The duPlooys Jungle Lodge is located farther south than Chan Chich and is just a few miles from the Guatemala border. The Belize Botanic Garden is attached and is a nice place for birds and flowers. We stayed longer than originally planned, so there are a great many pictures. Also nearby are the Xunantunich Maya ruins, which we didn't visit.

Click on any thumbnail to see a larger picture, then use "back" to return to this page. All photos © George Oetzel, 2006.

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The big attraction at duPlooys is the feeder by the lodge deck. They put out fruit for the birds and coffee for people at 6:30 each morning. It's a great chance to get closeup pictures of birds that otherwise would be very difficult. These are Aracaris, of the Toucan family.
Here's an Aracari in action.
In many respects, the Clay-colored Robin acts like an American Robin. It makes the same scolding calls, but has different songs.
In other places, I remember working hard for a moderately good look at the Red-throated Ant Tanager. This is the male.
Here's the female Ant Tanager.
Chachalacas are large birds that gather in noisy flocks. They sometimes woke us up in the mornings.
A garden break. One of several varieties of Heliconia. Many of the plants are not labeled.
A pair of Cowled Orioles in the garden.
On a guided walk through the garden, we found this tiny Ferruginous Pygmy Owl.
This Ivory-billed Woodcreeper landed on a tree right next to George. It's a pretty busy bird. This was a lucky catch.
One of the featured plants in the Belize Botanic Garden was the African Tulip tree.
Unidentified large tropical flower.
Back in the vicinity of the feeder, this is a Blue-crowned Motmot. Note the unusual "racket tail."
The Brown Jay is much larger than its northern cousins, but it still sounds unmistakably like a Jay.
The Boat-billed Flycatcher looks much like the Social Flycatcher (see Birds Eye View), but the bill is much larger.
The Masked Tityra is another type of flycatcher. It just doesn't have the word in its name.
Most, perhaps all, tanagers love fruit. This is a Yellow-winged Tanager.
We were interested in these flowers that always occur in purple and white pairs on the bush.
The garden includes a small lagoon (better, a pond) that had a pair of Least Grebes every time we went by.
There were several Blue-winged Teals resident in the pond as well.
A trail leads from the lodge down to the Macal River and gradually ascends to the Garden. By the river, I found this Black Vulture.
This Red-billed Pigeon was gathering nesting twigs near the lodge office.
The Keel-billed Toucan has a loud and distinctive call. We heard them often, but didn't get to see one at close range until our last afternoon.

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