Crooked Tree

Crooked Tree is a wildlife sanctuary built around a set of connected lagoons on the Belize River system, reached along a causeway to a village that sits on what is effectively an island. It is the country's premier birding site: over three hundred species recorded, with the jabiru, the tallest flying bird in Central and South America, nesting here, along with snail kites, agami herons, boat-billed herons and enormous numbers of waterfowl. As the dry season advances the water drops and the birds concentrate, which is when the boat trips are extraordinary. The village is one of the oldest inland settlements in Belize and grows cashews, celebrated with a festival each May.

History

The Chau Hiix site at the south-west corner of Western Lagoon, with a pyramid almost 75 feet tall, shows Maya settlement thousands of years ago and came to wider notice in 1990. The village was founded around 1750, one of the earliest inland European settlements in Belize, by settlers and the Africans they had enslaved who came up the Belize River for logwood, and its name is said to come either from a twisted bullet wood tree or from three slave-owning families of the 1700s known as the crooked three (Wikipedia, Crooked Tree, Belize).

The landscape

• Jabiru storks - nesting here, the tallest flying birds in Central and South America.
• The dry-season concentration - birds packed onto shrinking water.
• The boat trips - through the lagoons and creeks with local guides.
• The Cashew Festival - in the village each May.

When to go

February to May is the peak, when the lagoons shrink and the birds concentrate; by the end of the dry season the spectacle is at its best. The wet season disperses them and the causeway can flood. Boat trips leave at dawn.

Things to know

Outside the late dry season the birds are scattered and a visit can be quiet. The causeway floods in the wet season and access is sometimes by boat only. Accommodation in the village is basic and limited. Boat trips are early and the sun on open water is fierce.

Nearby

Altun Ha is an hour southeast; Orange Walk is an hour north.