My son Nick and I heartily recommend the birding adventures we experienced in Belize and Guatemala on a recent March trip. The nonstop flight from Minneapolis to Belize City was scheduled for an easy four-hour flight. However, on the flight there we had a 150-mph tailwind so the flight was only a little over three hours! One of the many things that I appreciated about Belize is that English is the Belize national language and has been since 1981 when it gained its independence from the United Kingdom. Money exchange was no problem because their currency is linked to the US dollar at a rate of two Belize dollars to one US dollar. Another wonderful fact, at least to me, was that there are NO McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food chains in Belize!
We had deep-blue skies and moderate breezes the whole week. Led by Ivar Marchand, a private guide whom we hired while planning our trip, we traveled across the country in search of birds. We covered Belize from remote backwaters via boat where we watched a Snail Kite eating huge snails, to mountains rising 3,500 feet above sea level, where we encountered a Black-and-white Hawk-eagle on her nest. We even did some birding in the world’s only jaguar habitat preserve, Cockscomb Wildlife Sanctuary, part of the Belize National Parks system. Our last full day was reserved for a snorkeling trip at one of the 400 ‘cayes’, which is Spanish for “islands” and is pronounced ‘keys’. I doubt that I’ll ever have another chance to have a White Pelican dive into a school of little fish that were being chased by several barracudas, all within 20 feet of shore where I relaxed in the shade of palm tree!
Our six-day tally in Belize was 223 species. The one day we were in Guatemala we racked up 73 species. Thankfully, our amazing guide could identify almost all of them by their winter calls or faint chips. I could hear the Black and White Warblers just as well as my son Nick or Guide Ivar because they don’t make a sound in the winter!! I missed the fun ‘Whitchidee, whichidee, whitchidee of the Common Yellow-throat Warbler. Another warbler winter feature was that they are much more relaxed there! Zipping from branch to branch like they do when they finally arrived here just didn’t happen! It wasn’t like shooting ‘fish in a barrel’ because the leaves on the trees were so thick, but I think I managed to get some fair photos of some of them.
Guatemala was just as nice, only we had Nolan, a Guatemalan birding guide along with Ivar!! Wow, a guide for each of us!! That worked quite well because it was a little warmer that day so Nolan and Nick climbed a pyramid at Tikal to get a better view of an Orange-breasted Falcon while Ivar and I looked at the same bird via a spotting scope in the shade. By mid-day it was already 95 degrees. The Mayan city of Tikal was amazing and not packed with tourists. The origins of the city go back to about 1000 B.C. I could have easily spent a week there marveling at the stonework and the culture that created it all.
We visited so many wonderful spots in Belize that it would be nearly impossible to choose just one spot to spend a week-long vacation! Thinking back to each place and all of its beauty, I could easily settle for any one of them if I really needed to make that choice!
As on so many occasions of the last of a wonderful adventure, melancholy hit me like a freight train as we enjoyed final evening salutes. It had been a great trip. Then to top it off, the full moon started to rise, from what seemed to be out of the calm ocean! That was the first time that I’ve ever seen an ocean-view moon rise, but Ivar said that it’s normal for the moon to appear reddish pink as it rises above the ocean’s horizon! I can guarantee that it was not normal for me!
Our guide, Ivar Marchand, posted some videos of our adventures. I reposted them on my Facebook page, Joe Sausen, if you’d like to see them. Ivar Marchand also has a FB page where he can be reached if you are interested in having an amazing guide while you’re there.
Following photos by Joe
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