One of my favourite things about long-haul travel is that feeling when you get off the plane, and not even the urban birds are familiar. Gone are the usual sights of crows and magpies, and present is something all together different. I love the otherness, the sense that you have journeyed far enough that the most ordinary things have changed.
In Guatemala, our new every day bird was the great-tailed grackle- a relative of the blackbird with piercing eyes and, as these pictures hopefully show, an extensive catalogue of power poses. The ones shown here are females, which don’t have the glossy black feathers of the males but whose sass more than made up for it.
In Antigua, we found that the best place to watch them were the quiet gardens in the artisanal market. Surrounded by the colourful huipiles, they could usually be found having a cool drink from the fountains or soaking a bit of tortilla they’d nicked to try to soften it up. Stopping by to watch them for a bit became our favourite mid-morning break, before we set off again to carry on stuffing our faces with amazing chocolate and coffee.
Speaking of other things; I’m sure you’ve noticed that not all these pictures are of grackles. I didn’t get enough wildlife pictures to justify dedicating a whole post to the wonders of the Pacaya Volcano and Lake Atitlan (both places that we managed to visit on our short trip), but I couldn’t wrap up the series of posts from Guatemala without showing you how stunningly beautiful and dramatic these places were. If you ever get the opportunity to go, grab it with both hands. Until we run out of the mezcal we picked up on our way back through the airport in Mexico City, then, I’ll be raising a glass to this country and to all the jaw-dropping places within it. Guatemala, we’ll be back.
