We biked out to Grand Belizean Estates for some birding this morning, then rode along the road north, still looking for bird life, until it became impassable just before Mata Chica.  It was a very productive morning of birding.  I got to see my first Lineated Woodpecker -- what a cool bird!  Barry had seen several, as he often sneaks out on early-morning birding walks while I'm still snoozing.  I also caught a fleeting glance of a Lesser Yellow-Headed Vulture, but he was gone from his perch too quickly to get a photo.  Here are some of our other sightings:

In addition to the photos above, we sighted one or more of the following species: Greater Yellowlegs, Blue-Winged Teal, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Killdeer, Turkey Vulture, unknown plovers, Tropical Kingbird, Great Kiskadee, Yellow Warbler, American Redstart, and Tropical Mockingbird.   

This afternoon was a busy one in the kitchen.  I made a Belizean-style Sweet Potato Pone, very similar to a bread pudding, but with yams instead of bread (much healthier!)  The yams had been freebies from Maria on two different trips to her fruit and vegetable stand, so it was high time to use them.  The Pone was quite tasty, and I can definitely see doing this again around Thanksgiving or Christmas, as it had those warming holiday flavors.  It would have been even better with ice cream or whipped cream on top, but it was still good unadorned.  Next time I'll get Barry to grate the sweet potatoes as that was quite a chore to do by hand.  Lucky guy had left on his bike for town to buy a few veggies for salsa so avoided the odious chore.  Looking on the bright side, I got my upper-body workout for the week!

When Barry got home, he made his blender salsa, and I whipped up a batch of Swiss Chard Enchiladas with the organic Chard we got from Sol Farms this week.  So, our dinner was enchiladas, local tortilla chips, fresh salsa, with Sweet Potato Pone for dessert.  Yum!

We've been having some very blustery East to Northeast winds lately, bringing massive quantities of sea grass, seaweed, and with it, plastic trash, up to the beach.  The beach in front of our condo is wedged between two sea walls, so the seaweed collects and can't escape.  Other owners here have told us that the weather conditions in January support this build-up more than in other months.  In the very shallow waters along the coastline, the organic material then starts decomposing and smelling mighty rank -- or, as Paisley thinks, mighty sweet. There's the occasional dead fish or discarded fish head mixed into the muck, adding to the fragrance that makes it irresistible to a dog.  She is drawn to it like a magnet, much to our displeasure.

The maintenance guys here have done their best in raking up what they can get to, and we have picked up several garbage bags of plastic trash ourselves, but it's hard to make a dent in such a large load; and more floats in every day.  Finally, the Grand Caribe staff brought out the heavy artillery to assist in the never-ending clean-up -- the front-end loader.  

A lot of the sea weed is floating in the shallow water rather than washed up on the beach, so when the tractor ventured in to try to retrieve more of the flotsam, a slight problem occurred.

Now it was time to bring out the backhoe to pull the tractor out!

After the rescue, the front-end loader took off, so there is still quite a bit of sea grass and seaweed down at the end of the beach he didn't get to clean up.  We will have to keep Paisley away from that.

On a different subject, here's a photo of a Lineated Woodpecker Barry snapped this morning.  Such a beautiful bird!  

The wind was rip-roaring this morning (25-30 mph with an occasional higher gust) after a heavy rain in the early morning hours that was just letting up as we rolled out of bed.  I didn't really feel like fighting the wind on our bikes along the beach and knew the road would be full of puddles, so suggested we just walk up the road a ways and do some birding instead of riding our bikes north to Grande Belizean Estates, our usual birding spot.  Barry agreed, so we grabbed our binoculars and Birds of Belize book and headed out after a quick snack.

Along the way, we happened to run into a younger couple, Andy and Rhianna, who were also bird-watching.  They were staying at the Cocotal Inn on vacation.  Turns out that Rhianna had lived in Chapel Hill back in the '90s; what a small world.  She is the second woman we've met in a week vacationing here that has lived in Chapel Hill (as we did before moving here) and was originally from Minnesota.  Wild coincidence.

We walked up and down the road a short way and managed to see quite a few birds in the foliage alongside.  Most we had already seen before, but we were able to help Andy and Rhianna identify the various species and show them pictures in our book, so that was more fun than it would have been if we'd been by ourselves.  

An unexpected highlight occurred right as we were almost back to our condo and thought we were finished with our birding for the morning.  Suddenly I saw two birds flying and dipping overhead and then alight in a nearby tree.  I realized they were parrots, or similar, and looked just like the ones we had seen in GBE the week before, ever so briefly, too briefly to get a photo of.  

This time, we were in luck.  One of them spent quite a bit of time on a tree branch eating some sort of fruit, and Barry was able to get some nice shots.  When we got home, we identified them as Olive-Throated Parakeets, another bird for our life lists.  It's a real pleasure to see such exotic birds right in our own "back yard"!

Here are a few of our photos from the walk:

While I was suffering from my cold, Barry ventured out solo on New Year's Day for some biking and birding up in Grand Belizean Estates.  He was lucky enough to beat the big rainstorms that began later in the day, but with it being a holiday, he ran into several locals with their dogs hunting for javelina.  We've biked in GBE many times, but this was a first.  

He stopped to talk to a couple of the hunters to verify that he was safe biking in the area while they were hunting, and one of them proudly showed him their kill.  I was glad I wasn't there since I am such an animal lover, but I do understand that they were doing it to feed their families.  I'm not posting the photo of the javelina in-line since it might be offensive to some readers, but if you'd like to see it, you can click this link to view it in Photobucket.

In addition to that unexpected encounter, Barry saw a nice assortment of birds, including a few new ones for his life list.  The photos below are species he didn't already have pictures of in his files.  I am looking forward to joining him on the next trip up to GBE as it is an excellent place to view a variety of birds and wildlife (we've seen a fox, and he even saw a croc there) and normally very few two-legged mammals.  We're planning on a lot more Belize birding in the new year.

Barry spotted this Osprey at the end of our dock and noticed, using binoculars, that it was guarding the nice-sized fish it had just caught.  The bird wasn't going to risk losing his lunch, so Barry was able to get quite close and zoom in for some nice shots.  

No, not that kind of shots!  Just a few photos from our day. :-)

After a full day, I'm too tired to write much but wanted to share these photos from the day.