My recent trip to Belize brought a number of exciting wild sightings. Species marked with an asterisk (*) are ones which the only captive sighting is at the Belize Zoo, while species marked with a question mark (?) are ones that I'm not sure if this was my first wild sighting of (mainly birds with wide ranges). I might be missing one or two, but I think this list is mostly complete.
Mammals
- White-Nosed Coati
- Kinkajou
- Jaguarundi*
- Central American Spider Monkey
- Yucatan Black Howler Monkey*
Birds
- Ornate Hawk Eagle*
- Black Vulture?
- Osprey?
- Lesser Scaup?
- Jabiru Stork*
- Aplomado Falcon
- Great Curassow*
- Blue-Gray Tanager
- Western Cattle Egret
- Boat-Billed Heron
- Snowy Egret
- Yellow-Crowned Night Heron
- Black-Crowned Night Heron
- Roseate Spoonbill
- Keel-Billed Toucan
- Yellow-Headed Parrot
- White-Fronted Parrot*
- Red-Lored Parrot*
- Mottled Owl*
- Anhinga
Herps
- Cane Toad (all captive sightings were before I started keeping track of amphibians)
- Morelet's Crocodile
- Green Iguana
- Brown Anole
- Meso-American Slider*
I also saw in the wild some close relatives of species I've seen in zoos, such as the Central American agouti (instead of the red-rumped agouti) or the russet-naped wood rail (instead of the giant wood rail), which were cool to see nonetheless. Perhaps the only disappointing no-show on the trip was that I didn't see any wild peccaries, along with a few species that I had an extremely low chance of seeing in the wild to begin with.
