Guatemala Day 3

It was cool and cloudy at sunrise this morning, but not rainy, here at the Country Delights Hotel, so I got out before breakfast to see who I could see. The great-trailed grackles were already making a racket, but the little zzzzt zzzzt of this gorgeous azure-crowned hummingbird (Saucerottia cyanocephala) really captured my attention.

The way the lighting has been so far on this trip means that the wordpress rendering is usually about as good as my pictures are gonna get, but not in this case. Somehow a little sun snuck in under the cloud deck and really lit this darling up beautifully. Give the image a click so that flickr will let you zoom in on all its spender.

Meanwhile, one of the several grackles in the tree above looked like it had less of a bill and dark eyes, instead of the giant schnoz and yellow eyes they usually have, and that’s because its a melodious blackbird (Dives dives), instead.

Once I saw this next bird, I immediately thought, “a ha, now there’s a familiar face,” because I was sure that it was a red-bellied woodpecker, as we see in Estabrook regularly. Their range, however, doesn’t bring them anywhere close to here. Instead, this turns out to be a golden-fronted woodpecker (Melanerpes aurifrons), and probably a female of the “Velasquez’s” variety, so the name-sake “golden front” is about as prominent as the “red-belly” on the birds in Estabrook.

After breakfast, Anne and I finally visited the Biotopo del Quetzal, and we saw a lot, including a highland guan, a green-throated mountain-gem, a scaly-throated foliage-gleaner, and a slate-throated redstart, which are all new to me, but my pictures are all poor or non-existent.

Then we went for lunch at the nearby Ranchitos del Quetzal, and look who came to visit the flowers hanging from the eave of the porch. By then it was already raining or just about to start, so there wasn’t much light, but this picture is good enough to identify the bird as my first ever violet sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileucurus).

After the rain quit, there was a racket in the trees overhead, and we thought a few grackles had flown in, but we were fooled again, this time by a few unicolored jays (Aphelocoma unicolor).

After lunch, we drove back to the Country Delight Hotel, and I strolled around the grounds while Anne relaxed. There were several butterflies flitting about, and I thought this was the most striking of them, even though it turns out to be a moth, an orange satyr-moth (Heterusia atalantata), as far as I can tell.

Later, I hiked up the hill behind the hotel again, and this time I found a rufous-collared Robin (Turdus rufitorques).

Finally, there really was a familiar face in the trees this morning, and it belonged to this Baltimore oriole, just like the ones we see in Estabrook, and who caught a bit of the same sun that lit up the azure-crowned hummingbird that I started with. So, if you’ve been wondering where they go in the winter, now you know.