I realized after I published my post yesterday, from Guatemala City, that I should have saved it until this morning, but I goofed up, and now I have reason to show you this evening already some of the amazing sights we saw today.
Before breakfast, I was looking out the window of our hotel room again, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted this character atop of the tree across the intersection. That’s my very first acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), and a pair of them were sipping water or nectar from those huge red blossoms. You can just see part of the second bird in the lower left of the image.
This next bird, my first clay-colored thrush (Turdus grayi), looks just like the cousin of our American robin that it is, if a bit less colorful, and it was kind enough to perch a lot closer.
After breakfast, we had a little time before the pickup appointment that Anne had made for the rental car, so we walked over to the the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia, which was fantastic. Even better, on the way back, I spotted this red-eyed character foraging amongst the great-trailed grackles on the lawn, and it turns out to be my first bronzed cowbird (Molothrus aeneus). It is, of course, a perhaps-flashier cousin of the brown-headed cowbirds we see in Estabrook.
Once we got the car, we drove through the mountains to our next lodging, Country Delights Hotel, just outside of Purulha and just up the road from the Biotopo del Quetzal we hope to visit tomorrow. Right off the bat, I noticed a large turtle sunning on the lawn beside a decorative pond they have out front. It looks a bit like the painted turtles we have in Estabrook, but bigger and with a rougher-looking shell. Well, that’s because it’s a Meso-American slider, (Trachemys scripta venusta) instead. Ha!
Once we checked in, we strolled around the grounds a bit before supper, and look who I found this time foraging amongst the great-tailed grackles, which are apparently ubiquitous here. Well, this stunner turns out to be a chestnut-headed oropendola (Psarocolius wagleri), and the first one I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen.
There’s a little trail that leads up the hill behind the hotel, and we could hear birds in the tall trees above, from time to time, but we had better luck seeing the butterflies on the ground. Here’s a wide-bordered satyr (Satyrotaygetis satyrina), as far as I can tell.
And this amazing creature, hiding in very bad light, is a white-spotted clearwing (Greta annette)
Finally, one of the birds in the canopy above relented and let me take its portrait. If you’ve been reading along for a while, it might look familiar, and that’s because it’s a greater pewee (Contopus pertinax), the slightly more “bulky” cousin to the eastern wood-pewee we see often in Estabrook Park.
That’s it for today, so wish us luck for tomorrow.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 