Birds of Belize

I got to see two brown pelicans while I was there, but they were both flying by pretty fast.

^Double-crested cormorants.

There weren't many gulls, but these huge frigate birds were always drifting above the shore. I never saw one standing on land or sitting on the water, and in my guidebook it says "...it swoops (unlike other birds, it doesn't dive or swim) to pluck food from the water's surface--or more commonly, it steals catch from the mouths of other birds."

^Some kind of woodpecker, I assume. This one had a nest in a palm tree just a few yards from my cabana. When it came to drop off food I could hear the babies hissing.

I saw tricolor herons wading at sunset, sort of far south where there aren't many people.

I think these are some variety of sandpiper, possibly turnstone.

I also saw osprey, bats, and hummingbirds. On the morning I was leaving I ran into a guy with binoculars looking for hummingbirds, and he said that in the U.S. we only have a few varieties of hummingbird, but in Belize they have around 50.

Jungle, plants & trees

It was pretty weird to see bananas growing by the side of the road. I've seen that in Hawaii, but nowhere else.

These are seagrapes. Some of the locals make wine out of them. There's also a street named after them--in fact the resort where I stayed was located at "1 Seagrape Drive."

I didn't go very far into the jungle because there were so many mosquitoes, but I poked around a bit.

Hotels, resorts & apartments

There were quite a few buildings on the island that had just been built. Sometimes I found huge, fancy-looking hotels basically next door to decrepit old huts. The one pictured above was next to a construction site dump.

Lily's and the Conch Shell are two places I thought about staying, but I'm glad I didn't because they were right in town and it would have been loud and busy.

Ramon's Village looked really cool. It's made up of giant, thatched-roof huts tucked away in a jungle setting.

Beach creatures

^Janny fidla! (Creole for fiddler crab)

These are all creatures and plants that I saw on the beach or in the shallow waters.

^This beat-up conch shell was serving as a hermit crab hotel.

Here's a live conch I found one day at low tide.

Look at its funny eyes!

One spot in the shallows always had a million hermit crabs.

^This is the only jellyfish I saw the whole time I was there.

Sea anemone tentacles have a neat feel to them, sort of like hops vines or a very smooth cat's tongue.

^Needlefish swim right at the surface of the water and are very well camouflaged. I darkened this picture and increased the contrast a bit--in real life they're light silver and even harder to see.

^I saw a crab like this one but a little smaller feasting on the tentacles of a Portuguese Man o'War that had washed up. Doesn't seem like a pleasant meal but I guess their mouths are immune to the sting.

^Detail on the underside of a large starfish.

Tons of seagrasses and other plants grow in the water because it's so calm. There are breakers a few hundred yards off the shore, so the waves that roll in are as tiny as those you'd find on a lake.

Sandcrabs are incredibly fast, but I managed to corner this one away from its hole and got it to sit on my hand for a few seconds.

There weren't many large hermit crabs, and the ones I did find were very shy and cautious (maybe that's why they've lived to get so big). The hermits I found on land were mostly orange (or red and purple for the larger ones), and those in the ocean were blue and brown with red and cream bands on the ends of their legs.