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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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Woke up to find that Santa had not been able to track us down to Honduras. Alas! Or maybe we hadn't been good this year...!
We decided to go to the Macaw Mountain Park today, just to have a lazy time and relax on Christmas Day. So even though we have seen many bright and colourful birds on our travels so far, we wanted to be able to get "up close and personal" with birds from this region.
So off we headed up the hill on the 2.5kms towards the sanctuary. We got some strange looks from the locals, who clearly don't see the gringos walking this route very often. What started off as a gentle walk ended up being quite a demanding uphill trek, all in all it took about half an hour, so it's just as well our fitness levels have improved over the last 4 weeks.En route we crossed a small river where women were washing their clothes in the shallows.
Reaching the Park, we paid our 10 US$ each to enter and this price also includes a free 45 minute guided tour, with a very knowledgeable guide. Ours was call Alex and he informed us that he has 28 uncles, so it was an expensive Christmas for him.
The birds in the park have been rescued or donated by owners who no longer want them as pets. Although there is a breeding programme at the Park, they never release any of those born in captivity into the wild, as they are unable to hunt for food and defend for themselves.
It was a real joy to be able to see the birds up close and really appreciate their vibrant colours and fantastic personalities, which previously we could only appreciate from afar.
The green Amazonian parrots were really cheeky, only speaking when they wanted to, and they could do a wolf whistle and continually shrieked "Hola". Dave is not sure if he caught this on camera or not, as they would not talk to order, and usually waited until the camera was turned off before starting to talk again.
The park had an interactive area where you could interact with the birds who were not caged. When perched on your shoulder they would tug at your hat or nibble at your watch or worse still, your glasses. It was a prime opportunity to get some great up-close pictures, if you could get them to stay still for long enough.
After the guided tour, you are free to walk around at your leisure for as long as you want, and the ticket price entitles you to come back every day for 3 days, should you so desire.
Our guided tour finished, we retraced our route to take some photos fot he birds. It was while we were enjoying some time at the Interactive area that our guide came running up and asked us to go with him, and to make sure we had the telephoto lens on the camers - apparently there was a sighting of a very rare bird! Dave had a little parrot on his shoulder, and when he tried to offload it onto the nearest branch the parrot did not want to leave. Alex suggested we just bring the parrot with us as "he won't fall off".
We chased after Alex, long lens poised for action.
The rare bird was in fact a Mountain Trogon, which had not been seen at this low level previously, as its normal habitat is at higher altitude in the mountains. It is part of the Quetzal group of birds, although it does not have the very long tail of the Quetzal. However it is an especially colourful bird, with its luminous green back and vibrant red underside. It created a bit of a fuss in the park, and since we were the only visitors to get some reasonably sharp photos of it, the owner of the park requested copies of them to use on his website.
It later transpired that the owner had asked Alex the guide to search us out as we were the only ones with a long telephoto lens. We believe that they wanted visual proof of the sighting of this rare bird.
previous travel blog entry
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