Pittsburgh Is for the Birds

Is that a Goura Victoria? Why, yes. It is.

Back on April 7, 2024, a few days before Total Eclipse Day in Western Pennsylvania, I took a trip to the National Aviary on the Northside of Pittsburgh.

The National Aviary is in Pittsburgh. That was not the surprise. The surprise was that the National Aviary not only is in Pittsburgh, but that it has been in Pittsburgh at the precise location since 1952. 

Longer than I've been alive. By the way, above, is an Athene Cunicularia. A burrowing owl. Which is ironic, since it is high up off the ground, in an enclosure, and not burrowed. As the old song goes: "Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick / Everyone knows a burrow owl lives in a hole / In the ground / Why the hell do you think they call it a 'burrow owl.'" Well, not this burrow owl. It lives up on a tree branch,.

Anyway. National Aviary. Pittsburgh. And here comes the first of two homages to Pittsburgh sports teams:

The Pittsburgh Condors! They played in the old ABA and disbanded well before the NBA-ABA merger. They now can be found at the National Aviary on Arch Street.

The male and female are kept in separate enclosures near the front entrance. Close up of the handsome male:

 

And this is the female with her baby condors:

Anyway, as I was saying, the National Aviary opened in 1952. I didn't know about it. We took no school field trips here. I only learned about a few months ago.

 

This could be a Cabot's Tragopan:

Apologies if I misidentified this.  This is the "Condor Court" part of the aviary. You can actually look in from outside the building. I don't recommend it. Pay the admission price. This price of birdfeed ain't birdfeed.

Not sure the bird species of this one. Could be one of the various ibises (ibes?) that live here.

This, of course, is the downside of waiting so long to post after a visit.

This one is definitely one of the vultures:

But which? The black head makes me think: Andean Condor, again. But I am guessing.

Perhaps this is the Amblyramphus holosericeus.

You know it better as the scarlet-headed blackbird. Or, perhaps, you don't.

Let's move out of "Condor Country" and into the Tropical Rainforest section and meet the star attraction:

This is a pigeon. Seriously. That's a pigeon. Goura victoria, or the Victoria-crowned pigeon. It may not look like the neighborhood winged rat, but it's a pigeon nonetheless.

And this is the real macaw:

Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus. The beautiful and always friendly-looking Hyacinth Macaw.

Let's have another look, shall we?

One of the interesting things about this section is that the birds run loose. These Victoria Crowned Pigeons frequently wander out from the confines of the Rain Forest Cafe into the neighboring sections because (a) they can and (b) they want to.

Quick. Somebody catch that Crown Vic.

Here are birds posing:

I believe those are a pair of Marbled Tral posing.

The problem with the Rain Forest section is that the birds are roaming free. If it's a recognizable species, such as the Hyacinth Macaw, I can label it as such. If it is a distinctive species, such as the Crown Victoria Pigeon -- I'm sorry -- Victoria Crowned Pigeon -- you can look it up easily. But this bird:

The bill makes me think "ibis," but the bird is not matching up with any birds listed on the aviary website.

And the identity of this fellow (or gal) (don't want to be misgendering anyone here) shall remain a mystery:

But this one is no mystery.

It's a penguin. Statue. A penguin statue. Which means we are entering the area where we will find the real deal:

The Pittsburgh Penguins!

Actually, these are African penguins. They live in the coastal area of South Africa, so they are used to a more temperate climate than other penguin species.

They actually look a lot like the Magellanic penguins, a.k.a. "Jackass penguins," that I met in Chilean Patagonia. Same size. Similar black and white pattern.

Not as oily of skin, which I am guessing is due to the climate difference between the southern tip of Africa and the southern tip of South America, which is much much closer to the Antarctic than Africa.

This section of the aviary is creatively named Penguin Point.

Moving on to the Wetlands section.

Muchos flamingos.

This one is known to be particularly aggressive at snatching shoe laces:

There were more birds than just flamingos in the wetlands area. Such as a lone pelican.

Pelecanus occidentalis. The brown pelican.

But I have some many photos of flamingos because (a) there were so many flamingos, and (b) they are so gosh-darn photogenic.

 

Not that these two aren't too.

I feel like every bird I cannot identify by species I'm just saying it's "a type of ibis." Maybe that pair are a type of ibis. I don't know. They didn't have name tags. Or species tags, as the case may be.

And this little boy loves fruit:

So let's conclude with another look at the Pittsburgh Penguin:

Life is good.

Traipsing Through Maya History at Tikal

Tikal's Grand Square. Basically, downtown Tikal.

Tikal was the largest and grandest of the Mayan cities of Mesoamerica. At its peak, it may have been home to as many as 200,000 people. It may have been, at its peak, possibly the second largest city in the world. (Beijing was probably always bigger.) And that's where my tourism-travel adventures take me today: Tikal.

Welcome to Tikal.

This is the Ceiba tree. Or maybe merely a Ceiba tree,

Again, Tikal is rather large.  Basically, I walked a city the size of Rochester, New York. Or Akron, Ohio. Or Little Rock, Arkansas. In an afternoon. No wonder my feet are sore.

I'm not going to comment too specifically on any one sight I saw. I don't recognize the various temples by their assigned numbers. And the grandeur of the place isn't any one specific point. It's the entirety of the place.

Tikal existed for a baktun. Yes, I am showing off my knowledge of Mayan lore.

A baktun is a 400-year cycle, a cycle of 20 katun on the Mayan long count calendar.

Tikan lasted for a baktun: A.D. 400 to A.D. 800. It limped on for a little after that, but it's prime (and time of all of the construction you see in these photos) was during that baktun.

Here's a fun fact. (Well, my idea of fun.) The Mayan counting system was based on "base 20," not "base 10" like every Western counting system. And the Mayans of the triple digit years A.D. were one of only two civilizations of the planet whose numbering system included a zero. The Mayans and India. That's it. Not even the super-sophisticated Romans and Greeks had a zero in their counting system. The Mayan did.

What I don't understand about Tikal is why is this not a major tourist attraction?

Everybody, including this guy, wants to go to Machu Picchu, for example.

But Tikal is a 1000 years older.

This is a restored face that decorated the now-restored temple on which you find this face.

Tikal is older than Machu Picchu. It is bigger than Machu Picchu. And it's a considerably shorter flight from the United States.

So why is Machu Picchu on everyone's so-called bucket list, while Tikal totters in anonymity?

I know: marketing. But sights like this should be a piece o' cake to market:

The people in the foreground give you an idea of the scale.

And keep in mind this was built well over a millennium ago, maybe even a millennium and a half.

This pyramid dates from the Calakmul occupation of Tikal.

Calakmul was a Mayan city-state in the southern Yucatan who was Tikal's arch-rival, or arch-nemesis. Think Athens and Sparta. Calakmul would be the Sparta in that analogy, in that it was more war-like.

So says the apologist for Tikal. Still, you would not go wrong analogizing the Mayan world of Mesoamerica to the Greek system of city-states, while the Aztecs of Mexico (who came along much later) could be analogized to the Roman Empire (which also came along after the decline of Greece), with its centralized control, and imposition of a single language.

What you see is a mix of original and "restored."

Much has been degraded in the intervening 1500 years. But, then again, think of how much "original" construction is still standing in Athens or Rome.

Monkey see:

And I did actually see a toucan. In the wild. It is visible at the top part of the photo below, near the center:

Wildlife sighting here were plentiful.

And the last new construction here (not counting restoration currently taking place) probably dates from the late 700's.

And I don't know why I am using the word "probably." The Mayans dated everything, right down to the specific day, using their sophisticated "long count" calendar. So if something says it was dated December 8, 791, that is an accurate date.

One quick word about the Mayan long count calendar supposedly predicting that the world would end on December 22, 2012. No. The Mayans never ever said that.

December 22, 2012, was the end of a calendar cycle. Key word: cycle. Unlike us Westerners who see time as linear, moving ever forward into the future, the Mayans saw time as circular. Like the movement of the earth through the solar system, for example.

Family selfie on one pyramid-temple:

So many of the pyramid-temples are so degraded that, to this day, they appear to be an odd-shaped mound of dirt.

Trust me, there's a small pyramid under there.

More pictures of people taking pictures:

And more me:

And here's a pregnant coati:

Her big belly does not mean she's from Milwaukee and has been living on a diet of beer and extra sharp cheddar. It means she's on the nest.

At this point, I climbed a pyramid. I told the guide I would climb one (and only one). He chose Temple IV.

And there was a different coati greeting us at the top.

Technically, it was not the top-top of the pyramid.

But to ascend any higher, you would have had to be a priest, a king, or a sacrifice victim. I certainly wasn't either of the two former and I had zero interest in being the latter.

So I just enjoyed the view looking east toward the sunrise.

But it was sunset, which was happening on the other side of the pyramid (where you could not walk to). But watching sunsets is of zero interest to me. You can't look at the sun where you are watching a sunset. So why watch something you can't look at?

But you can look at stelae. And I did.

This is a carving that was made into a huge slab of stone.

It was getting late at this point.

Luckily I had the special wristband allowing me to be in the park after closing time. I really did.

More stela and sacrifice altars.

Covered to protect them from the elements. And there are a lot of elements in the rain forest.

Luckily this was the (very brief) dry season in the rain forest.

This is my guide, Marlon Diaz, who I hired off viator.com, showing me the details on the carving.

One more pyramid before we go:

This is, I believe, the north zone of Tikal, the final area we visited today.

And that concludes Tikal. Ever visit some overhyped place that failed to live up to the hype? That place is not Tikal. Tikal is seriously, severely, under-hyped. And it would be amazing even if it were hyped. Which it isn't. It was definitely worth the trip into the Guatemalan rain forest to see.

And concluding Tikal Day was a supper at the hotel restaurant because my feet were way too tired to go any farther than I had to.

I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich. This being Guatemala, what did I find on my ham and cheese? Avocado! I am very certain that the elite and the commoners of Tikal ate plenty of avocado. This is Guatemala after all.