Beer and birds

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"I've just spotted a little owl."

It's 5.40am and my heart misses a beat. A man with a white plaited beard is standing in the far corner of the room.

What the hell, has he been in here all night?!

I remember where I am. It's Malcolm the bird man.

We met Malcolm the night before in the D&D brewery, near Los Naranjos. Malcolm is originally from Ipswich in England and I'd say he is in his sixties. His speech was soft and slowed, like someone pressing the slightest of touches on a record of his voice spinning on a turntable - a result of travelling the four corners of the globe for years spotting birds while indulging in a cocktail of drugs. He fascinated us with his knowledge of all things feathered and a 6am start was agreed for an outing on Lake Yojoa.

As luck would have it, D&D also has accommodation along with porter and ales. But that first night we were out of luck, all the private rooms were full and we had to bed down on the floor of the dorm's sitting room.

And so started our day. Malcolm dressed in army combats, safari hat and a short sleeve jacket (uniform of any would-be explorer), announcing his sighting of a small owl.

The tour begins.

We are a party of five: Malcolm, Aroldo rowing with a heavy hangover, a German girl who had a sour head for the whole four hours and barely spoke or looked around (I have no idea why she came) plus of course Jessica and myself.

As the day began to break, we set off in a rowing boat down a canal through an archeological park, hugging the tree line with only the sound of birds singing and oars slapping the water. Looking towards the lake, the early morning mist began to rise like dry ice on a seventies stage.

Malcolm comes into his own once we enter the lake, giving the birds their own personality.
"Good heavens it's a blue heron, he's up early."
"The snail kite. A particularly lazy bird."
A hawk watches us with curioursity as we drift pass. "We recognise one another" claims Malcolm, who had seen the bird regularly since he first hatched.

Even though the lake was a huge expanse of water, there wasn't a ripple or a wave in sight and in the distance extinct volcanoes watched over the lake. We saw many birds: vultures, herons (including a white heron called an Egret - we've seen this bird hanging around herds of cows in almost every country so far, I just didn't know what it was called before), limpkins, ducks, bats (do they count?), hummingbirds, hawks, woodpeckers and sparrows (who, according to Malcolm, are "like the middle classes, they sleep around but stay in a family unit to raise their young").

Malcolm's knowledge was endless and his enthusiasm was contagious. Did you know pheasants that are in Ireland and England aren't native, but actually a Himalayan bird introduced centuries ago? Or that storks mate for life and will mourn their deceased loved one, in fact refusing to leave the body until it decomposes?

Then mid-fact, all of a sudden Malcolm would excitedly reach for his binoculars. "There, two o'clock, a toucan, correction two toucans, wonderful plumage." And we nodded in agreement, it was indeed wonderful plumage.

At a marshy area of the lake, I caught a glimpse of a head of a shy otter swimming among beautiful white water lillies. We got also close to two red-headed woodpeckers. One was lounging at its front door, the other was hammering away at a tree as though sending a message in morse code to mark his territoriy.

In his life, Malcolm has spotted almost 1,400species of birds including over 270 of the 400 that live around Lake Yojoa. So I'll leave you witht he words of a man who has observed many things, talking about a species he admires:

"I rather like ants, they can live in cities of 120 million and manage to run it effectively with no traffic james or crime".
Shame humans cannot manage that.

From James

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Photos

Ant tunnel
We spotted this when we stopped for a quick break. The ants had constructed a tunnel heading up the tree to protect themselves from prey. How smart is that?! Malcolm was well impressed.

Water lilly
Looks similar to the lotus flower

Cow with egrets
These birds hang around herds of cattle, feeding off the insects and worms as the cows eat the grass.