From a Balcony in Guatemala

Through the haze of discomfort, it quickly became apparent that my balcony on the third floor of a detached hotel was quite the hotspot for birds. Of course, the same principle applies here as applies at home. Indigo Hill, as we call our 80-acre sanctuary, is really nothing special as far as Ohio mesic woodlands go. It's our close attention to it that makes it seem so abundant and miraculous. Which any piece of land, closely observed, can be. Here follow the observations and photographs I made while recuperating.

Repeated soft tapping from a branch stub that had been cut off to accommodate the hotel construction gave away the new nest cavity of a pair of golden-fronted woodpeckers. Yes, I know, they don't have golden fronts like ours do in the American southwest, and the scuttlebutt in the birding community is that this is probably a discrete species, perhaps to be called the Guatemalan woodpecker. An endemic in the making. I say that with a bit of irony. The woodpecker knows what it is. It's we who are trying to decide whether it's a big deal for our lifelists or not.
Knock yourselves out. I'll just keep digging our nest cavity, thanks.

A larger relative: the lineated woodpecker, Dryocopus lineatus. Smaller than our pileated, it's a bit more ornate, too, with barred underparts and cool facial markings. The lineated woodpecker was interested in a cavity in a rotten snag just a few yards from the golden-fronted's home. But that snag was hot property, as I was to find out, and the lineated woodpecker didn't have a chance against the current owners. They weren't taking offers.Nope. We've taken it back off the market. You'll have to excavate your own.

A white-fronted Amazon, the smallest of the Amazon parrots, and arguably the cutest. In the pet trade, they're sometimes called spectacled Amazons, but their Latin name (ever the most reliable) is Amazona albifrons. I've seen these little birds kept as pets, but I've never seen one look happier than the pair incubating their eggs just 15' off my balcony.The female's in front. Can you tell what makes her the female? She's worn her tail off in the tight nesting cavity, incubating her eggs! I was thrilled when, the first time I could observe them at length, the tailless one I'd picked as the hen disappeared back into the nest cavity, while the perfect-tailed male took off yelling. (I'd add here that they were not the least bit visibly concerned about my sitting on the balcony. They were relaxed, preening, talking between themselves, and just being parrots).

Each morning, they'd both sit outside the cavity and scream, AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK!! They'd preen a bit and scream some more and then one bird would quietly crawl back into the cavity and the other would take off, screaming AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK AK as it arrowed into the distance over the lagoon. Wild parrots scream a lot, even when they're paired and incubating and conceivably self-actualizing to the hilt. I always smirk when I read bird behavioralists proclaiming that pet parrots are screaming "because they're lonely, bored, in need of attention..." Well, yes, all that might be true, because unless he's glued to your cheek, a captive parrot is de facto lonely, bored and in need of attention; but happy beautiful wild parrots scream all the time, even when they're in a flock of 30. Screaming is part of what parrots do. Ergo: Parrots are noisy pets. Apologies to Charlie, who doesn't scream much at all, but does it enough (say twice a day AGGGHAGGGH HAGGGHAHHAG AGGHAGH GGHAGGGH...until we close his sliding glass door)...to drive anybody crazy.

In better light the next morning, the male parrot amused himself by clipping brancheswatching mepreening, stretching and dozing--such lovely red primary coverts!!! Such lovely indigo primary feathers--feathers we parrotkeepers are instructed to clip off as soon as they grow in, so the parrot never gets to use them. Yes, I am having a mid-life avicultural crisis, in case you hadn't noticed.

Eventually he'd take off, you guessed it, screaming all the way.Flying, the way all parrots should. Screaming, the way all parrots do.

Both talks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology went very well. Man, I've had sooo much fun up here in Ithaca. I hate to leave, but home calls, and the peas need to be planted in the beautiful new moon. Heading home Tuesday, Baker by my side. He keeps me awake by regularly fumigating the car interior.

Grounded in Guatemala

blue-gray tanager, Via Maya, Guatemala

Earlier, I made reference to staying at Hotel Via Maya for the remainder of the Guatemala trip. Foreshadowing, all that. Somewhere along the way, after leaving Las Tarrales, I ran into some frijoles refritos that didn't want to submit to their duty to nourish my body. No, these beans staged a miniature version of the L.A. riots in my guts, complete with burning, looting, and Molotov cocktails. The Antibiotic Police were called in, but it took awhile for their forces to quell the uprising. Firehoses were deployed, to little avail.

Bad food happens. It happens anywhere, but it happens more often in the tropics, because there are more bacteria foreign to tender North American digestive tracts, because there's higher heat and humidity, and, well, just because. I always travel with Immodium, which sort of stops overzealous peristalsis in its tracks, and since this happened, I travel with ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that's effective against the kinds of bugs that cause dysentery. Having had dysentery for six continuous months while in Amazonian Brasil, I needed Immodium to function on a daily basis. Cipro is a new, delightful development in the war.

One thing you don't want to do when stricken with dysentery is get in a vehicle. You don't want to do anything, in fact, that takes you farther than sprinting distance from a bathroom. This unfortunately includes birding excursions, boat rides, and (sob) going to Tikal. But hey. I've been to Tikal twice; I've had some of them most magical experiences of my life there, and as I told Bill of the Birds as he was taking leave of me in the pre-dawn hours, there are way worse places to be laid up than a third-floor jungle hotel room with an open-air balcony in the Peten region of Guatemala. I had my camera, I had my laptop to download and edit 8 bajillion photos; I had birds just off the balcony; I had a book to read, and most importantly, I had T.P.

The hotel maid looked in on me midmorning, at my sunken eyes and prone form, and visibly alarmed, asked auf Espanol, "Don't you want me to call your husband for you?"

"No. Absolutely not. There's nothing he can do for me. He belongs in the forest, watching birds. Please, do not call him."

Which must have sounded kind of weird, even though it was my most fervent wish, albeit in stilted, Portuguese-tinged Spanish. Perhaps she deduced that I was hallucinating, because about two hours later the loveliest lady doctor appeared at my door, carrying a small black bag and wearing a stethoscope around her neck. There followed a most interesting conversation, again conducted entirely in Spanish.

She listened to my description of my symptoms. Her eyebrows shot up when I told her I'd uh...gone...8 times since midnight.

"Ocho viezes?! Ehhhhhh."

She thought for a moment, then said, "Here's what I want to do. I want to take you in my car to Sta. Elena, to the hospital there. I want to put you on I.V. fluids, because you are dehydrated. And then I want to get a sample of your po-po from you and figure out what kind of germ you have, and give you the appropriate drugs for that germ."

The thought of getting in a car paralyzed me with dread. I had tried it just that morning, thought I'd surprise the group by showing up late for the birding excursion, and had had to stop the van for a little roadside interlude, and get the driver to take me straight the hell back to the hotel. Oh, no. Not getting in a vehicle for any hour-long ride over bumpy roads. Nuh-uhhhhn. I thought fast. Spanish bubbled up from the deep limbic recesses of my mind.

"Pardon me. But I want to stay right here, in my bed. And you can take my po-po to the hospital at Sta. Elena, and figure out what kind of germ it has, and then somebody can come back and bring me the right drug. My po-po can go. But I am not going anywhere. And I promise that I will drink and drink and drink and I do not need to be put on an IV."

I held my breath, watching her face, hoping hard that the good doctor would

a. understand my emergency Spanglish and
b.not make me get in a car again.

She smiled, shrugged, and asked if I had a little container.

I dumped out the rest of my Origins fruity facewash, maybe $20 worth, cleaned out the container, and quickly, yes, merrily produced the sample the good doctor had requested. We hugged and agreed that it had been a pleasant and fruitful exchange.

She came back that afternoon with a diagnosis:

"Se observo la microbiota moderamente aumentada con campos llenos de leucocitos."

which I gathered meant there were germs and white blood cells in my sample. She handed me a couple of cards of ciprofloxacin; we hugged again and shook hands. "Con mucho gusto!" I started the meds, and by late that night was feeling steady enough to wobble my way over to the thatched-roof bar, where my husband was yukking it up with the rest of the gang. I just as quickly wobbled back to the room, realizing that I was not going to be leaving at 3:30 AM for Tikal the next morning.

Well, that's some rotten timing, to get dysentery and miss the crowning birding excursion of a too-short trip. I'd have to make the best of it. I had the pre-excursion to Los Tarrales, there was that. Three days of bliss and manakins..And I have to confess, birding off a balcony in Guatemala, even sick, beats gazing out on sullen juncoes and dreary ice in Ohio. I would stay put, and make the best of it.
agouti, Tikal, 2007

Livin' La Vida Maya

Like all monkeys, she was an itchy little thing. (So was the howler, har har.)
Blogger poll:Are my pants touristy enough?

After our various adventures at Cerro Cahui, Ixpanpajul, Sta. Elena and PetenItza, it was time to settle in for a few days at a very nice hotel called La Via Maya. It's not too far from Tikal, and is surrounded by some nice forest and some very nice birds. This turned out to be a very good thing for me, because I was to spend the rest of the trip right there. I am now using foreshadowing, a literary device intended to produce tension in the reader, with a desire to punch the computer screen. More on that later.

Like many large hotels in Latin America, La Via Maya has enclosures with native wildlife; the harsh squawks of captive scarlet macaws ring out starting at dawn, well into dusk. They are well-treated and free to ramble about a large area, socializing, a satisfactory lot when you think of how most captive parrots end up living: in solitary confinement. Another paddock holds a herd of Guatemalan white-tailed deer, which are noticeably smaller and darker than our whitetails, not quite as small as Key deer, but getting there. I considered trying to make you think I had captured these images by stalking and waiting, but it is not so. My main concern was poking my lens through the woven wire and not getting any of it in the picture.

By chance, one of the does had just given birth to twin fawns, and I was captivated by the tiny animalettes, their bodies no larger than a small Jack Russell terrier's, all legs and angles and huge liquid eyes. They'd totter a few feet, then collapse down in a defensive crouch, probably responding to low vocalizations from their mother. Think small loaf of Pepperidge Farm Toasting White and you have the size. Teeny.
The other does were fascinated by the twins, and they got a whole lotta lovin.' I was reminded of myself around our friends' children Oona and Sophia, the 1-year-olds to whom I am lucky enough to act as an unofficial auntie. Oh, I love those girls.
Also hanging around the grounds was a somewhat mysterious young female black howler monkey. She was a most placid and lovely animal, unafraid but unobtrusive. She seemed to enjoy the smiles and surprised reactions she got from hotel guests when she'd drop down out of the trees and sit near the tables, absent-mindedly scratching herself. Here are the incomparable bird painter Keith Hansen (left) and the illustrious co-author (with Sophie Webb) of Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America, Steve Howell. Both are much rowdier than the little monkey. Keith is a howl unto himself. Dude. I love this guy and his beautiful wife Patricia, a Yucateca from Mexico with a keen sense of humor and terrific taste in textiles and travel. We staged some wonderful pictures of Steve showing the howler some birds in his book, but I took them all with his camera--rats! I never saw her grab anything from anyone, the way many acclimated monkeys in India and Africa do. Even when Keith offered her his video camera (something I would not do), she thought about taking it and then gave it back to him. She was a perfect little lady.

I so wanted to groom her. She probably would have enjoyed it and reciprocated. But it's never a good idea to touch a wild animal, even one that's obviously been hand-raised. So I hung around hoping she'd touch me. I wanted to bury my nose in her hair and see what she smelled like. Missin' Baker.

In the morning and evening, we could hear the unearthly roars of wild black howlers coming from the forest all around. They're common in the Peten region. They're heavy, rather slow-moving monkeys who live on fruit and leaves. Their round bellies house chambers where the low-quality forage is fermented and digested. Tails are prehensile, and act as a fifth hand. Nice nonskid undersurface, too.
Something about monkeys freaks people out; I think it might in part be due to the contrast between their familiar (human) eyes and faces, and the fact that many have these long slightly creepy prehensile tails, that move with a mind of their own.

Male howler monkeys have huge round bony bullae, or chambers, in the gular (throat) area that act as resonators for their roars. They have the most amazing skulls. I wish I could find a ventral view to show you, but the bullae are in the vee, under those massive mandibles. Very cool skull. This picture, pirated off the Net at a site that sells skulls. You can buy any darn thing online. Monkey skulls. I like skulls but I draw the line at displaying primate skulls in my home. Too close. At a distance, calling howlers sound like a great wind through trees. Close up, they sound like mythic lions, very angry ones. I love the sound of howlers in the morning.

And now, I am off to Ithaca, to hang the "Letters from Eden" paintings, open the show, give some talks, and meet some wonderful birdpeople at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There is talk of ethnic restaurants and wine. Plans are being made. It ought to be a hoot, or a howl. Chet Baker is going with me as my mental health guide dog. Maybe I can sneak him into public facilities by saying I'll freak out unless he's with me. He'll be great company on the drive, which will push 9 hours each way. Howler monkeys and humid forests will be a distant memory in the Land of Ice and Snow, but I have been promised ducks in nuptial plumage, and I'll take them! Must pack his sweaters.

Antigua Afternoon

Lisa, Liz and Jeff leading me through the streets of Antigua, Guatemala. That brilliantly-colored zone above the building is what is called a blue sky. Dig back into your memory...

Three trips to Guatemala, and I was finally going to see just a smidgen of Antigua, a gorgeous colonial city not far from Los Tarrales, near Lake Atitlan. Antigua is justly famed for its architecture, which has a Moorish influence, and its textiles. Its markets pull in the best Atitlan's Mayan weavers have to offer, and my head almost exploded when Jeff and Liz, who'd stayed here overnight, took me into the nicest textile shop. I overloaded, and couldn't buy a darn thing. Too much to choose from.I never got used to looking up and seeing a volcano, its massive dangerous head wreathed in clouds of its own making. Garden fans, this is what a yellow brugmansia looks like when it's really, really happy. Oh, I could spend a long, long time in Antigua, just photographing flowers and fabrics and buildings. Finally, with only about twenty minutes to spare before we had to leave for Los Tarrales, we bolted into the big marketplace, where hand-made papier mache monsters greeted us. How do you get something like this in your luggage? Darn it! Liam would have loved one.I finally assuaged my textile lust buy purchasing a couple of huipils, the traditional poncho-like overshirt worn by Maya women. See that hole in the middle? That's where your head goes through. Then it drapes over your shoulders, leaving your hands free.

It's as if the weavers know exactly what color combinations will drive me wildest. I bought one for Bill, covered in stylized dragons. I'm sitting now in a chair, my favorite blogging chair, an old family heirloom from the 1950's. It's got a tough nylon-chenille fabric, cut with a tracery of roses. It used to be rose-pink, but it's faded to an elegant dove-grey. And draped over it is my new huipil,embroidered in vibrant flowers and stylized quetzals, their colors fresh and new, and it still smells of woodsmoke from the cooking fires where it was woven on a backstrap loom. I paid about $20 for it, all that hand loomed fabric, all that work. I felt like buying the whole darn rack of them. They make terrific throws for weary furniture.

You can take it with you, just a little bit of it.

Doodling Around Flores

Lake PetenItza is a prominent feature of the Peten region of Guatemala. It's gorgeous and blue, with a calcareous bed that shines white where it's shallow. On Bill's birthday, we had lunch at a nice lakeside restaurant/hotel, and he celebrated with a swim in the lake. One of the things I love about him is that he lives life in a large way. That's him on the right, and Liz Gordon, who lives similarly, on the left. I would be the one on dry land, taking a picture of people who live large.At this point, I was feeling a bit odd, and the thought of crossing the lake in the covered dugouts didn't appeal to me; I'd been losing a battle with what I took to be carsickness all morning. So I opted to go back around the lake in the bus rather than cross it with the rest of the (more intrepid) group. If I can ride in the front, I'm fine. Every time I get in the back of a bus, trouble ensues. The bus driver agreed to drop me off in Flores, where I could wait for them to land in their tippy ol' pirogues.

It's a good thing I didn't know I'd be giving up awesome looks at Bill's birthday bat falcon by taking the bus.

Fact is, when I'm alone with my camera anywhere, I'm bound to have fun, and being in Guatemala just made it more special. I shot typical tourist pictures out of the bus windshield. I always get a chuckle out of the word "ferreteria;" it conjures up some kind of crazy weasel factory in my mind. It means "Ironworks," in fact, and there are ferreterias in every little town, because everybody has wrought iron guards over windows and doors to prevent theft, all over Latin America. We just don't get how lucky we are in the U.S., not to have to put grilles over all our windows and doors, not to even think about that.

A nice view of PetenItza, bougainvilleas in the foreground. Hey, I have those blooming in my greenhouse, with SNOW pelting on the roof, right here in Ohio! Lucky me!
When I think of Guatemala, I think of color, color, color. That's why it's such an anodyne to this endless stinkin' winter of snow, rain, sleet and snain. We arrived in Flores, and I soaked up some color.
Working on the theme of green and yellow, this tropical kingbird set off a wild balustrade. Try painting your house those colors in Shelter Island, New York. But it works beautifully with the heat and light down in Guatemala.
More turquoise. I walked down steamy-hot alleys, clicking all the way. Just to be in hot sun...such a foreign feeling. To feel my vitamin D cycle re-activate.
Finally, I climbed to the highest point in Flores, which is a little town on an island. I looked out over the harbor, at a cluster of dwellings, and marveled at how much birds add to a scene.
A white rock pigeon looked out over flapping sheets and towels. Roosters crowed, and I wondered how anybody sleeps in Guatemala. I guess after awhile you don't hear 'em.
A great-tailed grackle preened and displayed, cosseted by powerlines. Common as dirt, they are absolutely gorgeous birds, loud and crackly, squeaky and iridescent.
I had seen a rufous-tailed hummingbird flitting around a flowering vine at the overlook where I sat, the subject of curious conversation from a bunch of schoolboys in uniform on the plaza. Yes, I'm large and pale, and I have all kinds of optics dangling off me, and I stick out like a sore thumb, a gringa alone in a white-hot plaza, but there is a lovely hummingbird here, and I mean to stay and wait until I get a picture of it.
There was something dangling from its tail, and I realized upon zooming in that it was nesting material. So this is a female rufous-tailed hummingbird, filling her crop in a break in incubation or nest building. Nice to know. I see much the same thing when female rubythroats come to the feeder in early spring; many of them have nesting material stuck to their feet, and they leave puffs of plant down from their bills on the feeder ports. That's when I know they're nestbuilding. And to think it'll be happening here in grotty, gray old Ohio in about three weeks...it almost defies belief. Well, there were three tree swallows jingling over the meadow this morning, which lifted my heart immeasurably. But it's got a long way to go to be springy. And my friend Cindy is buried in snow again in New Hampshire. I can hear all of New England crying, "UNCLE!!"

I waited and waited for the hummingbird to return, keeping my camera lifted and focused on the best bunch of flowers, with the blue harbor as a backdrop. And finally she came in and I was ready and got The Shot, probably my best picture of the trip.
Thank you, Patience. Thank you, Photography Gods. Thank you, Flores, and thank you, Mrs. Hummingbird.

Later that evening, we threw an impromptu birthday party (complete with cake! Thank you, Ana Cristina Prem!!) for Bill. His friends stood up and offered testimonials. I had envisioned it as sort of a roast, but they all said really sweet things instead. Bawww! He blew out the candles, and everyone sang and cheered, for he is a jolly good fellow, and best of all he was in Guatemala at last. I can't tell you how much more complete it all was with Bill's spirit of fellowship and fun there.
photo by Lisa White.

Why, is that a Gallo in the foreground? I believe it is. Denise is smiling. Steve Howell, co-author with Sophie Webb of Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America, is looking over Bill's left shoulder, peerless Guatemalan bird guide Hugo Haroldo Enriquez Toledo over his right--naughty angel and good!

Tarrales Farewell

One of my favorite images from Los Tarrales: a toddler-sized chicken with a chicken-sized toddler.

Los Tarrales is a place where an ecoutorist can feel at home, as if she is contributing something of value to a vital, functioning establishment which gracefully balances tourism with sustainable agriculture. A family goes to work in the morning, to cut flowers or hack away weeds with their machetes. They pass me, going out to watch birds. I remind myself that watching birds is part of my work. The baby has tiny diamond earrings. Eddie, whose older brother Josue showed us many elusive birds, arranges some freshly cut heliconias. It was hard to sneak up on Eddie; he's just as sharp as Josue.Hearing my camera, he gives me a shy smile. I look at the riches in the joint compound bucket, and know that a hotel in Boston or New York would willingly pay hundreds of dollars for such a bouquet of heliconias and gingers, if one could be had.

Just down the road, a white-tailed deer steps lightly across the path.
A Maya woman packs bananas for shipment, overlooking the playing fields that serve as a gathering place for Tarrales' residents. Cinnamon hummingbirds hover around a luminscent vine, its color shivering in the shadows. Petrea volubilis, Queen's Wreath (Verbenaceae). The true flowers are darker blue; the calyxes are persistent, and extend the apparent bloom time by hanging on. Thanks to Liz Gordon for the ID!

A passionflower glows like a hot coal as it clambers over a fence.
The rooster's comb is almost as bright.
He flaps, to show me that he is king of the rubbish dump.
Volcan Atitlan hovers over it all. I look at its slopes, knowing that horned guans clamber in the highest reaches of the forest. Having given its rich ash to the farm fields of Los Tarrales, it is silent, for now
while an unquiet neighbor to the east lets off a belch of smoke to start the day.These are some of my favorite images from an enchanted three days at Los Tarrales in Guatemala. Please, consider going there, too, for an ecotourism experience that excites, then calms the soul.

In the Shade Coffee Plantation

Coffee in bloom. Do you ever think of the flower that precedes the bean, with its light, citrusy fragrance?

That day with the long-tailed manakins at Tarrales was magic. As I sat and watched for the manakins, a tropical pewee came down and sat quietly not far from my right shoulder.
Waiting for manakins, I saw everything else--a Swainson's thrush, eating the same lauraceous fruit that the manakins were enjoying. A Baltimore oriole, perched on an inga tree above the shade coffee plantation where the manakins were foraging. It was a flash back to my painting of the same subject for the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Full circle! Trying to get a photograph of the oriole reminded me why there will always be a place for artists who can paint an idealized scene. Would you know that the oriole in my photo was inhabiting a shade coffee plantation? The fact is, all this bird activity was taking place within an active agricultural field of shade-grown coffee. Shade growing leaves the overstory largely intact, if thinned, and replaces the understory with coffee shrubs. It's not virgin forest by any means, but it's highly valuable habitat for Neotropical migrants and tropical resident birds.
The entire time I sat quietly watching for manakins, a gray hawk screamed at me from across a valley.
It was clear to me that this vociferous bird had a nest nearby, because its mate would periodically come to join it and add its protests.
Gray hawks (Buteo nitidus) sound a lot like gulls, or red-shouldered hawks. This species is a rare prize near Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border, but they're very common around Tarrales.
Looking across the valley, I could see the most gorgeous golden trees in full bloom. Could anything send a clearer message to a honeycreeper to come sample some nectar?
Walking down from the manakin feeding area at last, I found a tree that had fallen across the path. The richness of canopy life hit me when I realized that the trunk was covered with creeping orchids. Oh, oh, oh. Of course, they were spicily fragrant, their tiny pink flowers no larger than my thumbnail. Charmed, I'm sure. Twitching, in fact.
Like the vast majority of things I found in Guatemala, I had no idea what they were. I knew they were orchids, and that was about it. Sigh. Another thing to figure out. Being mostly on the tree's underbelly, I hoped they would get enough moisture to survive, or perhaps be transferred to a more suitable spot before the tree rotted away. One could collect many such doomed plants if one were so inclined. Every tree that comes down holds treasures untold from the upper reaches of the forest. I could go pretty wild, having a garden in Guatemala.

As I rounded a turn in the dark trail, I spotted my life white-eared ground-sparrow (Melozone leucotis). What a bird! Buried in shadow, there was no way I could get a photograph of it. I stood, letting the feeling wash over me, of seeing something I'd never seen before. I looked down at the ground--I usually stare at the ground when I'm not looking for a bird--and there in the leaf litter lay the molted tail feather of a blue-crowned motmot. Well, would you look at that.
Magic, that's all it was, the whole day, and as tough as the trip turned out to be, I was glad I'd come here. I dream of spending a week or so just doodling around Los Tarrales, seeing what it has to show me.

Department of Shameless Promotion

Note to New Yorkers: I'll be speaking at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca on Monday evening, April 7--and opening the Letters from Eden art show at the same time. The show of 60-plus watercolors and drawings will hang at the Lab until July 7. Having never seen the new building, I'm really excited to be loaning some art to decorate it for three months! Many thanks to Jerry Regan and the Ned Smith Center for Nature and Art for helping me put the show together, creating the fabulous labels, curating and transporting the show, and kicking off its national tour! For more details, see the Lab of Ornithology's web site.

Back to Los Tarrales

A native heliconia flower. When these are put in bouquets, they're usually inverted so they point up, but they look best hanging, I think. An enormous hummingbird called the violet sabrewing feeds at heliconias. I saw it for a shining moment, perfectly purple in the sun, its big wings beating so slowly I could discern individual beats.

I really don't know whether these Guatemala posts are up your collective alley or not. But I took something like 900 photos in four days, so you're going to get Guatemala on your plate, and by God, you're going to at least try it. Or maybe you'll sit back and wait for a Chet Baker post. Ah well...After minor diversions, we're back at Los Tarrales, the uber-cool horticultural farm/shade coffee/banana/flower plantation with fabulous habitat for ecotourism (and ecotourists!)

Tarrales is owned by Andy and Monica Burge. Andy's grandparents bought it about 80 years ago, and it's been in continuous family ownership ever since. A little village of about 300 people has grown within its bounds, many of them employed at the finca. Andy is kind of like the town's mayor/boss/landlord--a position that's probably as hard to describe as it is to fill. You couldn't find nicer people than the Burges, and Tarrales in many ways seems like a charmed place.A Maya woman wraps and packs bananas for the market. These baskets will be carried in the traditional way, balanced on her head.

Other fruits abound. These are breadfruit leaves--enormous against the brilliant sky.A gumbolimbo tree, outrageously shiny, muscular, otherworldly. I wanted to run my hands up and down it.

The juxtaposition of human habitation and wild second-growth habitat makes for some interesting images. I peek through a bamboo stockade to see a fine, fluffy chicken butt.You'd better have a signed release from Henrietta, Missy. She's not going to like that photo one bit.A few dozen yards away, a cinnamon hummingbird guards one of Tarrales' many feeders. Though they're kept clean and filled, they don't get much action, because there's a nasty lil' cinnamon hummingbird guarding each one. This gave me to wonder if rufous-colored plumage is warpaint to hummingbirds (in North America, rufous hummers are the feeder-guarding bullies!) We saw some fabulous nectivorous bats, species unknown, sneaking nectar from the feeders at night. We advised Andy to try grouping a bunch of feeders all together to foil the cinnamon bullies.Just up a trail, a collared trogon called, jetting its tail up with each salvo of soft whoops.Check out the wing position. I love the Christmas colors of this outlandish bird. Trogons are among my favorite birds to draw, but I didn't get time to sketch on this trip. We were always going, moving on down the trail.
More Guatemala anon.

Shade Coffee Birds

On the moderate-elevation slopes and terraces of Los Tarrales, coffee grows in the shade of a largely intact forest. Trees of many different species provide the shade, and birds move between the canopy and the coffee shrubs unimpeded and apparently undisturbed. It's a beautiful conjunction of agriculture and useful habitat, foreign to those of us who associate agriculture with endless monocultures of corn, wheat, or soybeans, which are almost useless to native wildlife. This is a much happier land-use marriage.

I loved seeing birds that would soon be in my own yard, engaged in tropical doings. Here, a Baltimore oriole gorges on the strange fruits of a cecropia plant. They don't look juicy or tasty, but orioles and honeycreepers, euphonias and jays love to take bits of the strange, wormlike fruits.One of the things that strikes me hard in Guatemala is the difference in scale between temperate and tropical leaves. This oriole is dwarfed, lost but for his coal-bright orange.


Swainson's thrushes were everywhere in this disturbed, mid-elevation habitat. They looked strange to me against the odd forms of leguminous pods, but they felt perfectly at home.
A female ruby-throated hummingbird fed at the flowers of a tree-sized composite plant, perhaps a Senecio. Its perfume made me swoon.
Hurry home and see us, Mrs. Hummingbird. On second thought, wait a bit. The weather's still iffy. Wherever we went, black-and-white warblers combed the tree trunks, huge and small, for insectile delicacies. I'll see you in April, my dear, as you scour the oak limbs for sleeping spiders back home.
One of my favorite pictures of the trip is this little yellow-bellied flycatcher in the understory of a fishtail palm plantation at Los Tarrales, impatiens glowing in the background. I'll be listening for his plaintive chu-wee? in my backyard in May.
Enough on those Neotropical migrants, Ms. Zickefoose. Move on to the tropical residents. Start with me, the barred antshrike.
You are a fine birdie indeed, even though you and your mate skulk in the shadows. We'll talk about tropical residents next. Ah, sun, ah, exotica.

Tropical Interlude

Sick and tired of winter? Me, too. As ready as I was for warm weather and sun, it would have been a shock to be plunged right into the close heat and humidity of lowland Peten, Guatemala. Because Bill and I had to cut our Guatemala trip short to run back to a pre-existing festival commitment in Nebraska, we planned to start the trip with a few days at Los Tarrales, not far from Lake Atitlan, in the higher elevations.

Perfect. That's all I can say. Weather, upper 80's. Sun. Humid breeze. The inside of my nose, which had become a single large scab thanks to the winter furnace heat, was healed by the next day. Here I was in a T-shirt, the warm breeze playing over my bare skin. Oh, it was heaven. Everywhere, green and pink and red and magenta and yellow and orange, flowers in profusion, and the hummingbirds to go with them. Birds everywhere.Los Tarrales (The Bamboos) is a multi-puprose property, which combines ecotourism, banana and shade coffee plantations, floriculture and houseplant production in one alluring bundle. Here's the coffee processing plant, which gives forth mysterious whooshing sounds in the evening. Coffee beans are spread out in a single layer on the large courts in the foreground, and raked until they're sun-dried. Tourists are sometimes found drying here, too.

Here's the flower of a coffee plant. It has the light fragrance of citrus, combined with the scent of fresh mimeo paper. Ahhhhh. I couldn't stop burying my nose in coffee flowers.
Speaking of flowers, how's this for a flower? Behold the banana flower, bigger than any showerhead and twice as weird. The baby bananas are forming on the stalk already.Just a few yards beneath the blossom, a small yellowish dot resolved into a bird. (The lowest, tattered leaf is pointing right at it).

It was a yellow-bellied flycatcher, a boreal bird which nests in the stunted black spruces of Canadian bogs. I bet her nose was crusty inside when she arrived, too.

The tropical sun reached deep into her feathers, and she slowly succumbed to its charms.
I had been doing exactly the same thing since arriving the night before. Ahhh, ahh, ahh.
Oh, it's so good to be a bit overheated, to feel the Vitamin D., so good to cheat winter of a few days. Soon enough, she'd head back to the muskeg, and I'd head back to my breeding habitat, too.

But for now, we were sunning. Here, I'm exulting in one of the world's tallest orchids, the bamboo orchid, Arundina graminifolia, native to southeast Asia, but growing quite happily, rooted in the ground at Los Tarrales. Though only a couple of hundred plants survive in its native Singapore, elsewhere I've read that it can be a real pest, self-seeding like crazy. It's used as cattle fodder in Hawaii, where it's firmly established (read: a thug, if an orchid can be a thug.) Still, I was thrilled to be dwarfed by an orchid! So's Liz!

I am making a customarily potent fashion statement, with my flattering, crap-laden photo vest, but at least the pants go down to the shoes. Life is Good T's are all I packed, on purpose.


Delicate, cattleya-like flowers nodded at the tips of the tall stems. I'll be back tomorrow, with more tropical fun and basking at Los Tarrales. 

Mayan Delight

A long time ago, I alluded to this beautiful quilt, and promised I'd post about it at some point. Well, I'm being a hyper-super-insane bloggrasshopper lately, storing up posts as if Armageddon itself were on the way. Must be the fall coming, or perhaps I'm girding myself for some kind of cosmic shootout after which I'll be psychically indisposed for the foreseeable future. I can't tell you why I'm doing it myself, but there are 14 posts and counting on tap, and I'm still hoarding. This one is fresh, done tonight, in case it matters. I'm insane, I know, but at least I'm aware of it.

On our second trip to Guatemala last February, we visited a market in the center of Guatemala City and made a beeline for the nice textile shop there that has a selection of bedpreads, shams, pillow covers and tablecloths. We didn't know quite what we wanted, but we knew we'd know it when we saw it.

I could spend days at that market. Everything's neatly folded and stacked, and when the shopkeeper pulls something out for you you get a tantalizing glimpse of the next thing, be it garment or bag or bedspread, and then you just have to see that one. I am NUTS about the Mayan aesthetic. Nuts about their colors and patterns and the way they incorporate birds and plants and flowers in their art. Nuts about the color combinations, the fabulously fine handwork, and the wildly disparate styles of each region. My favorite textiles come from around Lake Atitlan, but I love them all unreservedly. I'm more than delighted to peel off bills and give them directly to the woman who created this incomparable art. It feels like free trade as it should be. It's all I can do not to stare at the women wearing these things on the street, and I've been known to discreetly use my binoculars from the bus to appreciate the textiles they're wearing to the market and the bank. Mayan culture is alive and dominant in Guatemala, and it's one of the main reasons we love the country, troubled as it is.
To me, the people in their handmade finery look like hummingbirds, with their brilliant, iridescent gorgets.

This bedspread is pieced together from discarded huipils (wee-peels), the heavily decorated blouses that Mayan women still wear for everyday use. It's covered with neck holes from the huipils, which have been creatively patched with other pieces. Here's a little tour around some of my favorite passages on the quilt.
Another neck hole. I think these are roses in the outer part, and on the inner ring are orchids, probably dendrobiums.
Who'd put roses with herringbone? Mayans. We couldn't even imagine such a combination. To me, huipil weavings are like nature itself--unexpected and beautiful beyond imagining. The merchants told me that many of the pieces of fabric in this quilt are no longer being produced; they're from men's dress pants that are no longer being made or worn. This quilt is holy, a piece of Mayan culture, and I feel privileged to have it on my bed, and not a little unworthy, too. It always makes me smile, just like sun on running water. And it doesn't show dog hairs at all.
This is Big Toe, my Ugly Doll. I bought him as a travel pillow, but because he, too, makes me smile. There's something comforting about taking a monster on your flight with you, sticking him in your backpack to pull out as the jet's taking off. Chet knows he is not allowed to chew Big Toe and treats him with respect. I know it's late in life to be buying dolls for myself, but there are things I find I need and cannot resist, from the ridiculous to the sublime. The wonder is the way they all fit together in my life.

Until I hoard again,
JZ

The Figs of Tikal

Me and my baby atop a temple in the Grand Plaza of Tikal, Guatemala. Photo by Jeff "El Jefe" Gordon. It's sweaty up there. Soundtrack: screeching red-lored Amazon parrots and burbling Montezuma oropendolas. Blurp-blurp-blooooeeeeepppkkksksksk!

In the tropics, one fruiting tree can make all the difference in your birdwatching experience. A lovely fig tree in the Grand Plaza is dripping with fruit, and hordes of birds are taking advantage. Tikal is one of the few places on earth where you can watch big, tasty birds like crested guans, curassows, and ocellated turkeys. They aren’t molested, and more importantly, they aren’t extirpated in parks like Tikal and Chan Chich in Belize. I spent six solid months in Amazonian Brasil, and never saw a wild cracid (the family name for the chachalacas, guans and curassows). Here, they’re present, and they are unafraid, a very unusual thing to be when you live in Latin America and are big enough to be edible. Oh, what a delight. I looove these birds, love to draw them as they clamber around in the fig tree, plucking fruit. They have a polished greenish patina on their feathers that reminds me of bronze. Not to mention their slate-blue facial skin and screaming red wattles. Here's a crested guan in flight, temple ruin behind. Yeah. Guan in flight. Happens every day in Ohio.Bill, Jeff and I set up on the flank of a temple at eye-level with the fruiting fig. It's not often you're at eye-level with a crested guan...
or a Montezuma oropendola. These amazing members of the oriole and blackbird family build enormous hanging nests, five to eight feet long. They're almost ridiculously loud, bold, and bizarre. Highly recommended.
Surreal, this, posting from Coban, Guatemala, telling you about the wonderful birds in this gorgeous little country even as I'm experiencing them. The Internet continues to delight and amaze me. Too soon, we'll be heading home. Bill and I are slated to play music on Friday night, February 23, for the opening reception of the Ohio Ornithological Symposium to be held at Hueston Woods near Oxford, Ohio. It's the OOS Owl Symposium. I'll be speaking on Saturday, Feburary 24, along with the incomparable Denver Holt of the Owl Institute. Bill and I will help lead field trips on Sunday. Yeah, we'll be fried crispy--racing home Thursday morning, driving across the state with kids and Chet on Friday. Yes, Puppy Supreme will be making an informal appearance at the Owl Symposium. Check it out! Hasta luego!