March all wrapped up

Pretty much the same routine as February (and every other month, really). No Harpy sightings but we did see the Lovely Cotinga at Oro and Calera. Who says they're rare?? Caught a few more fun birds like the Crimson-Collared Tanager.













Hired two new techs so now the bird crew theoretically consists of 6 people if we were ever all in the same place, but that seems to be incredibly difficult to do for some reason. We did flyovers of the Bladen in a teeny little plane but more on that later. The savanna burned to a crisp. That was new for me. My mom and aunt came down for a visit to experience the jungle and what not but that also needs its very own posting. That seems sufficient for now...













So after looking through my pictures I found a few more birds of interest. A Pygmy Kingfisher. Super tiny, unband-able (-ible?) and lost in the jungle?


























A couple of male Black-throated Shrike Tanagers













Not sure why it took me so long, but I finally hiked upstream a bit at Oro and it is really quite stunning up there. I'm sure it gets even better if you keep going but I'll take what I can get.

Bladen Flyovers

We went out for one day to do flyovers of the Bladen. Conveniently, the previous day it had rained pretty much all day (so much for the so called "dry season") which made getting out just that much more exciting. Hence the rather muddy truck.








The plane was a little thing but some how you could squish 6 people in there including the pilot.



























The entrance road to BFREE with the throughly charred savanna.

































BFREE from above...













The Bladen from above. How you are supposed to find an eagle nest in all this mess I don't know but it was fun none the less.

A quick summary of February

So, February...a trip up to Richardson and Oro, where we caught our third Barred Forest-Falcon and a male Royal Flycatcher. Did a couple more school visits at nearby villages. Went to the zoo, which is quite nice, by the way...more on that later. Saw the Harpy Eagle up close and personal (at the zoo). Granted I could go into much more detail on pretty much everything here but I know it's really the pictures that keep you coming back so we'll just leave it at that.

A rather stunning male Royal Flycatcher













A Plain Xenops and Wedge-billed Woodcreeper













Barred Forest-Falcon numero 3














Freaky Wood Thrush with a Botfly or some other nasty thing on it's face!














The leaning tower cake. Slightly scary to look at (and yes it is being held together with toothpicks), but oh so delicious. Chocolate cake with cheesecake filling, all smothered with chocolate icing. A heart attack waiting to happen. Amazing!














We also had a little Chinese New Year celebration. The kids spiced up the kitchen with lanterns and did a shadow puppet show. Quite festive.

Everything since January

Terribly sorry for the massive delay in posting new stuff. Despite the fact that I have been AWOL for the past couple of months now, I am still alive. For some reason the blog motivation seeped away for a bit there, or maybe it was motivation in general, maybe I'm just a lazy bum. At any rate, let's see if I can recap the past two months. The end of January does seem to be a horribly long time ago so I'm not sure my pea-sizede brain will be able to remember everything that happened. This may just turn into a collection of pictures with not so much in the way of commentary. But, at least it will be something new, right?

King Vulture Falls

After Tikal, we swung by Mountain Pine Ridge in western Belize to check for more Orange Breasted Falcons. We went to King Vulture Falls, which is fairly appropriately named considering the vultures are all over the place there. Sitting on the rocks at the top of the falls, perched in nearby trees and soaring over the canyon. Also found the Orange-breasted Falcon, though the look wasn't quite as spectacular as at Tikal.

Across the border - Tikal

I wrapped up January with a trip to Tikal. The actual trip to Tikal was almost, if not more, exciting than the actual ruins. Basically it involved a series of car malfunctions coupled with numerous social calls, making the trip just from BFREE to San Ignacio about 10 times longer than necessary. First we (Wilfred, William, Pedro and I) got stuck in the mud on the way out of BFREE, which took a good 30 minutes of jacking up the car, piling sticks under the wheels, pushing, shoving, you name it, to get out. Next was a stop in Trio village to drop off William, then a stop in Bella Vista, then a stop at Mamanoots (a resort - another story), at which point we (or someone) noticed one of the tires on the truck was looking rather low. While moving the truck closer to the air compressor the whole tire went flat. Fantastic! We inflated the tire and drove up the road to the gas station. Lucky for us we were actually fairly close to one. Close inspection of the tire revealed not just one puncture, but a whole series of holes. Time to bust out the spare, right? Too bad it was the original spare from '94 or something and had been dry-rotting under the truck for the past 15 years, but it still looked good...until you inflated it and tried to drive on it...which we most certainly did. A good 30 seconds out of the gas station the truck starts to shake, and continues to get worse, but drive on we do. Eventually the shaking gets so bad we can't drive faster than 40 mph and we pull over to investigate only to find the most warped tire you have ever seen still on a car that is actually trying to go somewhere. However, this sad excuse for a tire is our only spare, so we continue wobbling down the highway at 25-30 mph until we finally reach a garage...at lunch time...so no one is around. The owner was nice enough to lend us his tools and had a used spare tire so we did a little switcher-roo. Granted the "new" tire wasn't exactly the same size as all the others but at least it wasn't warped beyond recognition and splitting apart. After that little fiasco the rest of the trip to San Ignacio was really quite pleasant despite the fact we were a good 3 hours later than intended. Wilfred and I pick up Joe, who at this point has been dutifully sitting on the side of the street waiting for his so called friends to pick him up for the past 3 hours. There is some more tire rearrangement and finagling that happens before we head to the Guatemalan border. Passports get stamped, money exchanged, and eventually we are on our way (except for the brief stop to get gas and fiddle with the wiring of the headlights so they actually work), hurtling down a large and very bumpy dirt road in the dark.

On to the ruins...very large and very impressive. Can't say I really know that much about them though since we spent a lot of time looking at birds. Whoops. Ummm, you can see a lot of birds from the ruins... if you're reading this, you're on the internet which means you can look up everything you ever wanted to know about Tikal if you are really that curious. I'll just give you the pictures...














Our hotel in El Remate



















Beer hard at work





















The plaza














Crazy steep steps to get up one of the temples.





















A scenic view...



















and another one














Temple 4 - currently getting a face-lift

Firetail Creek

A few pictures from my little weekend venture up Firetail Creek. Ashley and I inaugurated "Spa de Firetail". Have to say it was a pretty good time. Quite amazing to sit there and realize that you are in fact in the middle of a jungle but it is also just your backyard.

More Pics from the Wonder Trip

Extra pictures that I neglected to put in that last post mostly because I didn't have time. However, semi-unfortunate circumstances have given me more time. William, a co-worker, got sick and so we had to come back from the jungle earlier than planned. Actually we made it to Richardson camp (someday I'll get a map on here so this all makes sense) before he decided he couldn't go any farther (4pm). Setup the hammocks, realized we didn't have any pots to cook in because we had left them farther up at Calera (our intended destination), waited for and hour before William wanted to go back to BFREE. So, we packed up and started hiking. Most of which ended up being in the dark. Amazingly enough we managed not to get lost and William didn't die, although we did have to abandon his pack. Which brings me back to the beginning of this little...oh blast, I can't think of the word...whatever, basically now I have time to post a few more pictures starting with a ripe wild cocoa pod...

William eating the cocoa fruit, some what psychotically (not sure if that's really spelled right)

Scrub Euphonia

Violet Sabrewing - a female, not quite as impressive as the males but still quite lovely
Wedge-tailed Sabrewing

Eye-ringed Flatbill

And finally, a couple pictures from Oro...trees and whatnot