After a long day of travel, I hope you will be glad to hear that Anne and I arrived home safely at just about quarter after 8 this (Wednesday) evening . We did take one more look before breakfast this morning, and saw some great sights, but I don’t believe we found anyone new. Thus, let me show you a few more shots from the great day we had yesterday (Tuesday).
After breakfast yesterday, we drove about an hour north of Antigua into the western highlands to visit Iximché, “the capital of the Late Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524.” The ruins were amazing, and the wildlife was quite nice.
This first bird was a bit of a surprise, because the Merlin app kept suggesting “Steller’s jay”, but I knew that couldn’t be right because I had just seen them last year when Anne took me to see the Grand Canyon, and they have distinctive tufts of feathers on their heads, similar to those of cardinals. Well, it turns out, as it does some times, that if you scroll down, you can find that there is more to the story. In this case, there is a “Central American” variety of Steller’s jay that has poofy white eyebrows instead of a triangular tuft on its head, and here’s one of the ones we saw at Iximche.
I also got another chance at a nice golden-fronted woodpecker picture, in which you can really see some of that name-sake “golden front”.
There were warblers there, as well, and this black-throated green let us have a nice look.
There was also another slate-throated redstart, and this time I got the focus pretty close, but the timing and/or framing could still use some work. It is still a pretty bird, though.
If you’ve been wondering, as have i, where those winter bluebirds that we saw in Estabrook just last month might have gone off to, perhaps they went to Guatemala, because I saw at least six foraging together, and here’s one looking nice and comfortable. Who can blame them, right?
Finally, I got a change to redeem myself for that abysmal acorn woodpecker picture I showed you back on day two. In fact, I had several chances because I suspect we were close to one of their hives, and it seemed that I could spot them just about in any tree. Very fun.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 