Birding around Flores, Peten

Peten Itza Lake
Photo by Maynor Ovando

Flores is the capital of the northernmost department of Guatemala, Peten. If you travel to visit any Maya city like Tikal or Yaxhá, you can’t miss this small and beautiful town. Flores is an island, bordered by Petén Itzá Lake and there’s a lot of options to take a tour on the lake or have a ride in a car to visit neighbor towns.
Last Wednesday I decided to go birding around Flores Island, so I tried to have the two sides of the coin birding in water and land.

I started in a boat at 6:00 am to look for wading birds for 3 hours, this is my bird list:
Pied-billed Greebe
Neotropic Cormorant
Northern Jacana
Purple Gallinule
Limpkin
Green Heron
Little Blue Heron
Ringed Kingfisher
Snail Kite
Mangrove Swallow
Great-tailed Grackle
Laughing Gull
Amazon Kingfisher
Great Egret
Bat Falcon
Social Flycatcher
Rock Dove
Common Moorhen
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Olive-throated Parakeet
Yellow-throated Euphonia
Blue-gray Tanager

Juvenile Little Blue Heron and Northern Jacana



Mangrove Swallow


At 9:00 am I got back to have breakfast and then took a car to El Remate, a town midway to Tikal National Park.

El Remate
Photo by Maynor Ovando

This is the bird list I got on the road:
Roadside Hawk
Vermillion Flycatcher (in front of International Airport Mundo Maya)
Fork-tailed Flycatcher
Gray-breasted Martin
Tropical Kingbird
Gray Hawk
Groove-billed Ani
White-collared Seedeater
Ruddy Ground-dove
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Black-headed Trogon
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
Plumbeous Kite
Bronzed Cowbird
Yellow Warbler

Ruddy Ground-dove

Tropical Kingbird

By noon I went back to Flores again. Just great birding!


Posted by Maynor Ovando

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