Tikal!

Today we visited the Tikal archeological site, and it was truly a wonder, of the same order of magnitude as Petra in Jordan. But we wanted to have breakfast before we went, which didn’t start till 7 am, and the sun came up around 6, so we strolled around the grounds to see who might be up early.

Deb spotted a heron flying over, but it was behind trees already before we could get our binoculars on it for an ID. We were ready for the next one, which I could clearly see was a great egret. The third one, however, was also white but noticeably smaller, and as we tried to detect the clues that would enable us to distinguish a cattle egret from a snowy egret, the little rascal landed in a tree nearly overhead.

As I was taking pictures, in hopes of getting one that would be presentable, I was thinking to myself, “that’s not the black beak of a snowy, nor is it the yellow beak of a cattle, so who the heck is this, now?” Thankfully, one of the pictures was good enough for the Merlin app to detect that it was a young, i.e. first-year, little blue heron (Egretta caerulea), whose blue feathers probably won’t arrive until next summer. Ha!

After breakfast, we did hike over to the archeological site, and just as we were getting into the thick of the monuments, Anne spotted this beauty in a nearby tree. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s another trogon, cousin to the one I showed you just yesterday, but this one is a slaty-tailed trogon (Trogon massena).

After a snack break, Deb and I climbed to the top of The Great Pyramid, in the Lost World complex, to take in the view. There, Deb noticed some vultures circling high overhead, but one did not look like the others. Well, that’s because it was a king vulture (Sarcoramphus papa) and not one of the black or turkey vultures we’ve been seeing.

When we finally took a break for some “lunch” mid-afternoon, there was a water feature by the restaurant, and look who was preening right at the shoreline: this pretty russet-naped wood-rail (Aramides albiventris)

On top of all the amazing birds, there were monkeys! We saw several troops of spider monkeys and one small group of howler monkeys, which took us forever to find. The latter were a little shy, which was surprising, considering the racket they make, and that could have something to do with why they were so hard for us to spot, but some of the Central American spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) appeared to be quite the show-offs, and here’s one.

After Deb and I climbed down from the great pyramid to rejoin Anne, she pointed out a tiny lizard on the ground. It was barely two inches long, cute as a button, probably a least gecko (Sphaerodactylus glaucus), and it gave Anne a bit of a scare when it started to run up her leg. Luckily, we quickly separated the two, and they are both expected to recover fully.

Finally, there was a smattering of wildflowers growing on the side of the pyramid, just below the summit, and they were attracting a nice collection of butterflies, one of whom was this stunner, a blue metalmark (Lasaia sula).

Tomorrow, we head back to Flores, but we’re not in a hurry, so I’m looking forward to one more chance to see a bit more of the amazing wildlife that lives around here. I’ll keep you posted.