Chan Chich

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Guides and birds

We had individual guides. I do like to start with guides, not so much for the information, but more to chat them up about their lives. Here, the guides grew up in the jungle, swimming, he said, with the crocodiles. That evening we took Night Walk which was a bit spooky, with flashlights, rain dripping, howler monkeys in the back ground, looking for jaguar eyes in the darkness. Maybe we would see the armadillo here. We only saw wolf spiders, bats, and crocodiles. Wolf spider eyes could reflect a flashlight beam from a hundred feet. Dark, slippery in the mud, I fell and cracked my view finder. I now had a 1950’s camera and I did not know when batteries were low. I don't have any of the photos I took on the trip after this event. Maureen will bring them at the end of March. I should also mention that I am running out of time to write this blog. so entries will be more brief until then.

Birds

The main attractions are tropical birds, over 350 species confirmed. Most of the other guests were a single party of Texas birders, serious

watchers working on their “life list,” salivating over the possibility of seeing a rare Toady Motmot. We had two varieties here, the Tody and the very rare Blue Crowned, because they feed sometimes on Poison Dart Frogs, also here.

The only exotic bird we could recognize besides the obvious and beautiful Toucans and wild turkeys, were Orapendolas, named for their long golden (ora) nests that hang down from trees ((pendulously). We remembered them from the Amazon. More interesting is to watch the Bird watchers. They travel in flocks and twitter amongst themselves. We saw a White Capped Greybeard and a Goggle Eyed Neck Crane standing amidst a flock of common White Dorks.

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Comments

[Marcia Billings]

You're just envious that you didn't know anything about birds.

[Kristen]

Lol!
White Dorks. It's late (2:39am) and your wit so perfectly dry, I first read this and thought, wow - interesting name for a bird species, I should Wikipedia that asap. Ha. Roy you are one of a kind. Bless you.