Guatemala Birding Trip- Day 5

Wine-throated Hummingbird Atthis ellioti is a tiny spectacular endemic Northern Central America specialty.

Day 5 was arguably my favorite day of my birding in Guatemala. Today we got up early at the Hotel Bambu in Santiago and met Rolando, our local guide, at 5:30 AM in the parking lot. Along with Rolando’s assistant we headed to the parking lot to the entrance into a trail to a primary cloud forest called Mirador Rey Tepepul. We slowly walked up a heavily used old trail through working local coffee and other agricultural crop lands. The trail is so old, and so worn that in places it is 2-3 feet beaten down from the surrounding terrain. On the way up we saw several birds new to me.

The extremely vocal Brown-backed Solitaire Myadestes occidentalis.

My favorite was the Golden-browed Warbler, along with a brief look, but no photo, of a Cinnamon-bellied Flowerpiercer. Claudia explained to me that in each cloud forest she has visited one species of thrush dominates. In this forest it was Brown-backed Solitaire. They were singing and calling everywhere, and have a wonderful assortment of songs, some beautifully melodius, some screeching and scratchy. Their calls were almost constant the whole day.

Spot-crowned Woodcreeper Lepidocolaptes affinis was the only woodcreeper I saw this trip.

As we worked our way through the agricultural lands Common Chlorospingus was commonly seen, and a few Azure-crowned Hummingbirds were buzzing around. Once we got to the area with older primary forest, we started to look for the targeted bird of the day, Resplendant Quetzal. Although we did not find this species today, a fabulous consolation prize was the Wine-throated Hummingbird. This is another of the mountain hummingbirds that breeds on a lek, the male singing and displaying and the female choosing a mate for her offspring. This species is almost unbelievable. They are tiny, fly like a bumble-bee, slowly hovering and seeming to float through the air, and sitting on top of a perch in plain sight to show off their gorget, and almost ridiculous red-wine colored oversized collection of feathers that they can puff out to cover a large portion of their body. We enjoyed these while we ate our bag breakfast and hoped for the quetzal.

We never saw the Resplendent Quetzal, but did manage great looks at Mountain Trogon on the way down. We finished the morning with 40 sepcies, including several incredibly cool birds.

Mountain Trogon Trogon mexicanus.

Yet another great site in Guatemala. For the afternoon we visited a road in Panajachel near the Reserva Natural Atitlan. It is overlooking Lake Atitlan, and we had nice looks at 19 species, but nothing really new. We headed to Panajachel for the night, and got ready to wrap up our trip the next morning.

Good birding. Steem on!