Our place in Belize

Today (Oct 3) has begun as a dreary, wet, and cool day. The rain may ease up a little later, but will remain cool with highs not even reaching 50F. Thus far the morning has been spent sleeping in (a rare treat for us), puttering around the house, and working a bit more on photos from Belize.

Our cabana overlooks the Caribbean Ocean. As I explained in a post about the earthquake that hit the area earlier this year (http://southenglishtown.blogspot.com/2009/06/earthquake.html), our cabana is built on 12 foot high concrete pilings. Below is view of the cabana from the end of the dock. The water is quite shallow here, barely 4 ft deep at the end of the dock.

A closer look shows the 30x10ft screened-in veranda that runs full length of side of the cabana facing the ocean. We spend most of our "indoor" time on the veranda. We have our dining table on the veranda and hang our hammocks there too. Just under the stairs that lead to the veranda is a big black vat that collects graywater from the kitcehn that we use to water the plants in the dry season.

Below is a view from the top of the stairs to the veranda looking toward ocean. The big tree on the right is a seagrape tree. It has great tasting purple fruit in bunches like grapes. The fruits each have a large central seed pit covered with a fairly thin layer of juicy flesh. Birds and other animals (including people) eat the fruit.
Below is the same view at sunrise. Sunrise is different every day and each is beautiful in its own way.

Some days are clear enough to see large cargo ships way out at the horizon. You can barely make one out at the center of the picture below.

And some days you can see the Maya Mountains to the northwest. The photo below was taken from the back veranda. Beyond the roof and bamboo pole for the TV aerial at our caretakers' cottage, you can see the distant mountains.

We are situated on a narrow strip of solid ground between the ocean to the east and a marsh that edges Black Creek to the west. The narrow strip of solid ground grades from sand at the beach to sandy soil at the jungle adjacent to the marsh. The picture below was also taken from the back veranda, this time looking south/southwest. About 4 years ago we cleared out the dead and damaged trees and understorey plants that were leftover from hurricane Iris and had room to plant bananas and other food plants. We kept all the healthy jungle trees like gumbo limbo, craboo, acacia, and others I still don't know the names of. This site had been cleared decades ago when the original Englishtown was there. We also found some domestic plants from that time including a huge mango (just behind the bananas in the photo below) and a cashew tree.I started out this post today with the intention of showing some of the very few birds I photographed on this trip, but it evolved into something else. The only birding I did was on our little patch of jungle and beach. We haven't built any bird blinds or hides or observation platforms yet, unless you count our tiny back veranda that is about 12 feet off the ground. Still, I got a few shots of some lovely birds, usually from a great distance. I'll finish up with the beautiful black-headed trogon that live in the area. I love its blue eye-ring and bright yellow underparts. Although they were around most of everyday, they were usually flitting around in the dense canopy. The pictures below are from the only time they were situated so that I could get a clear shot of them. It is a fairly common bird at the edges of jungles and woodlands in Belize.

I'll do more birds and other wildlife in a later post. I think this one is long enough already!