Sparkling-tailed to Pink-headed

Sparkling Tailed Hummingbird - FT

I forgot to mention in the last post that the night before we had a nice dinner in the restaurant and afterwards we were hanging out in the room when someone knocked on the door. It was our waiter. This man spoke Spanish super fast and with a strong accent. I think his first language was a local Mayan language. I think that I mentioned that for most people who live away from the big cities, a local Mayan language is their first language. As if the accent and the pace wasn’t enough, worse yet he was wearing a mask so it made it even harder to understand him. Anyhow, very rhymitcally he spun five or six sentences of which I understood about four words. However, he did have the bill in his hand and so I put one and one together and came up with three, which was close enough. My mama didn’t raise no fool. Turns out the problem was that we signed the check to charge the dinner to our room but they didn’t have a credit card on file. Josue had told us to sign the check to our room. I had to follow the waiter to the front desk and on the way I used the wi-fi with What’sApp to call Josue. I got a hold of him and he asked to speak to the waiter. So I handed the phone to the waiter and told him that Josue wanted to talk to him. He took the phone and I heard him say “halo” and “halo”, pronounced “alo”, He repeated the salutation again and again and I knew it was bad news. He gave me back the phone and I noticed that the wi-fi had cut out. It’s always doing that here, but now!!! Come on man! I began to go down a dark hole where I heard myself saying “ohh man I just hate it when it does that, this always %&*#$@# happens at the wrong time, why does it have to #$%@#& happen now!!!! And then I realize that my lovely wife isn’t here to remind me about starving children and homeless puppies and all of a sudden, I’m good. JK Well after I explained the situation to the front desk they called Josue and got it all worked out but it was definitely testing my Spanish comprehension. I gave myself a B minus. The plan for the morning was for Josue to meet us at the hotel and we’d walk around the grounds and search for a Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird. However, I was sitting on a bench right outside our room waiting for Josue to arrive when I noticed what looked to me like some kind of thorntail (a type of tropical hummingbird). I called to Torrey that there was a thorntail outside our door. He grabbed his bins and said that’s not possible as thorntails do not regularly occur in Guatemala. We relocated the bird and it turned out to be the Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird. Another lifer for both Torrey and me. When Jose arrived I told him that we didn’t need to spend time looking for the Sparkling-tailed Hummer. He looked at me in shock and asked why and I told him that I knew that he had placed us in that particular room so that we would feel like we found the bird on our own. I congratulated him on his strategy and he laughed and said, okie dokie let’s get breakfast and head out to find a Belted Flycatcher. The Hotel had an enormous breakfast buffet and we all had fresh fruit and omelets. Afterwards we packed up and headed off to a shade tree coffee plantation. When we got there, we parked and while waiting for Josue to pay a fee for access I noticed a Greater Pewee flycatching from an exposed perch high above the coffee plants. Once Josue was finished the three of us began to walk up the canyon and as we did we encountered a mixed flock of mostly wintering or migrating North American songbirds. We saw Blue-headed Vireo, Summer and Western Tanager, Indigo Bunting, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, a gorgeous Townsend’s and a striking Black-and-White Warbler. We heard the soft whistled “kyow, kyow, kyow, kyow, kyow, kyow, of Mountain Trogons. Cornell’s Birds of the World describes them perfectly as follows: Males are metallic green above, with red orbital skin, a black mask and throat, yellow bill, and wing panels with black and white vermiculation, appearing gray. The green upper breast is separated from the bright red belly and undertail coverts by a white breast band. But don’t take their word for it, just look at the beautiful photograph taken by Vittorio Cattelan in Northern Guatemala. Greater Pewee - FT Mountain Trogon - Vittorio CAttelan Rufous-browed Pepper-Shrike - Hudson-Bird Rio

Further or farther up the canyon, I can never keep them straight in my head, we heard Inca Doves giving their glass half empty “nooooo hope nooooo hope nooooo hope” calls repeatedly from the hillside. On and on they bemoaned, as if we didn’t hear them the first time. Like me they must be reading the NYTs and listening to NPR . And the White-wing Doves were answering back oh yeah well “who cooks for you” “who cooks for you” “who cooks for you” calls. And then from behind us deep in a thicket I hear the melodious warblering song “do you wash every week” - - - - - - - - - - “do you wash every week” - - - - - - - - - - - - - “do you wash every week” of the Rufous-browed Peppershrike. I make fun of the doves but what a beautiful chorus. Finally we made it to the Belted Flycatcher spot and Josue played its call. After about five minutes we heard it answer back but rather far away. So after my pessimism with the Ocellated Quail, I right away took the “oh we got this bird in the bag” approach. However the bird didn’t seem to be moving and so if you can’t bring the bird to you, you bring yourself to the bird. And so at least we tried. We entered the understory on a foot trail where it was necessary to duck under some branches but otherwise wasn’t so bad. We parked ourselves in a clearing and no sooner had we stopped when we heard the swish of wings passing between us and we looked up and not twenty feet away was not the Belted Flycatcher but a beautiful Chestnut-sided Shrike-Vireo! A lifer for Torrey but not for me as I had seen them a few years ago in Oaxaca. Nevertheless this was a much better look at a really strinking and my favorite Shrike-Vireo. Chestnut-sided Shrike-Vireo - Torrey

The Belted Flycatcher proved me to be a little too optimistic as it never came any closer and we did not see it. We couldn’t wait for it any longer as we had a four hour drive ahead of us. We hiked back, jumped in the car and took off on a cross country adventure through the outback of Guatemala. Gracias a dios the drive was pretty much uneventful. That’s if you don’t count the old gigantic speeding buses and the potholes that could eat your car alive. We arrived at Fuentes Georginas in the late afternoon to find it completely socked-in with fog. Fuentes Georginas is a very rusticly developed hot spring. There are a couple of small pools and one large pool where the water comes steaming out of the side of a rock cliff that climbs as far as the eye can see and it is filled with all kinds of tropical plants. Did I mention all the beautiful plants that we have been seeing? Probably not, but I should have as we have seen lots of bromeliads, heliconias, orchids, and all manner of flowers and ferns. We ate lunch and checked into our room. Then the fog lifted a little and we took advantage of the momentary clearing and started birding on the entrance road. Walking along we heard Highland Guan and the strange science fiction sound, anyone remember “The Outer Limits”, of the Brown-backed Solitaire. It’s just incredible that that bird can make that sound.We got good looks at White-eared Hummingbird, Chestnut-capped Brush-Finch, and a troupe of Unicolored Jays which is reminiscent of our Pinyon Jays. A little ways up the road we noticed a Slate-colored Redstart singing his jolly little song while moving through the treetops. And then, there it appeared, the second most desired find on my target list, the Pink-headed Warbler. We didn’t get great looks until the next day, but I am going to post the photo that I got the next day just so you guys can appreciate why it reigns so high on my target list. What an amazing warbler, in my book probably only second to the Red Warbler of Southern Mexico, and of that I’m not really sure, the jury is still out. Pink-headed Warbler - FT

Pink-headed Warbler - FT After dinner we heard the Fulvous Owls calling from somewhere near our cabin. Josue got his light and we approached the owls. We played the tape and within a minute two of them were within twenty feet of us. It was incredible to see these powerful owls so close and to listen to their call. We snapped some quick photos and then left the owls alone so that they could get back to their business of catching large insects, small mammals, frogs, lizards, and birds. As you can see the Fulvous Owl looks a lot like the Barred Owl, however it gives a different call, is smaller and as the name suggests is rusty brown where the Barred Owl is gray. We were super stoked to get such great looks that this Northern Central American endemic owl. Little did we know what was to come. Fulvous Owl - FT

Afterwards we met at the pool and we were the only ones at the hot spring. There were no other guests whatsoever. We had the entire place to ourselves. I was feeling pretty good thinking about relaxing in the hot water but when I stepped in, it wasn’t as hot as I had hoped. Probably just a little under body temperature. But we all swam around and soaked as bats dodged in and around us. It was surreal. However, when I got out I was so cold that my teeth were chattering. I dried off and high-tailed it back to the room where I built a fire. After a while I warmed up and I was enjoying the fire when I heard the rattling of the glass in the lamps on the hanging light. I felt the bed move and the hanging light began to sway back and forth and then it was over. A small earthquake. But that is not what I was referring to when I said “little did we know what was to come”. For that, tune in next time.