Abstract
The long and winding Hummingbird Highway laces through some of the best bird watching areas of Belize. Due to this, visitors to that country frequently travel the often treacherous highway in hopes of adding to their birdwatching " life list:' The highway, however, has changed a great deal during the decade that I had been visiting the Central American country. Once it seemed to slice through the forest, like taking a wedge out of a tree trunk. You had a first class view of the forest and its inhabitants as they darted across the road. If widening the highway wasn't enough, in recent years, plots of land near the road have been burned and cleared for agricultural purposes. One such area , however, near Belize 's famed Blue Hole Park, remained undisturbed and undoubtedly was being inhabited by a variety of birds. It was the blue-black grosbeak (Cyanocompsa cyanoides) that initially caught my eye as it fed on a flowering plant near the road's shoulder. Having observed a number of such grosbeaks in Mexico, I soon began searching the tree tops for additional inhabitants. Shortly thereafter, I spotted two mourning dove-sized pigeons sitting motionlessly high in a treetop. Through my 400 mm Nikor lens I could hardly identify the species but, upon closer examination with my binoculars, it appeared they were a pair of shortbilled....