February 2022: A Couple of Old Welshmen Bird Honduras
The second of the two 'big company' birding tours I booked at the 'end' of COVID. After the disaster that was the Ecuador trip, I headed out again with some trepidation, but went anyway ... life is too short ...
Friday, February 11 - Tegucigalpa
I have to say this city name makes for a great Facebook post so I put my 'Traveling to Tegucigalpa' status up along with 'let's try this again' and off I went. The airport worked just fine but the drive through the city to the Hotel Gloriales was long and slow. Still, it gave us time to get acquainted and for me to catch up the Steve N.G. Howell, who I've know since we were teenage birders in Wales in the 1980s, but rarely get to see any more.
The hotel was lovely. They had puppies and good birds in beautiful gardens. What more could you want?
Saturday, February 12 - P.N. La Tigra
Ah, that much anticipated first 'proper' day of birding in a new country ... there's nothing like it. Today started out well and I even had a trio of life birds in the morning. Highlight number one though wasn't a bird at all but a rather well-camouflaged Wilson's Montane Pitviper lurking in the leaves a the visitor center ... careful where you sit people (!).
On the bird front, the highlights for me were my life Green-breasted Mountain-gems, Golden-cheeked Warblers (hey, I've never been to Texas in Spring!) and Slate-colored Solitaires. There were lots of memorable species to see here though including Resplendent Quetzal, Pale-billed Woodpecker, White-breasted (Sharp-shinned) Hawk, Mountain Trogon, and lots of Northern Emerald Toucanets.
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| Wilson's Montane Pitviper |
Perhaps the most interesting bird though was not (yet) a lifer ... we saw the very rare local form of Black-banded Woodcreeper. This particular form occurs here and in Southern Mexico (where is is practically unknown) and is almost certainly a separate species from the forms that occur in Costa Rica and in the Amazon. Taxonomy in motion, one of the most fascinating parts of the world-birding experience.
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| Black-banded Woodcreeper and Green-breasted Mountain-gem |
Sunday, February 13 - Travel to PANACAM Lodge
A long travel day today but punctuated with some nice stops for some specific specialty birds.
Fist up was an early morning stop at P.N. Unidas el Picacho, a sort of park, picnic area, and small zoo that I'm sure is a nightmare at noon on a Sunday but this morning we were here early enough that we had it to ourselves. The highlight here was Ocellated Quail and we did indeed hear some but never close enough to have any chance of seeing one. We did see Plain Chachalacas and Crested Bobwhite running around plus a lot of noisy White-fronted Parrots. So a nice way to start the day, and onwards ...
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| Lesson's Motmot |
The next stop was mostly for me I think. I needed White-lored Gnatcatcher and Steve had scouted out a location for them on the day before the trip. The spot was not scenic, a bakingly hot, wind-blasted piece of badlands reminiscent more of S.E.Arizona than of Central America. But the scouting had paid off and we were very quickly looking at a pair of gnatcatchers with bonus Cinnamon Hummingbird and a 'blink and you missed it' Lesser Roadrunner crossing the road.
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| Bad shot of a White-lored Gnatcatcher |
Monday, February 24 - Honduran Emerald Day
Honduras has only one endemic bird, the Honduran Emerald, and it's impossible to imagine coming here without seeing it. Ironically, little was known of this species, or where to reliably see it, until relatively recently. Now, however there are spots where you can go and it was our number one priority for the day.
Fist stop was the El Rancho Restaurant where we picked up our expert local guide (who owns the hotel and restaurant) and enjoyed some of the local birds in the light rain.
Then off to a 'secret' trail location that ended at a feeder strategically hung deep in the forest and a conveniently well habituated Honduran Emerald that popped up on cue and gave a good show. OK, perhaps not a pure wilderness experience but we got the bird and the location is protected and carefully managed by and for the locals so not a bad thing overall.
It was also a pretty birdy spot so we spent an hour or so enjoying the locals, including Golden-winged Warbler, Red-throated Ant-Tanager, and a couple of singing Blue Buntings. Then back to the restaurant for a very pleasant lunch under a terrace in the rain. Mission accomplished.
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| Berylline Hummingbird and Honduran Emerald |
The rain, unfortunately, while scenic (I do love a good rain shower) made for tricky driving, and this afternoon the roads had become particularly treacherous. Cars and vans were slipping and sliding across, and off, the road all the way to our next spot. As we got closer, we arrived at a long, reasonably steep hill that we had to climb and the van simply couldn't keep enough traction to get up there on its first four attempts. Just when I was thinking we were going to have to re-trace our steps and go back to the lodge though, attempt number five proved to be a charm and we made it to the next birding spot (and there was much rejoicing).
Reserva Natural Privada Luna del Puente is a truly lovely spot. A working farm that produces shade-grown coffee and chocolate while preserving a number of forest patches for the birds, making it a very nice piece of varied habitat with a lot of bird diversity. Steve's three favorite things on earth are chocolate, birds, and coffee so we took time to sample all three while we were there (happy to report that all were excellent). On the bird front, we saw 50 species with the absolutely highlight being a cooperative Tody Motmot that posed for pictures in a forested gully. Perhaps the perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon in Honduras.
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| I have a soft spot for Tody Motmots |
Tuesday, February 15 - Lago de Yojoa
As a kid we sometimes used the phrase 'like going to the bird house at the zoo' to describe a wonderful morning of birding where you saw a lot of species in one place. Of course, as a kid in Wales I doubt we ever saw more than 40 species in a day, while this morning I saw 94 species at one spot, the amazing, scenic, and very birdy Lago de Yojoa. A truly satisfying morning of birding that combined a range of waterbirds, local residents, and a ton of Neotropic migrants including 16 species of wood warbler. An absolutely great morning of birding.
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| Muscovy Duck and Chestnut-headed Oropendola |
With no real plans for the afternoon birding session I opted to focus on a potential life bird for me and stake out a spot for Black-crested Coquette, a tiny canopy hummingbird that was known to frequent a couple of areas of flowers at the lodge. The rest of the group, having shorter attention plans went off birding while I spent the next three hours staring at a couple of flowing trees and waiting for a coquette to pass through. The wait ended up being a long one but almost three hours later a tiny, slow-motion, bee of a hummingbird buzzed through my clearing and I was able to get bins up and confirm it was the coquette. Not the most exciting view, but good enough and time well spent (the group had nothing more interesting to report when they returned later).
Wednesday, February 16 - PANACAM Lodge / Travel to the Coast
With the targets basically and accounted for we had a quiet morning to kill at PANACAM before driving down to the Atlantic Coast. In no rush, so we shared a leisurely breakfast with the local White-nosed Coati who came for her breakfast banana every morning. Then we birded the lodge grounds, spending time at the canopy tower and enjoying scope views of Keel-billed Motmot among other things. Sad to leave PANACAM but new species awaited.
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| White-nosed Coati waiting patiently for a banana. |
Thursday, February 17 - Garden Botanico Lancetilla
Today was lower elevation, on the Caribbean Slope, and so we expected different birds. Indeed, we did rack up an impressive list and a wide range of new species for the trip-list. It would perhaps have been more but of the traffic which limited our ability to get everywhere we wanted to go and we ended up skipping some spots rather than spending a big chunk of the day sitting in traffic jams.
The morning stop was the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens, or more specifically the patches of forest surrounding it. We birded the entrance road in the morning then some forest scraps near the HQ a little later. Steve had done bird survey work here 30+ years before as a young bird-bum writing a field guide to the birds of Mexico and Northern Central America so he had good memories. Although much of the forest in this area is sadly long gone, we did manage to pull together some nice things during the morning, including a Black Hawk-Eagle, a Uniform Crake, and a nice Thick-billed Seed-Finch.
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| Slaty-tailed Trogon |
Lunch with hummingbird feeders? Why not.... The rain had started again to the idea of sitting under a covered patio and enjoying our picnic lunch while watching an impressive feeder set-up at the defunct bird lodge didn't sound bad at all. The place positively hopped with dozens of hummingbirds and swarms of Shining and Green Honeycreepers. Nothing terribly unusual here but a really pleasant way to spend a rainy lunch time and then, just to round things off, we found a Lovely Cotinga by the van just as we were leaving.
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| White-necked Jacobin and Crowned Woodnymph |
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| Green Honeycreeper |
Friday, February 18 - R.V.S. Cuero y Salado (The Boat Ride)
A lot of group birding trips to Central America have 'the boat trip' where you putter at a leisurely place through the mangroves in a tourist boat and see Boat-billed Herons and maybe a Northern Potoo or an American Crocodile. Other groups also inevitably see Agami Herons but I never see them because that species is my nemesis bird and, despite having taken maybe 5 or 6 of these touristy boat trips in good habitat, this species continues to elude me. Non-birders will tell me about the boat trips they did while on their beach vacations in Mexico or Costa Rica and inevitably they will report seeing that 'special heron', 'you know the agave heron', the guide inevitably very excited to show it to them and everyone feeling like they got their money's worth. I, on the other hand, am simply incapable of finding one ... not that I'm bitter ...
This trip was no different. Boat-billed Heron (check), Northern Potoo (check), impressive American Crocodiles (check), Northern Tamandua (check) .... Agami Heron ... nope.
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| Northern Potoo and Russet-naped Wood-Rail (a life bird for me) |
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| Bare-throatedTiger-Heron (note the lack of Agami Heron photos) |
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| Yellow-crowned Night Heron and Boat-billed Heron |
Saturday, February 19 - COVID Tests and Airport
Time to go home. In the 'time of the COVID' that meant lining up at a regional health clinic for a 'little lobotomy' COVID test in order to get that all important -ve antigen paper that would allow us to board the plane and get out of the country. The good news was that we all passed and so the process of leaving was simple.
You hear so much of the bad news about Honduras in the U.S. Press where desperate migrants escaping a violent dysfunctional country seems to be the accepted narrative. I have to say though that it doesn't feel that way on the ground. Everyone we met in Honduras was super friendly and quite lovely, and while I know we were in a tourist bubble for some of the time, we also wandered the back roads and ranged widely across the country. There are no doubt real problems here but it was fine to travel, we were welcome everywhere, and I'd certainly be happy to go back. It was a very lovely break ... and I didn't catch COVID!
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| A 'real' American Crocodile, looks like it eats pirates' hands and unwary tourists ... |
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