Olive breasted Parakeets :The return of the Green Parrot

Once upon a time, when we still read bedtime stories with our children, one of the favourites was "But where is the green parrot?" by Wanda and Thomas Zacharias. Sadly, I believe it is out of print. But the green parrot lives on, in the form of the parakeets that come and roost some evenings in the tree just outside our garden.

These were the first parrots we saw in Belize, but for a couple of weeks we just saw small flocks of them rushing by. Then last week, on April 18th, they came and roosted in the tree. We were delighted - and we hope you like the pictures.


Then later on, as the sun went down at about 6.30pm, more and more parakeets arrived, and the moon rose behind the tree.

Visitors in the garden

I think this is a clay coloured Robin. The reference book includes it among the thrushes. (Is the Robin I know from the UK also a member of the thrush family? Ornithologist needed!)

So I don't know if this is a relative of the red breasted robin or not. But it certainly behaves like one. This one spent most of its time on the ground, and it appears quite relaxed about my presence nearby. It's a regular visitor to the garden.

Another regular visitor is a woodpecker - actually, a pair of woodpeckers. My friends here in Belize advise us to do all we can to chase it away. There's a lot of wood in the structure of the house, and we don't want it subject to too much woodpecker attention! But they are strikingly attractive, both stationary and in flight.

My best guess is that this is a golden fronted woodpecker. There is a very similar bird, the red vented woodpecker, which has a shorter beak, a shorter tail, and yellow tufts near the beak. To my untrained eye, this looks to have quite long beak and tail, so golden fronted woodpecker it is.

We've seen a couple of these birds every day in the garden since we've been here - over three weeks. There are others we see walking to and from the market. But they only alight for a few seconds at a time. This one had the grace to wait long enough for me to go and get the camera.

In flight, the red head isn't what you notice; it has a distinctive swooping flight, with a flash of white rump feathers at every wingbeat.

Next post: parakeets.

Royal Terns at Hopkins

We've had a couple of trips out and about, and seen some birds on the way. We also had some visitors to the garden.

One trip was to the coastal village of Hopkins. As well as more frigate birds, there were some Terns who sat and watched us swim.

I think these are Royal Terns - large yellow beak and quite a distinctive raised tuft on the head.


Michael and Deirdre posted a comment on the last blog entry. Good to hear from you! We don't have an email address for you here (most of our stuff is still in transit from the UK). Do send an email, and if you're not already on the mailing list for our letters from Belize, we'll gladly include you.

The frigate birds are certainly huge: my reference book says a metre long and with a 2 1/4 metre wingspan. But the other birds are more regular sizes. The Grackles are about 30cm for the females and 40cm for the males; the Kiskadee are probably 30cm too.

The Royal Terns here are a bit bigger; maybe 45-50 cm, with a similar wingspan.

There are some other big birds - birds of prey and vultures - but also a large number of very small ones. Hopefully I'll be able to photograph a fair cross section of the birds we see.

Independence Park, Belmopan

Here are some photos taken in Independence Park - the large open area at the heart of Belmopan.

These are both of the same bird - a Great Kiskadee which was kind enough to sit still on a branch next to the path I was walking down on my way to the market. You can 'click' on the image to see a larger version.

We've only seen one or two Gt Kiskadee. The bird we see (and hear! - they make an amazing variety of noises) all the time is the Gt tailed Grackle.

The males and females look very different, and in my first few days seeing them I thought they were different birds. But they make the same range of sounds, and seeing them in social groups I gradually decided that these were probably the same bird.

Starting out

We arrived in Belize on March 27th 2008. Our first couple of days were in Belize City, staying on the Southern Foreshore. And over our heads were some large birds. So let's start with these.

The aim here is to post photographs of the birds I see, and maybe risk trying to identify them too.

If you know that my identification is wrong (which is quite likely), please let me know. Maybe, over time, I can get to recognize some of the creatures that I share the planet with.





So let's start with these. They are (I think! Actually this is quite nerve-wracking. I'm very probably going to label something disastrously wrong ... ) frigate birds.

I'm assuming that the first two pictures are of males, and the lower two are of juveniles. At this point, of course, it suddenly gets complicated. Because the pictures in the book in front of me suggests that the white patches mean either juvenile, or adult female. The female has a black head and white chest, and the juvenile has white head and chest. (I'm sure there are technical terms, but white patch, head and chest it will be).

As well as seeing lots of birds, we've also heard them. So here also are some recordings of the "dawn chorus" in April in Belize. Click on the link and it should take you to the "Internet archive", where the sound files are stored. Choose "stream" to get them to play, or download if you want to save them to your computer. Enjoy!

Morning birdsong 1

Morning birdsong 2

Evening birdsong 1

Evening birdsong 2

Enjoy!!