Pigeon Pea’s Role in a Cacao Agroforest

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While on a hike, Sipriano Canti noticed a Pigeon Pea tree covered with dried seed pods. He, Jacob Marlin and Heather Barrett collected many of the pods. Soon after, Mark Canti and Lenardo Ash removed seeds from the dried pods and placed them in bags filled with soil. The bags will be placed in the plant nursery where seeds will become sapling trees. Eventually, saplings will be moved to the cacao agroforestry project to provide shade for cacao trees.

About Pigeon Pea

Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), is one of many tree species of shade tree that has been planted at BFREE. This is a legume that can be used as a food crop (dried peas, flour, or green vegetable peas) and a forage or cover crop. Pigeon pea is an important crop for green manure. Green manure is created by leaving uprooted or sown crop parts to wither on a field so that they serve as a mulch and soil amendment. The woody stems of pigeon peas can also be used as firewood, fencing and thatch.

Pigeon pea will provide shade for young cacao trees. As the cacao trees grow and require more space, the Pigeon peas will will be removed and only cacao trees and permanent shade trees will remain. For example, Belizean hardwoods like Barbajalote and Mahogany will continue to provide shade over the long-term.

About Cacao Agroforestry

Agroforestry practices like these can make agriculture permanently sustainable on a site and can play a critical role in biodiversity conservation. By integrating cacao trees with other short and long-lived trees, we lengthen the time that crops can be grown on a given piece of land. At BFREE, we continue to explore cacao-based agroforestry as a method for restoring rainforest habitat.

Want to learn more?

Check out: Integrating Landscapes: Agroforestry for Biodiversity Conservation and Food Sovereignty.

Edited by Florencia Montagnini is Volume 12 of the Advances in Agroforestry Series produced by Springer Publishing.

BFREE Head Ranger, Sipriano Canti, holds Pigeon Pea seeds and a pod in his hands.

Pale-billed Woodpecker Sighting

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Gato Pop taking a photo of the Pale-billed woodpecker at BFREE.

Liberato (Gato) Pop was a BFREE Avian Technician from 2006 – 2013. He began working with us when he was just 16 years old as a member of the Harpy Eagle research team. Gato now works as a Park Ranger for TIDE but continues to do contract work with us from time to time. He regularly helps teach field courses and he also documents our resident and migrant birds.

This month, he began a monitoring project to document which birds utilize the young cacao agroforest. Our intention is for him to continue to collect data in coming years, so that we can understand how the bird population changes over time.

Gato’s visit in February was his first time to BFREE since early 2020. The first bird he noticed was a Pale-billed Woodpecker, which, while a wonderful, resident bird, is not an unusual sight. Still, he was thrilled and immediately searched with his binoculars for a band on the bird’s leg. He located the band and began taking photos to document this finding. This bird, he explained, was the only Pale-billed Woodpecker that he and William Garcia, previous BFREE Bird Project Leader, ever banded. Since the program ended in 2013, he estimates that they placed the band in 2011 – 10 years ago!

Pale-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus guatemalensis)

are the largest woodpeckers in Belize and have a full red head. They commonly eat large larva of wood-boring beetles which they remove from the trunks and limbs of large decaying trees. Much to Jacob Marlin’s dismay, they are also very fond of burrowing into cacao pods. The one Gato spotted was in the forest opposite the cacao searching for food on a dead tree.

While woodpeckers are more long-lived than smaller birds, we are excited to know that this woodpecker has utilized the BFREE Privately Protected Area for so many years. We also thankful to Gato Pop for documenting this sighting!

Banded Pale-billed woodpecker spotted at BFREE by Gato Pop while conducting bird research in February 2021.

BFREE’s Bounty of Birds

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For the past three years, BFREE has had Harpy eagle visitors in late February. So that means we are spending a lot of time looking up! Scouring the tops of trees like Ceiba and Prickly Yellow where we’ve seen them previously perched in hopes that 2021 will be good to us. We’ve recorded 20 separate observations within the BFREE reserve since the first one in September 2016. The most recent was by Sipriano Canti last November.

To us, it is spectacular to witness this enormous and awe-inspiring raptor. We are reminded that having Harpies around means that BFREE and the Maya Mountains remain healthy and intact enough to support this top predator.

And the Harpy isn’t the only bird indicator that the BFREE reserve is an oasis for wildlife. Our Ranger team has diligently recorded Scarlet Macaw sightings on an almost daily basis since August 3, 2020.

We don’t want the rangers to have all of the fun though! So some of the staff have started to document birds using both ebird.org and printed observation sheets. As a 2021 challenge, Nelly Cadle and I began recording a list every day. Doing this helps us to become better birders while also documenting which birds inhabit BFREE. We often ask Tom Pop for help with IDs because he is excellent at identifying birds by song and calls. Lenardo Ash has also become interested in birding and has started recording sightings with us. Finally, we can always count on Sipriano Canti to snap pics and record bird observations around BFREE because he and his ranger team are constantly on the move and have the greatest opportunity to spot amazing birds and other wildlife.

Being at BFREE nurtures our love for this country’s incredible wildlife and inspires us to continue our role as stewards of this rare and spectacular place.

Below are photos BFREE staff took of birds at BFREE in 2020 and 2021.

  • Agami heron
  • Scarlet macaw
  • Red-lored parrot
  • King vulture
  • Rufous-tailed hummingbird
  • Variable seedeater
  • Harpy eagle
  • White-whisked puffbird

Land Snails of Belize Book Receives Five-Star Reviews!

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In 2019, we shared that 17 new land snails were discovered in Belize by husband and wife team, Dan and Judy Dourson, and their colleague, Dr. Ron Caldwell.

Before the team’s research began in 2006, only 24 species of land snails were reported from Belize. Over the next decade, a total of 158 native land snails with 17 species new to science were documented. The Dourson’s spent seven of those years living at BFREE, and the BFREE Field Station became home-base for the snail research team for over a decade.

The long-term research resulted in the development of the first field guide for the region, Land Snails of Belize, A Chronicle of Diversity and Function, and the first comprehensive publication since the early 1900s for Central America. The book is presented as a reference to both the biologist and citizen scientist alike and includes a brief history of research in the region, status of current research, how to collect land snails, shell morphology, anatomy and terminology, and species accounts. The book contains more than 750 color images and diagnostic features highlighted for each of the 158 species.

Five-star reviews for the book, Land Snails of Belize:

Since the release of their book, we have heard from many just how useful this resource has been. But don’t just take our word for it, read some of the reviews below! And be sure to pick up your own copy here: Purchase Land Snails of Belize on Amazon

“I just received my copy of this book and I write to commend you. I am not a malacologist so I can not speak to the technical taxonomic aspects of the work. However, I have written a few natural history books and collected many hundreds more. Based on this, I think that you have produced a masterpiece of natural history- a work that will inspire me and many others to learn about and work on this fascinating group. Thank you. I look forward to seeing some of your other books on this topic.”

– Adrian Forsyth, author of, Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America

“There are many photo guide books for marine shells (and mammals, birds, reptiles, and so on) in Central America, but none for land snails. These guide books are useful for biologists and those of related professions to keep track of all the taxa and to teach students or explain or show something to someone who is not an invertebrate expert. And they are wonderful for nature lovers who want to identify something in their backyard. Land snails in the tropics have an amazing amount of diversity, and we’re just starting to understand their different niches, behaviors, and relationships.

This book is up-to-date with most of the (albeit limited) studies on land snails in Belize. The scientific names are correct (at least for now), the organization of the book is very clear to follow, the descriptions are useful, the photos are fantastic, and the maps with known localities are incredibly useful. This is a valuable book for invertebrate enthusiasts in the tropics. The background at the beginning regarding snail behavior (as well as throughout the book, where relevant), along with associated pictures (wolfsnails attacking prey, various animals interacting with snails like the snake on the cover) are very useful, making this more than just a book on identifications and bringing these snails to life. It also has beautiful drawings and close-up photos of shell patterns and ridging for identification, including different colormorphs of the same species.

In addition to land snails in Belize, there are some useful sections regarding freshwater invertebrates (also, alas, understudied in this region of the world) and slugs. For invertebrate enthusiasts, this is a great guide with beautiful photos and some funny sketches. For anyone who works with these critters in and around Belize, it’s an absolutely excellent resource.”

– Anzu

“If you are interested in the snail of this region you must get this. It’s also well done, informative in general ways, and the ways of snails. A great work, and necessary if you’re a snailologist. (FYI that’s not really a word).”

– B. J. Stephen

Land Snail Citizen Science in Belize:

If you are in Belize, visit our blog, Un-Belizeable Land Snail Activity to learn how you can participate in citizen science. Submit your snail findings by email to contact@bfreebz.org. Download Land Snail Diversity of Belize card here.