Belize Birds part 2

Here's another batch of bird photos from Belize. At St. George's Caye the outdoor dining area was on the second floor and overlooked the top of a tree. At breakfast there would often be small birds in the tree so I started taking my camera and making sure I sat facing out. But the birds didn't sit still and tended to stay hidden in the tree. Until one morning when they cooperated and I finally got some photos. There were several warblers: yellow-throated, black-throated blue, and yellow.

Another yellow bird, a bit larger, was this female Hooded Oriole.

I noticed a woodpecker on one of the palm trees but it was too far away to get good photos. But amazingly, it also came and perched in the top of the tree near us. It turned out to be a Golden Fronted Woodpecker.

I saw this Cinnamon Hummingbird a few times before managing to photograph it. Once it came to visit the flowers beside our cabana and I managed a lucky shot. Another time I saw it perch on a tree beside the path.

Back at Turneffe I saw the American Redstart several more times.

This Tricolored Heron was surprisingly tolerant of me photographing it.

A few attempts at birds in flight - a Brown Pelican and a Royal Tern.

Easier to photograph when sitting still.

On St George's Caye we saw a Little Blue Heron

and also a sub-species of Great Blue Heron - Würdemann's

as well as regular Great Blue Herons

And, of course, cormorants and gulls

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Belize Diving - The Rest

Last but not least, some of the miscellaneous other creatures we saw. This is a long post - we saw a lot of "other" creatures.

Technically eels should have been in the fish post, but they don't seem much like fish. Usually we just saw their heads sticking out of the coral. On one dive a green eel was out exploring and we got a good look at it. We saw green and spotted Moray eels.

Lobsters are such bizarre looking creatures.

There were lots of large sponges and it was always tempting to look inside them. Usually they were empty but occasional there would be some critter. Shelley found this lobster inside one.

And I found these Banded Coral Shrimp in another.

Pederson's cleaner shrimp are relatively common but are small and mostly transparent making them easy to miss and hard to photograph. As in this photo, they are often found with corkscrew anemones.

I got one shot of this Mantis shrimp before it disappeared behind the coral. It was the first I've seen in the wild. Of course, I had no idea what it was at the time.

We saw some huge crabs.

Underwater, I had no idea what this was. Looking at the photos I think it's a Shortfinger Neck Crab.

There were a huge variety of sponges in all kind of shapes and colors. Some of them were big enough to hold a person.

Other places we enjoy finding nudibranches. Here we only saw Lettuce Sea Slugs. I don't know how our dive guide found them. They blended in so well. I tried to spot one myself but never managed.

My best find was a Bearded Fireworm (much less camouflaged)

The other worms we saw don't look much like worms (Christmas Tree worms and Feather worms).

Flamingo Tongue Snails feed on soft coral. The shells are plain white, it is flaps of its mantle that supply the colorful pattern.

The coral here, like most places has suffered from global warming. A lot of the hard coral was dead or bleached. Apparently they had a large bleaching event here last year. All we could do was appreciate what was left.

There aren't a lot of anemones here but there were a few interesting ones.

Shelley also took lots of photos underwater using the new housing for her iPhone.

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