Off to Guatemala! – Lake Atitlán

When you descend sharply into a valley at the base of a volcano, it only means one thing — you have a very intense workout in your future. We started down the trail in the dark, meandering down the stone pathway by the light of the moon, and the meager light of a small headlamp. It was too dark to see the forest around us, but I could already tell I liked it.
The sounds of guans serenaded us in the wee hours of the morning, before the sun had a chance to break dawn. We heard so many that we didn’t think we would have any trouble seeing one, but despite their size these birds stayed out of sight. And then at daybreak a switch was flipped and we had views of both Crested and Highland Guan jumping amongst the trees. And now that I could finally see the trees, I knew I liked it. (In case you missed it, we were travelling Guatemala and Mexico for an entire month!)

Mornings are simply so great for bird activity. There’s suddenly life to a quiet forest. The birds are singing and seemingly celebrating a new day. I really like that about birds — we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow so celebrate today! As the sky began to brighten, the sounds of potential targets came pouring in and we went deeper into the forest after them. Many birds, such as Azure-rumped Tanager, Blue-crowned Chlorophonia, and Blue-throated Motmot came easy.

But it was hard not to focus on the main target, the main bird to see in Guatemala. The one after which Guatemala’s currency, the quetzale, is named, Resplendent Quetzel. Despite being a native English speaker, resplendent was not a word in my vocabulary. In fact, I had to look up the definition. According to Webster, resplendent means “attractive and impressive through being richly colorful or sumptuous.” It is a rather fitting description of one of the most elaborate and showy birds to see in all of Central America, a nearly neon green and red bird with extremely long tail feathers. The subspecies in Guatemala is supposed to have longer tail feathers than the other subspecies so we wanted to see it ASAP, but we got distracted by a few other important targets, the subspecies of Spotted Nightingale-thrush being high on Ross’s priority list. (Yes, he’s constantly chasing subspecies as if they are the most important birds to see because someday they just might be.) We spent the better part of the morning listening for the faint whistle and getting more discouraged the later it became, knowing thrushes are likely to shut up early. But it’s uncanny how many times Ross has started off about how we aren’t going to see a particular bird only to have that exact bird come in to the tape at that very moment. Such was the case when a “Gould’s” Spotted Nightingale-thrush landed directly in front of us after seconds after Ross finished saying we were going to dip it! I think I’ll remember that exact moment for the rest of my life!

We walked exclusively downhill for two and a half hours. When it came time to turn around, neither of us were particularly looking forward to the uphill grind. Birding sure can keep you in shape! Especially because we walked 75% of the way back up to the car chasing the sound of a distant quetzal only for it to shut up and for us to decide we would go back down and take a different trail out to the road to bird along a new section of the trail. But by 10AM we really needed to get going. It was an amazing morning, even though we only heard the quetzal. We would need to try again elsewhere if we wanted to see this amazing bird.
And then the fog came rolling in. Great for keeping the birds active. Bad for the views we hoped to get of Lake Atitlán on our way to other birding sites. Fortunately we would have more time for views of the lake later as were spending the majority of the first portion of our trip to Guatemala around the impressive body of water. Lake Atitlán is world renown as “the most beautiful lake in the world” and has now become a tourist hotspot due to the variety of scenic locations. It really is something spectacular to see. There is no road that completely circles the lake so many tourists will take little water taxis to different cities. Surely by boat is faster than driving. Getting from one side to the other, by car, can take upwards of 2.5 hours when factoring in how steep and windy the roads are. Get behind a big truck hauling a heavy load and you won’t be going anywhere fast on these steep, one-lane roads.

We took advantage of the little scenic pathways and tourist destinations and visited two parks during our time around the lake, Rostra Maya Cerro de la Cruz and Chui-rax-amolo in search of target birds. I was simply happy to be birding AND enjoying the views. Ross on the other hand was getting frustrated that everywhere we went hummingbirds were not as prevalent as he would have liked. Our morning at Rostra Maya Cerro de la Cruz included plenty of new species including White-faced Ground Sparrow, Guatemala Pygmy Owl, and Blue-and-white Mockingbird, but the hoped for Slender Sheartail, a type of humminbird, was nowhere to be found. Chui-rax-amolo also produced some nice birds including our first Crescent-chested Warblers but the Wine-throated Hummingbird, despite hours of searching, remained frustratingly elusive.