Wintertime is a good time to travel to Belize as this is the coolest time, it is also outside of the rainy and the hurricane season there. I first heard about Belize through a BBC program. There was a lot of talk at the time about the 'Program for Belize' People were fund razing to buy a large area of rain forest to be protected. One could buy an acre for £25, so I sent of a cheque. I read-up about the country and for years I toyed with the idea of visiting. In 2001 I finally arrived for the first, of what turned out to be four visits. By the forth visit is was becoming almost routine. A lot of facts and figures here would be somewhat meaningless, and in such a short piece there is not at all enough room to go into details, so I will give you a general idea of the country and the recordings I made.
     At Belize city airport there is only one runway, it is also short, so having touched down the pilot has to turn the aircraft around 180 degrees and go back some distance to turn in to the terminal. The feeling of heat and humidity makes one feel really far from home. I would describe Belize as 'second world' even though most people have little money, they still manage to look clean and well dressed.
    On my first visit I recorded 5 hours of material, on the second trip not quite as much, till the forth trip when I think I got three hours or less. It is the case that you get less material each visit. This first visit provided enough recordings to make the album 'Garden of Songs.' The second journey to a different part of Belize got me enough recordings to make 'Forest Home' I think this name came to me in a dream. On my third visit there was a lot of noise in the area I was staying so I couldn't record as much, however I combined the recordings with those made on my forth visit to make 'Out Of The Blue.' There is at least three times the amount of species than in Ireland. A point to remember is that the density of birds is not necessarily greater in a country like Belize, just that there is more species but the numbers within each species is smaller. On the whole the birds are more colourful than at home. I saw flocks of parakeets and other species I had only seen on the famous Attenborough series. Often I would see and hear species that were new to me. When I first thought about visiting the rain forest I imagined bringing the big open reel to reel recorder and a heavy 16mm film camera, but it worked out much better than that. I had digital equipment that was small light and gave far superior results.