You are browsing the archives of Mesoamerica.

We’ve all heard the rough calculus equating a bird in the hand to two in the bush. One has to wonder, however, whether certain birds in hand may have even greater value. Depends on the bird, right? My contemplation of this creaky avifaunal aphorism is prompted by my recent trip to Costa Rica. Patrick O’Donnell, [...]

TECPAN, GUATEMALA FEBRUARY 2009 – Surprisingly for a country with over 720 bird species on its list, Guatemala doesn’t have any species to call its very own, unless you consider Goldman’s Warbler a full-fledged species. Endemic, however, may be in the eye of the beholder. The Endemic Bird Area (EBA) BirdLife International has designated North [...]

Waking up in a new country always has the potential to be profoundly memorable. I slipped into Panama under cover of night, consequently eluding the House Sparrows, grackles, and gulls that compete to be one’s first “trip bird.” I slept comfortably but fitfully, eagerly awaiting the break of day atop the world-famous Canopy Tower. After all, greeting [...]

Haven’t you always dreamed of birding in Panama? I have for far too long, and now I’m finally going to visit. Care to join me? Regular readers of 10,000 Birds are already familiar with the paired paradises presented by the world-famous Canopy Lodge and Canopy Tower, thanks to Charlie’s intrepid explorations in April 2009. With [...]

It has been four months since I returned from Honduras and I just realized that I stopped blogging about the trip rather abruptly.  Consider this a coda on what I like to believe was a fine series of posts about my trip to Honduras for the Mesoamerican Birding Festival.  Below you will find links to [...]

Once we returned from our amazing trip to the mangroves at Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge (the tale is told in two parts here and here) we only had a couple of hours in which to pack our bags, eat lunch, and cram a bit more birding in before we had to head off to [...]

When we left our intrepid explorers everyone was in a boat in the midst of a mangrove estuary in the Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge and monkeys had been sighted and  photographed…but there was still so much more to see!  One of the next marvelous sights was a bird that I had seen for the [...]

After our trip to the Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge was rained out on our first morning at The Lodge at Pico Bonito we rescheduled our visit for our second and last morning at the lodge.  Everyone wanted to get out into the mangroves (especially me seeing as I had never even seen a mangrove) [...]

I can still remember the delicious taste of dinner on our first night at The Lodge at Pico Bonito way back at the beginning of March.  I ordered the cacao-and-coffee-encrusted steak medallions and the combination of flavors was divine, though that dinner, like most of the meals I ate on my trip to Honduras, disappeared [...]

If I’ve been remiss in finishing the tale of my February 2009 Guatemalan odyssey, it may be that I’m as sorry to end the story as I was the trip itself. On the bright side, I’ve saved one of the best stops for last! After our inexorable sweep of Cerro Alux, Finca El Pilar, Rincon [...]

Well, I’m finally getting towards the end of the Honduras trip, with only about three more days worth of birding to go!  I never thought it would take me so long to write up ten days worth of neotropical birding, but I guess a first visit to the neotropics tends to make birders a bit [...]

While on the familiarity trip in Honduras I was fortunate enough to meet Fito Steiner, (photo left, copyright Robert Hyman) a conservationist and the Volunteer Director for the Honduran Emerald Reserve.  We actually met over dinner during the one night the participants of the familiarity trip stayed in Olanchito, but I was feeling rather lousy [...]

When I was growing up, before I consciously chose to become an atheist, I attended, with my family, a stone church built in 1732 in my hometown of Saugerties in the Hudson Valley of New York State.  I was always impressed by the fact that people over two hundred years earlier had managed to build [...]

Seeing ancient Mayan ruins is a mind-bending experience, especially for someone, like me, who has not seen the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, or other similarly old and impressive architectural marvels.  I was fascinated by the combination of lush, organic elements like trees and vines with the solid and inorganic stone.  Standing [...]

A word of warning: this is going to be a rather long post so go grab a snack and make yourself comfortable before you start reading.  Normally, the birding I did on the morning of February 28, 2009, would be enough to fill up a week’s worth of posts but seeing as I’ve been back [...]

High on a hill over the town of Copan Ruinas sits the Hacienda San Lucas, a small hotel with a great restaurant that serves authentic (and delicious) Mayan food.  The entire birding group was there to eat dinner on our first night in Copan Ruinas, and it was one heck of an amazing meal!  But [...]

The man who did more than anyone else to put together both the first ever Mesoamerican Birding Festival and the familiarity trip after the birding festival, Robert Gallardo, does more than organize and lead birding tours (though that is certainly a full-time job in and of itself).  He also runs, with his lovely wife, Irma, [...]

My most recent birding excursion to Guatemala was immensely improved by the addition of two invaluable items. With my new Swarovski SLC 10x42s, I saw so much more than I ever had before. And with Birds of Mexico and Central America by Ber van Perlo, I was able to identify a lot more of what [...]

If you have any plans to bird Mesoamerica you need to purchase A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America posthaste.  The two who put the guide together, Steve Howell, who did the text, and Sophie Webb, who did the plates, spent over seven years on the project and the expertise that [...]

Before arriving in the town of Copan Ruinas, Honduras, on February 27, 2009, I had only ever heard Inca Doves.  Their melancholy “no hope, no hope” had reached my ears previously only in the town of Brawley at the south end of the Salton Sea in southern California.  So when I realized that the pasture [...]