Birding
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Tue 4 Dec 2012 23:06
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Monkey River Bird Watching
Trip
We were picked up by Renee on the
beach outside the villa for our three quarter of an hour launcha trip in the
pouring rain to Monkey River. We picked up a couple as we passed Placencia
Village who told us they came from “Trinidad, Colorado, the sex change capital
of the world”, not entirely sure how to respond we asked the ratio of men to
women changing. “Oh 50 : 50”. Right then.
We stopped at the mouth of the river,
got out to put in our lunch orders and wring out a bit. Sadly my R.E. anorak has
no hood, so a quick bit of improvisation – hey it
worked. Moth took it in her stride seeing the funny
side and I showed the only dry patch courtesy of my
camera bags coat.
We were joined by a second guide,
Victor and the spotting duo worked really well
together. We were soon shown lots of flora and fauna, including a very wet, fed
up howler monkey. The great thing about birding is hopefully if and when the
rain stops all sorts of creatures come out to dry. We were not disappointed. The
list we saw: royal tern, pelican, yellow-crowned night-heron, turkey,
swallow-tailed kite, short-billed pigeon, frigate bird, little blue heron, great
blue heron, great egret, green heron (known locally as Poor Joe), white ibis,
common black hawk, osprey, great kiskadee, tropical kingbird, cowbirds, sun
grebe (locally greeb littlest duck and quite a rare sighting), finches,
swallows, and a spotted sandpiper (locally and a favourite called shaky batty).
The boat-billed heron, the
squirrel cuckoo and the white-lined sac-winged bat were completely new ones on
us.
These are some of the pictures we
took.
After we
had meandered up the wiggly river for an hour, spotting a couple of crocs, we got out to go seek a troop of howler monkeys,
they shouted to order but the light was fairly ropey
I was delighted on our walk back that
Victor, our second guide got down on his hands and knees and shoved his hand
into a biggish home. What a chap he pulled
out.
A bit of a
scrapper by his missing eye and claw.
After lunch we were introduced to
Victor’s rescue-come-pet, a random anvil and a one carefully owned
house
Time for Renee to take us back, just as the rain started once more.
Hot showers, a game of Mexican Train Dominoes Baileys o’clock then.
ALL IN ALL TOP NOTCH
SPOTTING
BUT A BIT DAMP
ANOTHER INCH OF BAILEYS
ANYONE |