Colombia and Guatemala Birding by L
(Travel review from birdwatching day with Mrs. Patricia and Mr. Victor Restrepo, Yaxhá, February 22nd, 2013)
I wrote a travel review about my experiences during the archaeology, nature, birding, and jungle tours at La Selva Maya. There is an essential condition in this review: this is not a description of the itinerary or the supposed feelings of the people involved in a discussion of different facts engaged during the tour about things that happened to all of us during our search for finally hug the more preserved nature or taste the glorious moment to finally watch a colorful bird with enough time and so close that we can declare “it’s done, not just a glance.”
Sometimes, we assume the people’s feelings with us in travel reviews. To respect their real feelings, I will discuss the facts from my own point of view.
Colombia and Guatemala birding
On February Friday, 22nd, I traveled with Mr. and Mrs. Restrepo to the Yaxhá archeological site for morning birding, archeological, and nature observation. Our friends Restrepo are a couple from Colombia. Traveling with other Latin American people is nice because you enjoy comparing the diversity of countries in quite a similar reality. I knew Colombia was larger than Guatemala, and it had an essential staff of great ornithologists and excellent bird biodiversity. The news for me was the importance of birding clubs there. The Restrepo friends told me about 80 active members in their club in Antioquia and about 200. These clubs include well-known scientists like Gabriel Colorado and Diego Calderon. Colombia has about 1871 bird species, 74 politically endemic (74!!! A large number!). Colombia is close to one million 200 thousand square kilometers area.
Guatemala is an excellent place to watch birds because it is a small country, about 200 thousand square kilometers, with just 724 birds, but its area is 50 times smaller than the United States, with 980 bird species. Many years ago, we lost Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Yucatán, and Belize for political reasons, and therefore, we lost the possibility of political endemism. The Atitlan Grebe (Podilymbus gigas) is now extinct, and the Yellow-rumped warbler (Dendroica coronata) subspecies goldmani is proposed with excellent reasons to be a new species that could be endemic from this country.
The Caribbean Gulf is an important migration route. Birds like the Caerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulean) fly over the Gulf to reach Guatemala and continue their journey to Colombia. The most common warblers in Guatemala are the Magnolia warbler, Yellow warbler, Townsend’s warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler, and Wilson’s warbler. Our friends from Colombia told me that the chestnut-sided warbler is one of the most common warblers in Antioquia.
Safety in Guatemala
Almost all visitors from North and South America who come with us are afraid of the nasty comments about safety. A month ago, I was traveling with a Cuban girl, and she told me his family was close to applying her holy oils before coming. There were no safety incidents during the travel. The same happened with Mr. and Mrs. Restrepo, who commented that the travel guides warn you too much about Guatemalan safety. So much so that, in some moments, people conclude that the Guatemalan journey is an extreme activity. But all their travel in Guatemala was safe. I visited Colombia some years ago, and the guides recited many times the unjustified fame of violence in Colombia. I have been there many times, and I think the violence is the same trend in Guatemala.
In about ten years of working in tourism nationwide, I have never had any safety problems. Of course, there is violence in the country, most of it concentrated in gangs and narco activity. Of course, there is violence against tourism, like isolated assaults, but it is not an everyday matter. But the results are always in the international news. A close analysis of the statistics indicates that the warnings against Guatemala are just the usual panic wave used to manipulate public opinion.
Digiscoping
We all want to save our birds or nature observation in pictures. However, our images are good memories, but they don’t reflect the beauty of the moment just because we don’t have the expensive equipment to save it properly and show it to our friends. Well, I think the solution is digiscoping. I saw some extraordinary and beautiful pictures of birds Mr. Restrepo took using the digiscoping technique. It was great because I saw many birds from South America that I had never seen before because they are just from South America or extinct here or because they are homologous birds.
The keys to an excellent digiscoping session are having a good telescope, carefully preparing a homemade adapter for your camera, having a good, stable, and comfortable tripod, and using your pocket camera.
Trogons
For me, the highlight of this morning was watching close to finishing the travel of a couple of Violaceous trogons (Trogon violaceus) close to a Black-headed Trogon couple (Trogon melanocephalus). So, I had pictures of both of them at the exact moment. The Black-headed trogon is found from Mexico to Nicaragua. The Violaceous trogon has the yellow eye-ring, and the andeyeringck-headed has blue eyering. The tail patterns of each species are very distinctive.
Archaeology and people
One extra point about birding in Guatemala is that you are always birding in context with culture. So, the birding morning was also an archaeological experience, watching and climbing the Yaxha Mayan site. These Mayan buildings are massive, large, and extraordinary, at last, a different approach from Tikal. Having a moment to understand the Mayan glyphs and admire the stellar. Finally, the view from the top of the 216-pyramid is to watch the Sacnab and Yaxha lakes and the top of the other Mayan pyramids getting out from the large forest at the horizon of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve. It was noon, so the sun was scorching, but the view from this place was a moment you cannot leave without.
Later, we had lunch in a Restaurant. The lunch was prepared with a sauce made from the seeds of the local tree, Ramon (Brosimum alicastrum). The seeds are used as an alternative to corn for people, and the fresh leaves are used to feed the horses when traveling into the jungle. It was also a nice moment because the girl at this place talked to us about birds, orchids, and other biodiversity at the restaurant.
It was a tiring and hot day, but we returned to Flores Island to rest from a hectic day.
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