Guatemala: Shade-grown Birding 2023 with Maine Audubon
March 7-16, 2023
with Jesse Fagan & Doug Hitchcox
Click here to see the PDF itinerary for this tour.
Important Note: We look forward to birding with you! To see the most recent update of our pre-tour and on-tour protocols and our requirements for travel, please visit our tour protocols page.
Guatemala is a wonderful birding destination with many avian specialties, beautiful scenery, a colorful culture (including the proud Mayan, perhaps the richest indigenous culture remaining in the New World), and some of the best coffee in the world. We combine all of these to give you a truly unforgettable experience.
For a part of the tour, we’ll be based at a shade-grown coffee plantation with native forest on the property. Where else can you wake up to a warm breakfast at a friendly family-run finca, drink your morning cup of locally grown coffee, walk up shaded mountain trails, and then sit at benches specially set up for birders to watch for the rare Azure-rumped Tanager? The habitats we will visit are varied, from the cool pine-oak forests near Antigua and Tecpan (think Pink-headed Warbler) to humid tropical lowland forests in the Petén (the Caribbean slope).
We will also have a few cultural outings such as an afternoon guided walk around Antigua, a boat trip across Lake Atitlan, and our own private guide for the ruins of Tikal.
Indeed, the tour will start in the Petén with a visit to the Classic Mayan site of Tikal and Las Guacamayas which will add a large number of birds (not possible on the Pacific Highlands side), including the opportunity to see Orange-breasted Falcon, as well as several Yucatan endemics that include Ocellated Turkey, Yucatan Poorwill, Yucatan Flycatcher, and the striking Gray-throated Chat. Tikal is easily one of the best birding sites in all of Central America, but it will also amaze you for the immensity of the surrounding forest and the grandeur of the temples and complexes.
Your guides for this tour will be Field Guides’s Jesse Fagan with your Maine Audubon host-guide Doug Hitchcox.
Read more in our itinerary linked below…