Birding Mountain Pine Ridge

Some times I have a great day birding and I have great photos to go with each step of the way. I saw a great bird in great light, I enjoyed it and then I took a decent photo of it. This was not one of those days. I do have some decent photos from the day, particularly from some hummingbirds towards the end of the day but I feel the photos do not adequately summarise the day and certainly not one 10-15 minutes period which was truly world class.

Practically I often feel a balance when deciding whether to bird (look through the binoculars) or to photograph (use and carry a heavy camera). Often it is a compromise and balance. Today I focused on birding as they came thick and fast.

Today we were up and out by 6am to visit Mountain Pine Ridge with Julio from Maya Walk. This trip was stretching our budget significantly but in the end it was worth every penny as Julio was fantastic at spotting and hearing birds and he was also great at teaching us about the birds which we loved.

This habitat of Pine Woods is quite unique in Belize and indeed wider Central America so it has some unique birds too.

We started seeing birds along the roadside outside San Ignacio including my first lifer – Eastern Meadow Lark along with the Road-Side Hawk living up to it’s name.

At the entrance to the park we added Thick-Billed Finch and Pale-Billed Woodpecker. This later bird is very close to the Lineated Woodpecker but told by it’s pale bill and the white V on it’s back. I think I must have patiently looked through a dozen Lineated before today when Julio confidently called this woodpecker from sound before I could get out of the car. Before the end of the day I was confidently hearing its unique double tap too.

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Next we parked up and, having been warned to look out for vipers, we took a 30 minute walk to the Slate Creek Lookout. We were here for a raptor watch and it really reminded me of a place me and my birding mentor Rick have often gone back home near Dunkeld looking for Goshawk and Honey Buzzard. 

We added a bird upon arrival hearing very close calls from a Barred Forest-Falcon, before it flew off. It was probably here for the hundreds of White-Collared Swifts (and few Lesser Swallow-Tailed Swifts) which were hawking on the thermals. But we were here for raptors and at first it was fairly quiet – a few distant perched Bat Falcons, a couple of Parrot species (Mealy and White-Crowned) but no raptors. Several bird species were heard and confidently called by sound by Julio but there was little for us to see. 

Our patience was more than rewarded when after at least an hour we had an amazing 15 minutes of birding where we added King Vulture, Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Black and White Hawk-Eagle, Double-Toothed Kite, White Hawk, Grey Hawk and quite surprisingly an early Northern Harrier on early migration. Amazing and far too busy picking the birds out one after the other to photograph any of them accept this King Vulture.

To cap it off we had two Hummingbird species during this period, Azure-Crowned and White-bellied Emerald (pictured), along with Rose-Breasted Grosbeak so that at times it was literally impossible to know where to look.

We would leave this viewpoint buzzing having added 26 lifers before 10am! Wonderful!

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We continued to drive in our 4×4 (needed) birding along the way. At one point when we stopped we spotted a big cat footpint (possible Jaguar?) on the ground whilst adding Golden-Olive Woodpecker, Black-Headed Siskin, Rusty Sparrow and Rufous-Capped Warbler.

We continued to a viewpoint overlooking the Thousand Foot Falls (under-named as it is 1,600 feet in reality) the highest waterfall in Central America where we added more King Vulture and an Orange-Breasted Falcon to our growing raptor list.

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By this point we were quite hot and ready for a brief break from birdwatching with a refreshing swim at the stunning Big Rock Falls.

We had already added a hummingbird lifer earlier (Azure-Crowned) but Julio had one more treat to add to this amazing day. We stopped at the hummingbird feeders outside Green Hills Butterfly Ranch and added five more (Scaly-Breasted Hummingbird, Violet Sabrewing, Wedge-Tailed Sabrewing, Long-Billed Hermit, White-Necked Jacobin).

As we were leaving we added Short-Billed Pigeon and Olivaceous Woodcreeper to this amazing day list.

By the end of the day we had seen 82 species of birds of which an incredible 37 were lifers. My total for Belize was now at 184 of which 72 were lifers taking my trip total to 328 (on my quest for 1,000).

Whole-heartedly recommend Julio and Maya Walk for birding trips in this part of Belize. My only regret is that we didn’t have enough of a budget to do a second day with them to visit Black Rock Lodge and no doubt add another 35+ lifers to the impressive Belize List.