrine Wagtail (who knows when there will be another, if ever) and Greater Sand-Plover (ugh what a bird to dip on - still only one record on the continent). Another life bird down the tubes.

In times like this, it is best to reminisce on the Ross's Gull. That was a fucking bird.

But I need not just pathetically cling to the dearly departed Ross's Gull. In these dark times, that is not my only source of light...of hope.

No.

There is another.

I may very well finish 2018 with all of one (!) life bird for the year for the first time ever, (that would be Swainson's Warbler), but I am going to start 2019 by getting the hell out of here and going to Belize! I love birding the Neotropics, and I think almost everyone who has had the pleasure feels the same way. Once immersed, no matter the country, you are drawn back to it. This will be my first time going to the country, and from what I gather, the birds of Belize can vaguely be generalized as a mix of Yucatan Peninsula and what I have previously experienced on Atlantic slope of Costa Rica. This won't be guiding for Max Rebo Birding Tours (though maybe Max could be convinced to run a Belize trip afterward), but my first international trip with both Billy and Annabelle. Anything can happen! Disaster could strike! But no matter what there will be birding.

The list of raptors one can find in Belize is long and mouth-watering. There is a good chance I will get to reconnect with White Hawks, which I've only seen a couple times before in Costa Rica. This cooperative juvenile was at Virgen del Socorro, a great spot for raptors itself.

Why Belize? Belize is the size of New Jersey - it's a small country, and getting around to different birding hotspots is alleged to not be very time consuming; long days on the road are easy to avoid. There are lodges galore, and as Billy likes to say (she has been there already), it is just set up for a birding trip. Three of the four places we will be staying are known for the quality of birding on or within walking distance of the property. I have even scheduled a transfer for our first destination, which is a lifer experience (TREATYOSELF); I've always just rented a car for the entirety of dedicated birding trips before. Kind of stoked that we will just be immediately whisked away to life birds (we will pick up a rental a few days later) after we land. Also, since Annie is coming with us we aren't exactly planning on being immersed in the jungle every day, so having amenities available (like the English language!) to help keep her happy (and thus all of us) will be croosh.

It goes without saying that there are a number of extremely desirable birds that one can find in Belize, and since there are dozens of species I still haven't seen (including many of the "Yucatan specialties") that make their bird homes there, that leaves me with a lot of juicy target birds of many flavors. There are wetland flavors (Pinnated Bittern, Ruddy Crake, American Pygmy Kingfisher), taloned flavors (Black-collared Hawk, Bicolored Hawk, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Orange-breasted Falcon), bland flavors (Plain-breasted Ground-Dove, Yucatan Flycatcher, Northern Schiffornis), cataclysmic birdgasm flavors (Jabiru, Agami Heron, Ocellated Turkey, Tody Motmot), etc. You get the idea.

I almost forgot...for all of you wringing your hands and grinding your teeth in suspense...YES! THERE WILL BE GERI BIRDING!!!! Can't wait. Belize is not filthy rich in tanager diversity, but it is home to the crippling Crimson-collared Tanager, and we should run into them. This unabashed banana lover was photographed at Sarapiqui Eco-Resort in Costa Rica, a Geri Birding mecca, though I think it is now called Dave and Dave's Nature Park or something like that.

So there you have it. The plover cuts deep, but with some luck in a few months I'll be bagging a bunch of lifers without this even being a fully committed all-hands-on-deck birding trip. Should be pretty sick. Wounds heal with time...and a steady diet of lifers.

Virgen Del Socorro Part I

After 4 days and nights of birding the Sarapiqui lowlands and Quebrada Gonzales (which was amazing...so amazing that I couldnt even take bird pictures because the mixed flocks were so intense...go there!!!) it was finally time to move on to a new hotspot and get some different birds. We decided to bypass birding the Tirimbina Biological Reserve and instead headed to Virgen Del Socorro, a steep canyon that held great habitat and also happened to have a little-traveled road going down one side and up the other, perfect for birding.

After picking up Torrent Tyrannulet from the bridge below the turnoff for the road, we stared furiously at a distant black and white raptor that may have been a dark Hook-billed Kite or a Black Hawk-Eagle (both species would appear, conclusively, later in the trip). Staring furiously at the bird was ultimately fruitless, but shit really hit the fan when a White Hawk appeared over a ridge on the other side of the canyon and flew over the road. Goddamn, what a fine bird that was...a species I had literally dreamed about seeing. Of course, when I went to check my photos, I saw I had a "bumped wheel" and everything I had just shot was pretty much worthless. Not stoked. After we parked our hilariously small and poorly powered rental car, we proceeded down the canyon, where I could hear a loud, repetitive, high-pitched call. Luckily the culprit was sitting in plain view...a juvenile White Hawk!

Barred Hawks showed up shortly after we parked; there were multiple individuals soaring above the canyon for much of the time we were there. Although an easy find at La Virgen, we did not find them anywhere else.

Barred Hawks are big birds with ridiculous proportions; broad wings, a long neck and stubby tail. This shape isn't uncommon in larger tropical and subtropical birds of prey though.

Unlike Barred Hawk, who do not dare to occupy lands north of Costa Rica, Short-tailed Hawk is common in much of Central America.

I think all the Short-taileds we saw were light morphs. They superficially resemble Swainson's Hawks but never form kettles and are much shorter-winged, proportioned more like a Red-tailed Hawk; they often prefer hunting over forests to open country and agricultural lands.

Howler Monkey is a landmark animal of Costa Rica...common, widespread and the loudest land mammal on earth, their iconic bellow resonates from many a forest. If you haven't heard one before, there are a few words I could use to describe hearing them..."visceral" "thrilling" and "terrifying" come to mind. I think this is a Mantled Howler Monkey?

Despite the fact that it wasn't very close, this is one of my favorite Howler images from the trip. I'm not obsessed with monkeys by any means, but that face is pretty precious. Ticos call howlers "Congos".

Blackburnian Warbler, one of many species of North American warblers that winter in the country. All of the "familiar" warblers down there are "eastern" warblers, I assume all of the "western" warblers winter further north. Of course, there's a number of awesome tropical species as well.

A female Violet-crowned Woodnymph, one of the cooler looking female-plumaged hummingbirds we saw. White, green, black, blue...a winning color combo. This one was a brainbird, all of us pretty much drew a blank when we first saw it.

Leafcutter ants are always busy. Yes, they created that dark path themselves...more like a freeway than a path I guess.