Birdchick

I’m not sure how much to tell you about the horned guan. I had a vague idea of the challenge of the trail to the guan, but I really don’t think I fully grasped how hard it would be to see this bird. Now, I debate with myself: “Do I go on and on about how hard it was and will that prevent someone from going to see this amazing bird?”

Because, honestly, if I truly understood what was ahead of me, I don’t know that I would have gone for it. That’s right, you read that correctly, I don’t know if I would have gone for one of the more rare species one can see in the Americas if I had truly understood the work in front of me. Oh, I had heard the stories from Julie Zickefoose on NPR and on her blog regarding her horned guan adventure. I read and heard of Bill of the Birds on his horned guan search. There were tales from some of my buddies on the bird festival trail that it was a brutal climb. I heard of well known, great birders, who I considered to be incredibly physically fit, having to crawl that last part of the trail just to see the bird. I think a part of me thought that was just a bit of exaggeration.

The hike up Volcan San Pedro was saved for one of our final days of birding in Guatemala. Our group had been mentioning it to each other, “Do you think you’re going to be able to do it?” or “Sharon, do you really think you can take your scope up the volcano, I’d leave it here.”

I heard that Jeff Bouton and Bill of the Birds had brought their scopes, so I should be able to do it too. Right?

I didn’t get very scared until the day before. I had found some wireless internet at our lodge in Los Andes and put up a status update on Facebook: Sharon is nervous about tomorrow’s climb up the Volcano to see the horned guan. I got a comment from Chris Benesh who works for Field Guides–travels all over the world to show people birds. He was also on the same Ivory-bill Search Team I was on. I considered to him to be very physically fit. He left a comment to the effect of the climb being the toughest he had ever done, it was brutal, but the got the guan.

Okay, if Chris called it brutal, maybe those stories of birders panting and crawling to the top weren’t just exaggerated fish tales. I decided to be all Scarlett O’Hara about it and, “I’ll not think about that right now, I’ll go crazy if I do. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

We had one more field trip planned at Los Andes to look for some mannikans, I opted to take the afternoon off, relax a bit so I could be fresh the next morning. I was a rough schedule. We had to be ready to go by 4:15 am, take a bus to Lake Atitlan where we would take a ferry to San Pedro for the climb. The hike up to the guan was going to take four hours, who knew how long the hike down would take.

Gulp.

Initially, all went well. We arrived at Lake Atitlan and watched in amazement at how the local used it. As we were loading our ferry, one man drove in his tuk tuk (tiny taxi car) into the water for a wash, another drove in his truck, a couple of people were bathing right on the water’s edge.

We boarded boat, marveled at the beautiful volcanoes that surrounded the lake and laughed as the cool water sprayed us as we hit waves. Outside the boat we looked to pad our species list with lesser scaup, brown pelicans, and ruddy ducks. As we approached the other side of the lake, we watched in amazement as Volcan San Pedro loomed over us. Yes, we would be climbing this extinct volcano. Hugo, our guide tried to alleviate our fears since many of us were not accustomed to this altitude. In his quiet, spanish accent he said, “Yes, we will go slow. It will be slow, slow walking, then looking at birds, slow, slow walking, then looking at birds.”

I felt some comfort in this. Perhaps the four hours was not all climbing but just such a slow pace of birding that it would seem steep, but not be that bad.

When we landed in San Pedro, I saw more tourists here than in any other town. Peddlers were ready for us, a Mayan woman greeted us with a basket full of baked goods. I looked at the steep streets in front of us and wondered if we were going to start right away, but Irene and Ana Christina said that a bus was coming to take us.

As we waited for a bus, we noticed some expatriots in a nearby cafe, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Mike tried to ask were the gentleman in the shorts was from, he replied, “Mexico.” in a rather non-Mexican accent. He the answered, “I’m from nowhere, man.” Gotta love those expats!

I made friends with a great gal on the trip—Jen Sauter. She’s helping to organize the Midwest Birding Symposium this fall and has a wonderful, giggly sense of humor. We noticed a truck stopped and several locals including school kids loaded into it. Jen said, “There’s our bus!” We laughed at the prospect of standing in the bed of a pick up truck to go see a bird…then our vehicle arrived.

And we laughed some more! We were going to stand in the back of a pickup truck afterall, piled with 10 birders.

I love this photo. We’re all so happy, so giddy, so blissfully unaware of the horrors and sweat that await us. That’s me with Mike Bergin of 10,000 Birds, Jen Sauter, Hugo our guide and even a part of Rick Wright. It was all just an exciting adventure then.

We began our drive through the narrow cobblestone streets of San Pedro, up and up we went.

We passed many locals taking the route on foot, many carrying heavy burdens of goods on their backs. What is it like to be acclimatized to this? This poor guys was carrying what appeared to be drippy wet blankets.

We arrived at the reserve for the horned guan. We readjusted our packs with our lunches and our bottles of water and began the trail. The day was sunny, the birds were numerous and we made some stops.

We found a spotted a load with western tanagers (more of those North American breeders).

I was excited to get the rufous-capped warbler. I had actually seen one of these earlier in our journey, but was the only one who had. I was glad others got to see it and this time I even got to digiscope it.

We also got great looks at this ginormous squirrel cuckoo—it was much bigger than the black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos I see. And so beautiful too—reminiscent of a brown thrasher. As we stopped for this birding, I started to think, “This isn’t so bad.” I have short legs and I was not used to the elevation. I did lag behind the group but managed to catch up with enough time to rest along with them before pressing forward. I felt that I could do this.

This didn’t seem too bad…

Part 2 can be found here.