Black Rock Lodge Day 5 - Mountain Pine Ridge

Was watching the Superbowl instead of writing this post (always an excuse oops!). 

Today was the coldest and wettest day of the trip! I felt cold at some points! Not a -20 windchill typical February day in Ontario cold, but for here it was chilly. We left bright and early to maximize our time on the mountain pine ridge.

The roads took us through a new landscape. Gone was the broadleaf forest and in with the sandy/silty pine. 

The path to the Slate Creek Lookout was quite overgrown and the road was absolutely terrible. Muddy and uneven and it took all the power of our truck to get our way out of a treacherous muddy area. We finished the last portion on foot with hopes of a Cotinga, but the elusive species decided it did not want to be seen.

Victor pointed out the Schippia concolor, a palm tree endemic to Belize.

Unfortunately the wet and cold weather limited hawk movement so we didn't get the variety we were hoping to see, but we did see two bst Falcons and a White Hawk. This Gartered Trogon was cute. Oh and we heard two Little Tinamous with their haunting whistles, and a Mayan Antthrush.

After the lookout we drove along some roads deeper into the pine ridge with the targets being Rufous Capped Warbler, Grace's Warbler, Rusty Sparrow, Gray Crowned Yellowthroat, Azure Crowned Hummingbird and Black Headed Siskin, all lifers for me. These species favour habitat found within the MPR. Our first stop allowed us to see the first three birds listed above as well as Hepatic Tanager (should have been a lifer for me if not for one found by friend of the blog Markus in Oakville last year). 

 Rufous Capped Warbler.

Rusty Sparrow

The Grace's Warblers were lovely, photos aren't the greatest but I will upload them at a later date.

Victor kept doing this even whistle, a toot-toot-toot... whenever we would stop along side of the roads. The whistling stirred up the birds a bit however at one point in time I heard something whistling back and was told it was a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl!

We managed to track it down above a restaurant and had lovely looks.

This owl is a diurnal meaning it is a daytime hunter of small song birds (makes sense why the whistling stirred up some birds).

Another drive down a sketchy road yielded some Gray Crowned Yellowthroats! 

This is a bird I had been wanting to see, it's cool to see the southern counterpart to our Common Yellowthroat (which I also saw today).

We heard a strange vocalization and then a Laughing Falcon flew over our heads and landed in a nearby Pine! 

What a neat looking bird!!! It kept bobbing it's head up and down, not sure what that was about. They exclusively hunt snakes! It seemed very chill but we left the area to give it some space.

At this point in time we had one area specialty left, the Black Headed Siskin. Finches are a unpredictable species so we just had to keep driving around. Eventually, while driving through an abandoned logging village, we saw a flock of 30 birds flush from the grass. At first I thought they were Morelets Seed Eaters but we saw tremendous black and yellow in flight and sure enough there were our birds!

As we were observing the siskins, we heard a bugiling sound from near by which Victor ID'd as a Montezuma Oropendula. We drove to the source of the sound but all we saw were grackles.

We heard the sound further off. I don't know how Victor found it but he managed to bring up a distant bird in the scope that was our bird.

We drove closer and got to see it from a medium distance. They are quite large birds, larger than I thought. 

What a stylish bird.

On the drive home we finally caught up with a Clay-Coloured Thrush!

At a stop attempting to search for Painted Buntings, we saw 2 blue Grosbeaks, 2 Barred antshrikes and 2 squirrel Cuckoo.

Blurry pic of the Barred Antshrike.

A nearby field had two Created Caracaras cuddling.

Bonus Lessons Motmot picture from the drive.