Guatemala wrap-up and recap.

It’s a pretty grey day here in Milwaukee, and I’m feelin’ a bit wiped-out from the trip, so I’m just gonna use a few more trip pictures to tide us over.

First, here’s one more look at a great-tailed grackle, this time from the B&B outside Antigua. We saw and heard them at every stop, and sometimes I could have sworn they were mimicking car alarms.

Here’s one more look at one of the Deppe’s squirrels competing with the birds for calories in the trees around the B&B.

Here’s a bird I haven’t shown you yet because I was always hoping for a better picture, but they always took off before the light got good enough for that. Anyway, it’s a black-headed saltator (Saltator atriceps) and first cousin of the cinnamon-bellied saltator, who was kind enough to linger at the B&B a little later into the morning. Anyway, I read that “the name is from the Latin saltator, saltatoris meaning ‘dancer’,” but I don’t recall seeing much dancing from either of these two species.

Here’s one more Guatemalan emerald spiny lizard, this time at the Iximché archeological site, and it seems, from my exhaustive sampling, that they prefer to inhabit tourist destinations.

Here’s one more look at the darling azure-crowned hummingbird who posed so nicely for me at the B&B.

Here’s one last butterfly, a lamplight actinote (Actinote ozomene), as far as I can tell, and also from Iximché.

Finally, here’s one last look at what might have been the rarest treat of the trip, the tiny ferruginous pygmy-owl from our first morning at the B&B. Anne and I were sure we heard it during the nights we were there, but we never managed to spot it again. By the way, the B&B just so happens to be named Casa Buho, or “owl house” in English, so how’s that for a fun coincidence?

I’m sure I’ll be back up to speed by tomorrow and back in Estabrook Park.