While birding the Hopeville/Cattle Landing area on Tuesday morning, 22 November, Lee Jones and
Wilfred Requena heard and glimpsed a pair of Altamira Orioles. This is significant because this species has never been recorded in Belize south of Hopkins, and there only recently. Mutrie mentioned to Jones that Ric and Darla, proprietors of the Coral House Inn at the opposite end of P.G. had reported a pair of Altamira Orioles recently, so Jones went there later in the day and talked with Darla. She said the birds were first reported by a couple of avid birders from California last February and that she and Ric had been seeing them regularly shortly after dawn ever since. These birds, she said were flaming yellow-orange, which is consistent with Altamira Orioles from the Yucatan and northern Belize. The birds that Mutrie and Jones saw, however, were more yellow than orange, a trait consistent with birds of a different subspecies found south of Belize in Guatemala and Honduras. It would be truly amazing if two distinctive subspecies of Altamira Oriole had invaded Punta Gorda almost simultaneously from two different directions.
On Wednesday, 23 November, Mutrie, Jones, and Emmanuel Chan met at the Hopeville/Cattle Landing site at 5:30 a.m. and less than a half hour later were rewarded with excellent looks at one of the Altamira Orioles. The bird called and sang several times. Shortly after, Steven Choco arrived from Big Falls, and he and Mutrie promptly drove to Coral House Inn to check out the reported pair down at that end of town. But when Mutrie called Jones a few minutes after they arrived, the birds he described were not Altamira Orioles. They had spots across their breast and a prominent white patch in the rear portion of the wing instead of the white wingbar of Altamira. What they had were a pair of Spot-breasted Orioles!
Four years ago, in October 2007, Jones had found Belize’s first Spot-breasted Orioles in Cattle Landing, not far from where he and Mutrie found the Altamira Orioles. One of the two original birds had stuck around until at least March 2008 but then disappeared. Now, four years later, Belize has recorded its second pair of Spot-breasted Orioles!
We are hoping that these spectacular orioles will stick around for the P.G. Christmas Bird Count on 30 December, and that many birders will be enticed by the orioles to drive down to see them and participate in this year’s count!
