Hi All,
Delia and I have just returned from Belize where we birded for the last week at the Chan Chich Lodge about a mile from the Guatemalan border. Here?s what we saw:

1. Least Grebe
2. Anhinga
3. Bare Throated Tiger Heron
4. Great Blue Heron
5. Great Egret
6. Little Blue Heron
7. Agami Heron
8. Jabiru (flying--from the Cessna on the way back to Belize City)
9. Black Vulture
10. Turkey Vulture
11. King Vulture
12. Blue Winged Teal
13. Plumbeous Kite
14. Roadside Hawk
(Short Tailed Hawk?not positive though, well above us in the Cessna, which the Pilot Daniel Perdomo flies at 1000 ft., on the way in).

15. Ornate Hawk Eagle (including getting bombed by a Bat Falcon)
16. Barred Forest Falcon (barks like a fox)
17. Bat Falcon (this veritable forest-punk even mercilessly harassed a Turkey Vulture).
18. Plain Chachalaca
19. Crested Guan (a striking and big gallenaceous bird that moves with surprising ease high in the branches)
20. Great Curassow
21. Ocellated Turkey
22. SunGrebe
23. Northern Jacana
24. Red Billed Pigeon
25. Short Billed Pigeon
26. Ruddy Ground Dove
27. Gray Headed Dove
28. Ruddy Quail Dove
29. Aztec Parakeet
30. White Crowned Parrot
31. Red Lored Parrot
32. Mealy Parrot
33. Squirrel Cuckoo
34. Groove Billed Ani
35. Barn Owl
36. Common Pauraque
37. Vaux?s Swift (this and Barn Swallow the only birds we might see again this year)
38. Lesser Swallow Tailed Swift
39. Long Tailed Hermit
40. Little Hermit
41. Scaly Breasted Hummingbird (a hummer with a passable song)
42. White Necked Jacobin (a stunning hummer blue black and white)
43. White Bellied Emerald
44. Rufous Tailed Hummingbird
45. Purple Crowned Fairy (The long white tail and dancing flight make this bird look ethereal when bathing in a jungle creek in the evening light)
46. Black Headed Trogon (I missed a photo of this bird that would have justified the trip)
47. Violacous Trogon
48. Collared Trogon
49. Slaty Tailed Trogon
50. Tody Motmot
51. Blue Crowned Motmot
52. Ringed Kingfisher
53. Belted Kingfisher
54. Green Kingfisher
55. Rufous Tailed Jacamar
56. Emerald Toucanet
57. Collared Aracari
58. Keel Billed Toucon
59. Black Cheeked Woodpecker
60. Smoky Brown Woodpecker
61. Chestnut Colored Woodpecker
62. Lineated Woodpecker
63. Pale Billed Woodpecker
64. Plain Xenops
65. Tawny Winged Woodcreeper
66. Ruddy Woodcreeper
67. Olivaceous Woodcreeper (all the woodcreepers remind you of a Brown Creeper, but this little one especially?except on speed, and sounding like an Orange Crowned Warbler)
68. Ivory Billed Woodcreeper
69. Barred Woodcreeper
70. Dot Winged Antwren
71. Paltry Tyrannulet
72. Yellow Bellied Tyrannulet (one gave the other a berry, and although the berry got tossed, at least Delia, who witnessed this, was charmed)
73. Greenish Elaenia
74. Yellow Bellied Elaenia
75. Ochre Bellied Flycatcher
76. Sepia Capped Flycatcher
77. Northern Bentbill
78. Eye Ringed Flatbill
79. Yellow Olive Flycatcher (don?t identify till you see the whites of it?s eyes)
80. Stub Tailed Spadebill (Pretty loud for a bird that can?t be more than 2.5 inches long)
81. Royal Flycatcher (the crown wasn?t out but folded back as usual in the hammerhead position)
82. Ruddy Tailed Flycatcher
83. Sulphur Rumped Flycatcher
84. Yellow Bellied Flycatcher (we?ve never seen this in the U.S.)
85. Rufous Mourner
86. Brown Crested Flycatcher
87. Social Flycatcher
88. Sulphur Bellied Flycatcher
89. Tropical Kingbird
90. Eastern Kingbird
91. Fork Tailed Flycatcher
92. Masked Tityra
93. Black Crowned Tityra
94. Rufous Piha
95. Thrush Like Shiffornis
96. White Collared Manakin
97. Red Capped Manakin
98. Gray Breasted Martin
99. Mangrove Swallow
100. Barn Swallow
101. Brown Jay
102. Spot Breasted Wren
103. White Bellied Wren
104. White Breasted Wood Wren
105. Long Billed Gnatwren
106. Tropical Gnatcatcher
107. Wood Thrush
108. Clay Colored Robin
109. White Throated Robin (this bird has particularly fantastic song, and is unusually tame for this forest. Did it buy safety from human predation with it?s amazing singing ability?)
110. Gray Catbird
111. White Eyed Vireo
112. Red Eyed Vireo
113. Yellow Green Vireo
114. Lesser Greenlet (possibly the most often heard bird song down there, but not one of the most admired songs)
115. Yellow Warbler
116. Chestnut Sided Warbler
117. Magnolia Warbler (the most common ?U.S. bird? perhaps by far)
118. Black Throated Green Warbler
119. Yellow Throated Warbler
120. Black and White Warbler
121. American Redstart
122. Worm Eating Warbler
123. Northern Waterthrush (lots) (We?ve noticed that not all birders come up with the same diagnosis when they see a Waterthrush. No wonder when the field mark is under the chin, but no self-respecting Waterthrush ever lets you look under its chin.)
124. Kentucky Warbler (pretty many)
125. Common Yellowthroat
126. Hooded Warbler (also many)
127. Green Honeycreeper
128. Red Legged Honeycreeper
129. Yellow Throated Euphonia
130. Olive Backed Euphonia
131. Blue Gray Tanager
132. Yellow Winged Tanager
133. Gray Headed Tanager
134. Red Crowned Ant Tanager
135. Red Throated Ant Tanager
136. Summer Tanager
137. Golden Hooded Tanager
138. Grayish Saltator
139. Black Headed Saltator
140. Black Faced Grosbeak
141. Blue Black Grosbeak
142. Indigo Bunting
143. Blue Black Grassquit
144. White Collared Seedeater
145. Red Winged Blackbird
146. Melodious Blackbird
147. Great Tailed Grackle
148. Giant Cowbird
149. Black Cowled Oriole
150. Orchard Oriole
151. Baltimore Oriole
152. Montezuma Oropendola (these are the ?trash birds? of Chan Chich, but what spectacular ones they are, with an exotic voice that they use to wake you up at a good time to start birding: 5 am))


Birds can be really hard to locate and see down here, so here are some birds we heard repeatedly but never could see:

1. Great Tinamou (we thought the most beautiful sound in the jungle, a bell like fluting)

2. Laughing Falcon
3. Collared Forest Falcon
4. Black Throated Antthrush
5. Tawny Crowned Greenlet

Mammals we saw included Black Howler Monkeys and Spider Monkeys as well as Gray Fox and Tamandua (crossing the road). The Monkeys down there don?t care for us terrestrials. A young Spider stuck its tongue out at us and made lots of faces but five Howlers took much more serious action against us, although we weren?t hit.

Also had Morlitz Crocodiles and a huge Tarantula.

We did a lot of both guided and unguided birding on this trip, but to start getting the songs organized in one?s mind guides are sort of a must. Chan Chich has really great guides, presently Gilberto Vasquez, Luis Romero, Ruben Blanco and Raoul Martinez. They are all fantastic. Not to mention a great bartender named Norman Evanko.

Chan Chich is in the biggest standing rain forest north of the Amazon (in three countries) and is on 130,000 acres of privately held forest next to other tracts of so-far intact forest. It?s amazing when the Cessna clears the airstrip and suddenly you?re looking down on nothing but a sea of trees. Knock on plastic.

There?s certainly an argument that going there is true ecotouring. Anyone who is planning a trip to coastal Mexico or Coastal Bellize might consider it as an alternative. The tourism on Ambergris Caye is largely reverse-eco-touring which is causing rapid ecological deterioration. American tourists intent on enjoying the beaches and diving and snorkeling are being catered to with hotels that usually bulldoze the upland forest there and replace it with a few palm trees. Consumers, if they only had the will, could stop this in a minute by simply refusing to patronize any hotel that had manicured grounds and only patronizing hotels that kept their grounds in native forest.

For two days before going to Chan Chich, we went to one such hotel, the Carribean Villas Hotel. Most of the birds we saw on Ambergris we saw on tiny backyard refuge, as much of the rest of the Caye that we saw appeared to be in the process of being destroyed. Here?s the list:
1.Great Tailed Grackle
2.Magnificent Frigatebird
3. Royal Tern
4. White Winged Dove
5. Black Catbird (this endemic species is a great singer and sort of dashing)
6. Brown Pelican
7. Gray Catbird
8. Social Flycatcher
9. Rose Breasted Grosbeak
10. Magnolia Warbler
11. Orchard Oriole
12. Summer Tanager
13. Cape May Warbler
14. Tropical Mockingbird
15. Kiskadee
16. Eastern Kingbird
17. Yellow Backed Oriole
18. Hooded Warbler
19. Ovenbird
20. American Redstart
21. Laughing Gull
22. Black and White Warbler
23. Yellow Throated Warbler
24. Northern Parula
25. Yellow Warbler
26. Hooded Oriole
27. Mangrove Warbler
28. Prothonotary Warbler
29. White Collared Seedeater
30. White Eyed Vireo
31. Tropical Kingbird
32. Barn Swallow
33. Mangrove Swallow
34. Spotted Sandpiper
35. Roadside Hawk
36. Roseate Spoonbill
37. White Ibis
38. Green Heron
39. Little Blue Heron
40. Common Black Hawk
41. Great Blue Heron
42. Osprey
43. Snowy Egret
44. Red Eyed Vireo
45. Palm Warbler
46. Green Breasted Mango
47. Great Egret
48. Common Ground Dove
49. Double Crested Cormorant (unless we were misidentifying Neotropicals)
50. Golden Fronted Woodpecker
51. Grayish Saltator
52. Yellow Bellied Elaenia
53. Altimira Oriole
54. Common Yellowthroat
55. Black Throated Blue Warbler
56. Barred Antshrike
57. Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
58. Black Headed Trogon
59. Bananaquit
60. Black Bellied Plover
61. Sanderling
62. Ruddy Turnstone
63. Rock Pigeon
64. Glossy Ibis
65. Dusky Capped Flycatcher
66. Tennessee Warbler

Well that?s the Belize report. I?ll mention a Rufous Hummingbird at Seward Park, but other than that, no more lists. I promise!

Ed Newbold, Beacon Hill, Seattle WA newboldwildlife at netscape.net










67.
68.
69.
70. Night Heron
71. Black Vulture
72. Turkey Vulture (This great soaring specialist was our first and last Belizean bird, Dian McCrae might be happy to know)
73. King Vulture
74. Swallow Tailed Kite
75. White Tailed Kite
76. Plumbeous Kite
77. Black Collared Hawk
78. Gray Hawk
79. Roadside Hawk
80. Ornate Hawk Eagle (We came close to this unskittish bird twice perch-hunting at human levels in the jungle and when one made a pass at some Curosaws that we never saw, it was just astonishing how fast it sailed through the jungle understory) Seen four times.
81. American Kestrel (A lot of my personal favorite birds were on this trip)
82. Bat Falcon (a pair lived at Chan Chich and we saw them every day, begging and yelling and being contentious with each other and they ultimately became quite annoying)
83. Plain Chachalaca (this is one sleek bird)
84. Crested Guan
85. Ocellated Turkey
86. Sungrebe
87. Northern Jacana (only one)
88. Spotted Sandpiper (ditto)
89. Scaled Pigeon
90. Red Billed Pigeon
91. Short Billed Pigeon
92. Ruddy Ground Dove (I think we had Common also)
93. Blue Ground Dove (a stunningly beautiful bird)
94. Gray Headed Dove (ditto)
95. Ruddy Quail Dove (we staked out a creek for several evenings and this bird came close in for a drink. Pretty common at Chan Chich.)
96. Aztec Parakeet (speedy)
97. Brown Hooded Parrot (like the Prairie Falcon, this bird can be identified by the color of their axillar feathers. Only they?re scarlet).
98. White Crowned Parrot
99. Red Lored Parrot (the most abundant amazon at Chan Chich)
100. Mealy Parrot
101. Common Barn Owl (at Gallon Jug)
102. Common Pauraque
103. Common Nighthawk
104. Vaux?s Swift
105. Lesser Swallow Tailed Swift
106. Long Tailed Hermit (a Whimbrel-like hummingbird)
107. Little Hermit
108. Scaly Breasted Hummingbird
109. White Necked Jacobin
110. Green Breasted Mango (only one look, but really beautiful)
111. White Bellied Emerald
112. Rufous Tailed Hummingbird
113. Purple Crowned Fairy (This is a big hummer with a long tail and white outers that seems to dance and shimmer in the low light of the forest and it becomes perfectly obvious where it gets its name.)
114. Black Headed Trogon
115. Violaceous Trogon
116. Collared Trogon
117. Slaty Tailed Trogon
118. Blue Crowned Motmot
119. Ringed Kingfisher
120. Green Kingfisher
121. Pygmy Kingfisher (tiny bright, jewel-like and not to hard to see)
122. White Whiskered Puffbird
123. Rufous Tailed Jacamar
124. Emerald Toucanet (only one, but a great view)
125. Collared Aracari (pretty many, they seem a little bit crepuscular)
126. Keel Billed Toucon (here and there)
127. Black Cheeked Woodpecker (common)
128. Smokey Brown Woodpecker (cute!)
129. Golden Olive Woodpecker
130. Chestnut Colored Woodpecker (This fancy-looking Celeus genus woodpecker is not too hard to find there)
131. Linneated Woodpecker
132. Pale Billed Woodpecker
133. Plain Xenops (twice, good views. This bird, made famous by Tweeters?-own Ken Knittle lives life upside down grabbing onto branches upside down and then sliding down them in search of insects).
134. Tawny Winged Woodcreeper (this is apparently a ?leader-bird? that is good at locating prey so other birds follow it. There were three other species where we saw ours).
135. Ruddy Woodcreeper ( We renamed this the ?Big-Hair Woodcreeper.?)
136. Olivaceous Woodcreeper
137. Barred Woodcreeper (Delia only)
138. Ivory Billed Woodcreeper (beautiful song)
139. Pain Antvireo
140. Dot Winged Antwren (we found about 8 in an antswarm, really handsome birds)
141. Greenish Eleania
142. Ochre Bellied Flycatcher (one of the commoner birds there)
143. Northern Bentbill
144. Eye Ringed Flatbill (should be called the Lion Flatbill for its big shaggy head)
145. Yellow Olive Flycatcher
146. Royal Flycatcher (three times, but never with its crown extended)
147. Sulphur Rumped Flycatcher ( huge eyes, voted 2nd cutest bird on the trip, after Pygmy Kingfisher)
148. Tropical Pewee
149. Rufous Mourner
150. Great Crested Flycatcher
151. Brown Crested Flycatcher
152. Dusky Capped Flycatcher
153. Boat Billed Flycatcher
154. Social Flycatcher
155. Sulphur Bellied Flycatcher
156. Piratic Flycatcher
157. Tropical Kingbird
158. Eastern Kingbird
159. Scissor Tailed Flycatcher (not in the jungle, in Gallon Jug area)
160. Fork Tailed Flycatcher (ditto)
161. Empidonax genus flycatcher (we didn?t even try, just moved on. But there were a fair number of them) (Subtract one from the total species count.)
162. Cinnamon Becard (they got robbed of their nest by a Piratic Flycatcher while we were there)
163. Rose Throated Becard (great smart looking bird, but no rose)
164. Masked Tityra
165. Black Crowned Tityra
166. Lovely Cotinga (we only saw the female?and let?s face it, this is a bird people are pretty sexist about) Neither male or female makes any noise.
167. Thrush-like Shiffornis (came down for a bath during one of our stake outs).
168. White Collared Manakin (stunning)
169. Red Capped Manakin (ditto)
170. Gray Breasted Martin (Apparently all the Purple Martins had already headed up to Seattle to try out the new Kevin Li boxes)
171. Mangrove Swallow (just like our Violet Greens, these birds are desperate for nest sites and our pilot said two were trying to get into the wing vent holes on the Cessna, which wouldn?t be a good place to raise swallow babies.)
172. Barn Swallow
173. Brown Jay
174. Spot Breasted Wren
175. House Wren
176. White Breasted Wood Wren (has no tail, but can sing)
177. Long Billed Gnatwren
178. Wood Thrush
179. Clay Colored Robin
180. White Throated Robin (beautiful, great singer)
181. Gray Catbird
182. Tropical Mockingbird
183. Yellow Throated Vireo
184. Red Eyed Vireo (many)
185. Yellow Green Vireo (maybe the commonest song down there)
186. Lesser Greenlet (sounds vaguely like a Hutton?s Vireo)
187. Golden Winged Warbler (this was the biggest surprise of the trip for me, although Gilberto didn?t seem surprised when we told him about it. This was an emotional bird because it goes way back for me (circa 1965) and I haven?t seen it hardly at all in the interim, and it?s so beautiful and it is apparently in trouble. This bird was rocketing around a little tree so fast, even by warbler standards, that we almost missed getting our binocs on it.
188. Yellow Warbler
189. Chestnust Sided Warbler (many)
190. Magnolia Warbler (this beautiful bird was the most abundant North American warbler there. We had thought the North American birds would be gone.)
191. Black and White Warbler
192. American Redstart (many)
193. Worm Eating Warbler (one)
194. Blackburnian Warbler (one, wow)
195. Northern Waterthrush
196. Louisiana Waterthrush (both waterthrush were there in force and it?s amazing how different birders (among the guides and guests, some of whom were also quite erudite) seemed to perennially disagree on which was which. The birds could help by making more of an effort to show us poor birders the undersides of their chins and the top part of their chests)
197. Kentucky Warbler
198. Common Yellowthroat
199. Gray Crowned Yellowthroat
200. Hooded Warbler (twice including drinking male with perfect hood).
201. Yellow Breasted Chat
202. Green Honeycreeper (a neon green bird)
203. Red Legged Honeycreeper (a neon blue bird, both are pretty common)
204. Yellow Throated Euphonia posed for pictures
205. Olive Backed Euphonia ditto
206. Yellow Winged Tanager
207. Black Throated Shrike Tanager (this bird is a leader, good at finding prey and followed by other forest birds, so its doubly nice to see this really handsome black and yellow bird.)
208. Red Crowned Ant Tanager
209. Red Throated Ant Tanager
210. Summer Tanager
211. Scarlet Tanager (perfect male, at the risk of being sexist again)
212. Black Headed Saltator
213. Black Faced Grosbeak
214. Blue Black Grosbeak
215. Blue Grosbeak
216. Dickcissel (at Gallon Jug)
217. Blue-Black Grassquit
218. White Collared Seedeater
219. Melodious Blackbird (sounds like a Northern Cardinal)
220. Great Tailed Grackle
221. Giant Cowbird
222. Black Cowled Oriole
223. Orchard Oriole
224. Yellow Tailed Oriole
225. Baltimore Oriole
226. Montezuma Oropendola (These and the Ocellated Turkeys and Red Lored Parrots dominated the grounds of Chan Chich in the mornings and made quite a nice racket.
Mammals:
Small Squirrel, forgot the name
Black Howler Monkey, seen and always heard. Some nights at Chan Chich the Howlers would roar all night. If you didn?t know what they were, they would scare the wits out of you.
Spider Monkey These seemed so people-like, and very large. At one point a troop passed overhead at high speed, making spectacular crashing sounds and knocking down branches and small trees in the process. Another time a mom was crossing over the road and first ordered her baby onto her back, then clearly counted to three (rocking back and forth) before making perhaps an 18 foot leap to a palm frond below.
Tayra
Raccoon
River Otter
Others saw Ocelot twice while we were there, and there were lots of credible big cat sightings in the very recent past, as there is a relatively huge population of jaguars and cougars there.

We also saw two Morelet Crocodiles, the freshwater crocodile there that gets to be over 12 feet long but isn?t known to attack humans.
Snakes came up in conversation and a number are considered dangerous, but we didn?t notice any of the locals taking any specific precautions and so decided the odds must be in your favor regarding that fear, and we sure didn?t see any.

There were almost no bothersome insects, it being the dry season, which was great for us but no doubt not so great for the vast number of insectivorous birds down there.

At Gallon Jug there was an area planted in shade coffee which was the first time I had ever seen coffee growing. It was obvious that shade coffee is just spectacular habitat for birds like North American Warblers and vireos, plus many of the other indigenous birds there with perhaps the exception of the deep forest and understory specialists like ant-thrush.

Belize is a country where some citizens are clearly making a significant internal effort to develop in the ecotourism direction. The country is clearly at a crossroads, and that is one reason why we made this trip even though I personally had to add debt load at the moment to do it. The local staff working the lodge are really warm and nice, and the local staff is very knowledgeable. There are also other lodges in the area that offer slightly different approaches and emphases, and may charge less or more. (Belize is kind of expensive in general). Chan Chich is a bit formal and has a swimming pool, but coming from Seattle and not being acclimated to the heat, we really appreciated that on a daily basis. Anyone who is interested in heading down that way is welcome to email us privately if there is anything we might know. And I apologize in advance for the Bat Falcon comments.

Ed Newbold, newboldwildlife at netscape.net Beacon Hill Seattle, where one warbler we couldn?t find in Belize, the Yellow Rumped just took a bath in our backyard.



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