Belizean Heat

In February, my wife and I visited Belize for 10 days . We managed to see a fair bit of the diverse and beautiful country with a few days in Caye Caulker, some time in the jungle, a night in Hopkins, a stay on a mangrove island, and a stop in Placencia before heading home. It’s a fairly small country, but it has a wealth of wildlife with a number of ecological reserves on land and sea. Naturally I brought my H4N portable recorder and Rode NTG3 shotgun microphone, but this time I brought along a JRF Hydrophone and a pair of Roland CS10EM binaural earbuds.

I was really happy with the cricket recordings I captured, both in the jungle and on the mangrove island. I also really enjoyed the chatty grackles, and managed a fun recording of a huge flock in a tree. Unfortunately it was interrupted by a nearby dance studio, but I feel like it just added a demented funny vibe to the recording (along with the woman saying “aren’t you afraid they’ll poop on your head?”).  I tried to get a few recordings of howler monkeys but it was difficult to isolate them as I only saw them during group tours. While trying to record the monkeys I accidentally wandered onto an ant hill and started getting bitten. It’s really hard to stand still and stay silent when you’re being eaten!

Here’s another sound collage from the recordings I gathered during this trip. I’ve noted what they are in the comments.

You can read about the first part of our trip on our blog here:

https://scottania.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/island-time-caye-caulker-belize/