Birds in the undergrowth and on the river

We cheated - and went to the zoo. It really is a fabulous little zoo, and we will definitely take you there if you come to visit. And we did get to see some of the iconic birds of Belize, that we haven't yet managed to see in the wild.

Some of them, sadly, we are very unlikely to see anywhere else. There are less than 200 Scarlet Macaws left in Belize; and the Harpy Eagle is also very rare indeed. We are likely to see Toucans at some stage. But so far, the one we saw in the zoo is the nearest we have got.

Belize zoo is basically an area of jungle and woodland, fenced around into enclosures. And it definitely feels like cheating to show any of the photographs of the animals inside the enclosures. But there were quite a lot of creatures outside the enclosures - in the undergrowth and the trees. And because these weren't captive, zoo creatures, I think it's reasonable to include the photographs of them.

This is a Plain Chachalaca. Small head, long neck, quite large darker coloured tail tipped white, and red throat patch.

The red patch on the gullet, says "the book", is visible when the bird is displaying. Like this:


We heard this bird before we saw it. A very distinctive sound, as two birds appeared to be singing a duet - one higher pitched, one lower pitched. We traced the sound, and found the birds.

The name "Chachalaca" is supposed to represent some of the sounds the bird makes.


The other birds for this post come, not from the zoo, but from the local Mopan River. I think that these are Neotropic Cormorants. The inestimable H Lee Jones informs me that the Double Crested Cormorant, which looks similar, is common on the coast and cayes - offshore islands. And also - a bit of a give-away - the Neotropic is "the only Cormorant found inland". Since Belmopan is over 50 miles inland, I should be on fairly safe ground with this identification.

A walk in the woods: Hummingbirds

One of the things I really wanted to see was a hummingbird. "The book" says there are lots of different hummingbirds in Belize. The road south to Dangriga is called the Hummingbird Highway. But a month in, I still hadn't seen one. Ruth saw one in a garden in Belize City - but I wasn't there.

Then we took a walk in the woods nearby. That's where we saw what I was sure, at first, were large dragonflies. No bigger than my thumb, and hovering and darting in just the way that dragonflies do. It was only when they landed on a branch for a moment that I realised what they were.


I found them immensely difficult to photograph. They are so small, and move so quickly. My first attempt at photographing them just resulted in lots of blurry pictures that could have been anything. So we went back to the same spot another day, and tried again. This is the result. Still not brilliant, but the best we've managed so far.


But what sort of hummingbird are they? The truth is, I don't know what the first one is. It looks very distinctive: small bird - about 3" or 4" - with straight white bill, emerald back and copper coloured tail feathers. The most likely candidate is the "Rufous tailed hummingbird" - it is the right colours (green and red) and is apparently the commonest hummingbird in Belize. But it has a red bill with a black tip, which doesn't seem to match what we saw.

The photographs of the second bird are not as good. (I must learn to control the manual focus better on the camera - in these shots the focus is set on the foliage, not the bird.) But even so, I'm slightly more confident about this identification: the "white bellied emerald". About the same size - only 3 - 4" and again, fairly common throughout Belize.