Dawn at Maya Mountain

[The following piece is part 1 of a longer narrative reflecting an experience in Belize earlier this spring. There was no fly-fishing in this tropical environment, but the birding was a pleasure.]

Once again, I’m out of my thatch-roofed cabin at Maya Mountain at 5:10 this morning. A distant chanticleer begins to crack the night with his jungle cry. The fog is thick, as seen through the darkened palms that ring the outdoor pool belonging to this “eco-lodge” in the rolling hills of western Belize. I am here for a week in April, brought to full attention by the momentary smack of fruit nuts dropping on a metal roof.

A Bright-rumped Attila chips in with its shrill ah-heh-heh notes, the oddly shaped, whiskery flycatcher seeming to say, “So, you’re here for us birds, well brace yourself– the forest is about to sing!” Without delay, the forest sounds begin to roll, slowly at first then waving toward me in progressively stronger phrases: the Ivory-billed Woodcreeper’s whinny, the sharp whistling of Melodious Blackbirds, the whirring of a large hummingbird at bromeliad blooms, the melancholic utterance of a White-winged Dove, the call notes of Magnolia Warblers ready for migration, the muted cackling of the Masked Tityra like an insect’s cry for light, the accented krik-krik invocation of the Keel-billed Toucan for the powers of the moment, the robin-like refrain of a Clay-colored Thrush, and to keep things on familiar ground for me– the greetings of a Carolina Wren!

Social Flycatcher

My ear for the tropical birds has become more practical and discriminating after several days of listening to the avian species and recording their appearance, with help from the Cornell Laboratory’s Merlin app. It’s a peaceful but demanding job, a voluntary labor stemming from my need to know and understand the place at which I’m staying, to encounter the spirit of a new location introduced by the wild inhabitants, in this case, by the birds.

Black Orchid

My visibility is clouded for a while, limited by the early morning light and the closeness of the foliage. A large butterfly, like a dark version of a Tiger Swallowtail or like a Jaguar of ethereal mind, flits back and forth above the pool as if hunting for something lost. What about the insects here? They seem to be largely absent at ground level. The result of poisons such as DDT? No, that’s unlikely in this section of the country. Are they kept in balance by a natural harmony rarely noticed in the USA? I’m consoled, somewhat, by the presence of innumerable insectivorous birds that look to be doing fine in the middle and upper layers of the rainforest, even if their numbers are, in all too many cases, in a serious decline.

Jaguar, trail cam

I’m brought back to the glorious sounds: the deeply resonant hoop-hoop (owl-like) calling of the Blue-crowned (Lesser’s) Motmot. I would love to see this splendid, multi-colored creature but, like so many species of a lush mountain landscape, it is difficult to spot. And there– the piercing, mournful note of a Thicket Tinamou, almost lost amidst the harsh cries of a Brown Jay and the chatter of a roving flock of Red-lored Parrots.

motmot courtesy animalia.bio

I am taken here and there by the sights and sounds of some 60-70 avian species as the morning heightens. It’s like entering the more distant and pristine places traveled to in the company of my wife and grown-up kids. We’re visiting and exploring many of the Mayan ruins, the ancient pyramids and temple sites, while guided by a certified historian or naturalist. We’re time travelers, moving outward through a green-boughed cosmos or inward through a haunted and archaic age.

Leighanne at Jaguar Mask

Again, I see the beautiful Oscellated Turkey on the potholed road to Caracol, the massive Kapok trees embracing earth and sky, the mystic ruins at Tikal National Park in Guatemala where the Howler Monkeys foraged in the limbs above, and where a nesting Paraque fluttered from a limestone staircase, feigning injury when we stepped too close.

Lake Tikal, Guatemala

Here, at Maya Mountain Lodge, I think back to one specific moment, to 5:46 a.m. on April 26. I feel anchored and immersed. The Merlin app flashes in my hand. I hear them– Little Tinamou, Barred Antshrike and Green-backed Sparrow, all the company I need.

The birdsong has a timeless aura. It absorbs me like a dream. I could be tracing mossy waterways in a Mesozoic wilderness or become a “modern guy”– a hunter with a blowgun aimed at meaty parrots in the canopy. I could be amongst the friends of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the hero twins described in the ancient Mayan text, the Popol Vuh. I could be with the sun and moon at the dawn of time, entering the hanging ferns of the “Bird House People” as the total darkness falls away and ushers in the human element. The birdsong brings transition.

Later, I’ll recall my reading of George Miksch Sutton’s Mexican Birds, First Impressions, a 1940s recollection by the famed ornithologist where he wrote: “Bird study in an entirely new country is thrilling, but it is also a bit hard on the nerves. One does not know where to start, which direction to turn, which road to take. Every prospect is bewildering. Birds are abundant on every hand, but there’s no way of knowing which of these need to be studied in life, which collected at once and preserved.” Eighty years later I am in agreement with Sutton on this point, although my “collection and preservation” methods differ somewhat. I have no gun at hand. My eyes and ears collect impressions only, words that form as field notes for the memory….