Belize! Part IV: Crooked Tree to The Tropical Education Center

By our last day at Crooked Tree, I already considered our visit there Great Success, and if and when I go back to Belize, I would absolutely be down to go back...especially in February or March, when the lagoon is seething with birds and Agami Herons are more dependable. As railer as it was to leave Agamiless, Hooded Warblers were a heartening sight, and brought me comfort on most days during the trip. Come to think of it, I'm almost always having a good time when there are Hooded Warblers around.

This American Redstart was exceptional, pivoting back and forth at this one spot, keeping its attention on me and tail fanned the entire time. Maybe it was trying to tell me something, like "You will never see an Agami Heron" or "Oh hey we met at Point Reyes a few years ago" or "Nikon sucks go Canon".

Yucatan Woodpecker was a prized lifer, one of *nine* I was able to squeeze out of the Crooked Tree area. A marvelous mini-Melanerpes...perhaps belonging in its own genus, Mellownerpes.

Eventually it was time to leave Crooked Tree and see a new part of the country. We got Bird's Eye View Lodge to drive us back to the airport, where we were dropped off at Hertz. After a few minutes we got into our sweet new diesel Isuzu (I didn't know they still made Isuzus, let alone diesels) and were off to the Belize Zoo Jungle Lodge, aka the Tropical Education Center, aka the TEC. I chose to stay two nights at the TEC for four reasons: 1) its proximity to the Belize Zoo, which we figured would be fun for Annie to visit 2) since it was on the way to Black Rock Lodge, it eliminated a long driving day, which is ideal when you are driving around with a toddler 3) it isn't expensi and 4) it gives good access to pine savanna, and the chance to clean up on any specialties of that habitat we missed at Crooked Tree.

The drive from Belize City was easy and uneventful. We ate lunch at Cheers, which is just past the TEC/Belize Zoo on the George Price Highway, and also an eBird hotspot. The food was deec but I suspect something I ate there didn't treat my stomach well later that night...it was brutal, actually...but it was the only place where we saw Tennessee Warblers and Giant Cowbird for the trip.

Eventually we got checked in to the TEC and did a little exploring before sunset. The TEC itself provides good birding opportunities and an extensive, well-marked trail system. One of the highlights of our time there was the evening parrot flight. The number of parrots flying over, commuting to evening roost sites, was really impressive...not massive flocks mind you, but a constant, dispersed stream of birds.

The vast majority were Red-lored, which seems by far the most abundant parrot species in much of Belize. Thankfully their calls are easy to learn, so most birds could be identified by ear before they were close enough to see well.

They were all in pairs. Many of them flew quite low, giving good looks, which is not something to take for granted when it comes to parrots in flight.

Great birds they are.

Besides all the Red-loreds going over, we also had a single adult Yellow-lored Parrot squawking in a nearby tree. It was nice to see a brightly marked individual after seeing Drabby McDrabberson at Crooked Tree earlier in the day.

While looking at the Yellow-lored Parrot, I heard a distinctly new parrot noise, more screechy and raucous than anything I heard before. With jaw clenched, hands trembling, lip quivering, I raised my binoculars with sky high hopes...YELLOW-HEADED PARROTS!!! They were flying low and right towards us.

In fact, they came a little too close for crushing purposes, but that's not something I will complain about. This was a great LIFE BIRD, one I had been really hoping to see. While they have declined greatly and disappeared from parts of their historic range due to habitat loss and the parrot trade, they are still readily findable in much of lowland Belize.

Not an ideal photo, but it is an ideal lifer. This was the only pair we saw on the trip.

The TEC is in a huge swath of pine savanna, good Yellow-headed Parrot habitat. It's also where Black-throated Bobwhites make their bobhomes, and I spent quite a bit of time and energy looking for them, but that pursuit ended in bobfailure. Luckily, wandering around in this habitat did at least connect me with a lifer Plain-breasted Ground-Dove (I'll spare you the awful picture), which also ended up being the only one of the trip.

A handful of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons lurked at the pond. I also heard Boat-billed Herons both nights we were there, but couldn't locate their day roosts.

In retrospect, the TEC was not quite as birdy as it maybe is at other times...it looked great, but birds were simply not as abundant as I thought they would be. That said, one of the commonest birds in the area was, of all things, Thick-billed Seed-Finch. Frankly, I was unprepared for their sheer abundance and sweet, casual songs...I won't make that mistake again.

I did have one mixed flock at the TEC that left me glassy-eyed and slack-jawed...it wasn't massive, but it contained several Yellow-backed Orioles (life bird!), another target I had been drooling over. I don't really associate orioles with conifers, so it was interesting to see these big facemelters take their time foraging in the pines. The flock also contained Yucatan Woodpeckers, Green Jays, a Hepatic Tanager, a Golden-olive Woodpecker, and a surprise Gray-collared Becard, which I've only seen once before and are fairly rare in Belize. It wasn't exactly an "it's happening" flock but it was fully gripping, and in retrospect included an impressive three species I didn't see on any other occasion on the trip.

After the flock oozed away from the trail, I then pished up my lifer Green-backed Sparrows...everything was coming up Steve!

Elaenia. Have any of you considered naming your first/next daughter "Elaenia"? I think it's legit. First of all, no one else is going to have that fucking name, so 10/10 for originality, and it isn't nearly as bracing/esoteric/wince-inducing as "Apple" or "Blanket" or some shit, nor is at as trendy as "Wren" or as common as "Phoebe". It basically sounds like an established name with a nice exotic-but-modest flourish at the end. For real, you can use it, go ahead, just give credit where credit is due.

Granted, elaenias aren't extravagantly beautiful, or talented singers, or really anybody's absolute favorite birds, but they are perfectly fine birds...and in the end, isn't that all we can hope for from our children? That they turn out to be perfectly fine beings? This is a Yellow-bellied Elaenia, a great example of a perfectly fine bird.

The TEC has a range of lodging options that are pretty reasonably priced; we stayed in one of the two houses overlooking the pond, which was pretty sweet and no, the mosquitoes were not that bad. Annie and Billy weren't so into the rain and falling tropical fruits banging on the metal roof at night, but I thought it added character.

AGOUTI AGOUTI AGOUTI

TEC has a lot of confiding agoutis, which are like mini capybaras. They don't get hunted around there so they are pretty nonchalant, as are the Russet-naped Woodrails. A gray fox there early one morning was another nice sighting on mammal front.

I was hoping to have some more amphibian encounters but they were relatively few...and yes, it was for a lack of trying. Having a toddler with you in the tropics is not conducive to night hikes or night anything really. I saw a rad reddish toad (raddish toad) here at TEC but didn't have anything on me at the time to photograph it with...so all I have to share is this very humble frog. Brian Freiermuth suggests it is a juvenile Leptodactylus. Having no idea how to identify any frogs found in Belize, or almost anywhere else frogs exist, I am not one to argue.

The fungus scene in Belize was good, there were a lot of mushrooms out, not that I could say anything intelligent about them. This smurf thing was one of the best ones.

Oh yeah, I doubt they will read this, but my boys Juan Carlos and Gilbert really helped us out and went above and beyond their duties when we had to deal with some medical stuff (I ate the smurf thing). Thanks TEC!

JK I didn't eat the mushroom but we did have to semi-urgently take care of some stuff.

We spent a morning at the mostly-great Belize Zoo, where Annie got to see things like tapirs ("mountain cows"), real Jabirus, this wooden Jabiru, and Harpy Eagles, which she oddly did not have much interest in but the big female had a great deal of interest in her. I had seen one or two Harpy Eagles at a zoo before but it was a privilege to be in the presence of this one, who had chosen to sit on a perch very close to us. I felt like I should bow or something...talk about a spellbinding animal, I can only hope I see a wild one someday. That is some bucket list shit right there...

Right, the zoo. The zoo was good. Great for kids, unless your kids hate animals. All wildlife native to Belize. They've got everything from Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl to jaguars. Anyhow, I didn't see any unusual free-flying birds at the zoo but I don't doubt that good stuff is possible there. BTW I've read in a couple places that in the past the zoo has been really aggressive about making photographers with vaguely professional looking gear pay $$$ to have their cameras out there, but I got a copy of their current photo policy and that shouldn't be a problem any longer.

After leaving the Belize Zoo/TEC area, we took a detour down the Monkey Bay Sanctuary access road on our way to Black Rock Lodge. On that road, destiny had a cruel twist of fate planned for me...my six month old (and apparent piece of shit) Nikon D7200 died after I took a single exposure of a Crane Hawk. Crane Hawks are magical beings, it is known, but I suspect Nikon is to blame this time. Life was mostly pain on the photography front after that, just as the birding really picked up again.

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!