Today was our first day in Belize!!! It was our travel day, so we still haven’t fully entered the forest yet, but we will be tomorrow. I woke up at 5:30AM to make it to Rice by 6:00AM—the first of many early mornings. We flew into Belize just before noon and ate lunch at a restaurant named Cheers. They had a ton of t-shirts hung by people who’ve visited throughout the years!
There was even one from NC A&T. North Carolina proud!!
There were a ton of birds around us, and we saw a hummingbird hovering around the canopy of the trees behind the restaurant. When we walked around and explored the river next to us, we saw a bunch of iguanas jump into the river from the trees surrounding the bank. We managed to spot one that appeared to have lost a leg and another smaller, juvenile one high up in the tree!
We arrived at the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge a couple hours later and were greeted with the chirps of a bunch of cicadas, and some even landed on the sidewalks. We went down to the Macal River, where we heard more cicadas and what we believe to be a type of frog.
When we came back, I saw my first Orthoptera of the trip!! It appears to be an angled-wing katydid, which is super cool because I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever seen a katydid, or at least consciously recognized one before. Seeing one in person really emphasized just how leaf-like katydids can be, and I’m super excited to find more. Now just have to find some grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts to complete the collection!
After dinner, we saw what looked like some species of owl perched atop of a trunk in the middle of the forest, which was super cool. Even cooler yet was when I was walking back to our room, through the gazebo right outside our door, another bird flew inches in front of my face across and out the gazebo. From the coloring of the plumage, I think it was the same type of owl, and we think it was perched in the support beams of the roof before we disturbed it.
All in all, today was a super fun and successful day! We had a couple minor hiccups at the airport, but we got a small taste of the next two weeks and I cannot wait to go further into the forest and see more. Tomorrow’ll be full of more birding, car rides, and hikes. See you in Las Cuevas!!
Ian Chen