It was another day in paradise, out here on Caye Caulker, and we got an early start exploring the south end of the island.

There were a lot of wonderful things to see, but a highlight has got to be my very first adult yellow-crowned night heron. Long time readers will surely recognize the name because we had a juvenile hang out on the pond in Estabrook a couple of times for a while, but I have never seen the full majesty of an adult until this morning.

Another adult we saw for the first time this morning is this little blue heron, although we didn’t have to wait nearly as long for this sighting.

I can’t assert that this next bird, my very first willet (Tringa semipalmata), is a youngster or an adult, but it is for sure not in breeding plumage.

As Anne and I strolled along the edge of the island, often between walls of mangrove, I spied at least a couple of gray catbirds, but there was also a glossy black bird of about the same size. Well, I didn’t get a good luck until we ventured out again this afternoon to investigate the north end of the island, and it turns out that there is such a bird as a black catbird (Melanoptila glabrirostris), and this is what it looks like. Ha!

I was thrilled to see an osprey this morning, and things only got better on our hike back to our hotel when I spotted it with a fish. Thus, you can imagine my joy when we went out again this afternoon and spotted this one in its nest with a nearly grown-looking youngster. Hot diggity dog! They’re making more!

After all the warning signs at Tikal about crocodiles, we were all a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see one. Well, Anne and I are the lucky ones, because here is our first American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus). “Sorry, Deb!” Even better, as luck would have it, I was able to capture a pretty nice image, without losing any limbs, and if you click on it so you can zoom in, you can even see the vertical-slit pupil in the eye on the left.

Finally, there were a few butterflies around, and I especially enjoyed spotting this one, because I thought it was a monarch, but it didn’t look quite right with those white-ish blotches on the hind wing and a slightly darker reddish color elsewhere. Well, that’s because it’s a soldier (Danaus eresimus), not a monarch (Danaus plexippus), and it doesn’t venture farther north than Florida and Texas.

Tomorrow, we ship out again, but we’re not done with Belize yet, so stay tuned for who we find next.

Anne and I spent most of the morning traveling, but we arrived on Caye Cauker, off the coast of Belize, in time for a late lunch. It was a bit of a challenge for me to focus on food, however, because the place was alive with wild and wonderful new birds.

I’ve had the good fortune to see magnificent frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) years ago, long before we started this operation, but it was great to see them again, and now I can share them with you.

We’ve seen several pelicans before, including American white at Kohler Andrae and great white in Jordan, but this is our first brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). They are the smallest pelicans, and Anne noticed right away that they were significantly smaller than the huge great white that forced us off the trail in Azraq.

Another newbie for us is this royal tern (Thalasseus maximus), which is “only slightly smaller than [the] Caspian[s],” that we see in Milwaukee.

If we’re on the water, we should expect to see gulls, and the ones here all appear to be laughing gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla), but I didn’t hear a peep out of them.

I only saw ruddy turnstones for the first time this summer in Milwaukee, and here they are again, seemingly asking “what took you so long to get here?”

Last and least, size-wise that is, was this darling little American redstart hopping around the beach, of all places.

Finally, not all the amazing sights were avian, as usual, and here’s a Caribbean whiptail stingray (Styracura schmardae) that has learned to come to shore so tourists can feed it fish.

Tomorrow we’re going to try visiting the forest on the south end of the island, and if we find anything interesting, I’ll be sure let you know.

Things went as spectacularly as I could have hoped this morning, and we had beautiful weather for exploring the forest outside of the Tikal archeological site. We even waited until after breakfast before heading out, and that felt luxurious.

We had been hearing parrots, noisily “vocalizing”, as I’ve been taught to say, in the treetops since we arrived, and we have caught glimpses of some, but they usually stay mostly out of sight. This morning, however, a group of red-lored Amazons (Amazona autumnalis) must have been especially bold or hungry, because I finally have a picture to show you. In case you didn’t know, as I sure has heck did not, “Amazons” are a genus of parrots, and “lore” is the space between the eye and nostril.

After dinner last evening, we must have felt that we had not yet fed enough mosquitoes because we headed back into the site to check out one more monument. On the way, we spotted a couple of new birds, but it was way too dark for pictures. Happily, this little cutie, a white-whiskered puffbird (Malacoptila panamensis), gave me another chance today, and yes, that is its real name.

At the same time as I was trying to redeem myself with a decent puffbird picture, another little darling, this bright-rumped attila (Attila spadiceus), was busily hopping around on the ground gobbling up bugs and daring me to get a picture of it, too.

Then things settle down for a bit, and we continued down an unmarked dirt road into the forest and past signs warning us to turn back because of the danger of getting lost or meeting crocodiles. Neither Anne nor Deb were deterred, and the road eventually led to a small pond, not even half the size of the pond in Estabrook, and things quickly got exciting again. We could hear a large bird or birds squawking on the other side of some trees on a little peninsula, and then they started flying across the water to the other side.

Once I saw one in flight, I was immediately reminded of black-crowned night herons that I’ve seen fly across Juneau Lagoon, so I began frantically searching for them over the far shore. The first few hid pretty well, but this one finally relented, and if you glance at the picture below, you can imagine my surprise. What on earth is that? Thankfully the merlin app had an answer: that is a boat-billed heron (Cochlearius cochlearius). Wow, just wow! Right?

But that’s not all. On the same tiny pond, with more crocodile warnings, this little bird was busily diving for its breakfast. If those fuzzy feathers look familiar, that’s because this is yet another grebe, in fact, a least grebe (achybaptus dominicus), which is different from the little grebe we just saw in Jordan.

Then it was time to start heading back to the hotel so we could check out and head back to Flores, but on the way, we found one more trogon, this beautiful black-headed trogon (Trogon melanocephalus).

Finally, as we headed out for lunch after checking into our hotel in Flores, Deb spotted this stunning butterfly, a split-banded owl-butterfly (Opsiphanes cassina), near the ceiling of a passage way.

Tomorrow, we all get up early, and Deb will fly down to Guatemala City to join up with her volunteer veterinarian organization to work for a week in Antigua. Meanwhile, Anne and I will travel back to Belize for the next leg of our adventure.

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.

Holy Moly! What a day we had. Before breakfast, Anne, my sister, Deb, and I all strolled around the island city of Flores, and we found a swallow that none of us had ever heard of, let alone seen before, this darling mangrove swallow (Tachycineta albilinea).

After breakfast, we piled into a rental car and Deb drove us up to Tikal, and we had barely checked into our hotel before Anne spotted this stunner on a branch right over the parking area. Its name, gartered violaceous trogon (Trogon caligatus), is almost as amazing as its appearance. Raise your hand if you already knew that “violaceous” was a real word.

And the astounding sights just kept coming. Here’s a pale-billed woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis) we found in the same area.

Anne spotted this bird, which doesn’t even look real, high above our bungalow. Its name, Montezuma oropendola (Psarocolius montezuma), sounds equally made up. The fine folks at ebird.org describe its call as a “memorable gurgling song [which] sounds like water poured from a bottle.” The bird is mid-call in this image.

Speaking of imaginary creatures, this walking collage of brilliant colors and three of its compatriots strolled out of the forest while we were eating lunch and proceeded to forage all around the grounds. It’s an ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata), and at one point, one of them even leaped up on the hood of the car Deb had rented, and she rushed over to shoo it away.

Finally, not all the fantastical critters we saw today were feathered, but it took me at least three tries to capture this little cutie on film. It’s a Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata), and it appears that the hotel grounds are in its regular circuit.

Lastly, it’s late, and everyone is asleep, including my editor, so all the errors in the text above are my very own creations. Tomorrow we go to the actual archeological site to see what the Maya left for us.

Today, Anne and I traveled to northern Guatemala to meet my sister, Deb, but before we went, we had one more morning to look around in Belize, so we tried the Cahal Pesh archeological site right around the corner from our hotel. It did not disappoint.

First, I finally got eyes on the national bird of Belize, the keel-billed toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus). See what I mean?

I also spotted my first white-fronted amazon (Amazona albifrons), a very noisy parrot, but that may be a redundancy.

As I was leaving to go join Anne for breakfast, this amazing creature was perched right outside the visitors center, and it’s a masked tityra (Tityra semifasciata). How do they even come up with these? What’s more, the fine folks at ebird.org describe its call as “a wet quacking or farting sound,” but I didn’t hear it so I can neither confirm nor deny that detail.

Anne went back to the site with me after breakfast, and we did see a few more critters, but let me keep this short and show you instead the stunning creature our driver spotted after the border crossing this afternoon. Here is my very first bare-throated tiger-heron (Tigrisoma mexicanum). Yikes! Right?

We did see a mammal today, a paca, but it ran off too quickly for me to get a picture. Instead, let me show the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) that Anne spotted as we left Caracol yesterday. Even our guide and driver were stunned.

Finally, as we left Cahal Pech for the second time, this astounding butterfly, a regal hairstreak (Evenus regalis) appeared to be looking for minerals on this rock that has been painted white, and I sure hope it eventually finds what it’s looking for.

We did all meet up later this afternoon, and tomorrow we’ll drive north to another hotel right near Tikal. Everyone who hears that we’re going there says we should be able to see amazing critters, maybe even a jaguar, so I’m really looking forward to it.

It was another amazing day in Belize, and things got off to a great start when I strolled around the hotel grounds before breakfast.

I spotted this little bird, which I have never seen before, in a small tree, and my camera was having a dickens of a time focusing in the low, early-morning light, but he was so thrilled to show off that bug or grub in his bill, that he just kept flashing it around until one of my pictures came out. He turns out to be a yellow-throated euphonia (Euphonia hirundinacea), and there was probably a female somewhere in those leaves, that he was hoping to impress, but I never really caught more than a glimpse of her shadow.

Before I was able to observe how that story ended, however, this critter, which is the size of a small chicken, hopped into the same tree and broke up the show. I had already seen two of these on the lawn, but this picture came out better than any of those, and this turns out to be the first plain chachalaca (Ortalis vetula) I’ve ever managed to capture on film.

I eventually had to call off the hunt and join Anne for breakfast before we headed out to see the fabulous Caracol archeological site. There, our guide Ethan, who had gone ahead a bit with Anne, called for me from atop one of the many pyramids because he had spotted some toucans in the nearby trees. By the time I managed to hustle up there, and if you’ve ever tried climbing a Mayan pyramid, you know what I mean, the only one we could find is this stunning collared aracari (Pteroglossus torquatus). Wow, wow, wow! What a consolation prize.

The next most amazing bird I was able to photograph there was this extraordinary hooded warbler (Setophaga citrina), which even migrates through Milwaukee, but I have failed to see until today.

Finally, we saw several troops of Central American spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) in the canopy above us, and here’s one taking a momentary break from swinging through the trees.

Lastly, there were quite a few butterflies flitting about, and this gray cracker (Hamadryas februa) has about the most intricate design I have ever seen on one.

Tomorrow, we off to meet my sister across the border into Guatemala, but before we go, we’re gonna spend a couple of hours in the nearby Cahal Pech archaeological site, where 51 species have already been reported on ebird this month, so wish me luck!

Anne and I arrived at the fabulous Cahal Pech Village Resort in San Ignacio on the west edge of Belize around mid-afternoon today, with a special thanks to my niece, Liz, who picked us up at 4:10am to bring us to the airport.

I was thrilled to find plenty of critters out and about at that late hour, and one of the prettier ones was this white-winged dove.

One of the noisier ones was this great-tailed grackle, seen here giving me his best scowl.

There were a couple of great kiskadees, who toyed with me for a while, but eventually this one relented and posed for a portrait.

It wasn’t all birds, either, and here’s a brown anole, …

a Yucatán squirrel eating its vegetables, …

and this stunning white sailor butterfly, who seemingly took forever to find exactly the right spot to perch, and I thank my lucky stars it was in sight.

Now it is time for the sleeping…

My nephew and his betrothed were successfully married yesterday afternoon, yay, so I didn’t really get out to look for wildlife until this afternoon. I have had some luck with mid-day walks lately, but let us say that today I had just enough luck. The only picture I managed to capture was of this darling bluebird, and the lack of blue on its head suggests that it is either a female or immature male. Either way, please allow me to dedicate this bluebird of happiness to Alissa and Danny. May it follow them wherever life leads.