Some 38km south of Orange Walk a branch road heads west to Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, a reserve that takes in a vast area of wetlands, covering four separate lagoons. Designated Belize's first Ramsar site (to protect wetlands of international importance) the sanctuary provides an ideal resting place for thousands of migrating and resident birds, such as snail kites, tiger herons, snowy egrets, ospreys and black-collared hawks. The reserve's most famous visitor is the jabiru stork, the largest flying bird in the New World, with a wingspan of 2.5m. Belize has the biggest nesting population of jabiru storks at any one site: they arrive in November, the young hatch in April or May, and they leave just before the rainy season gets under way. The best months for bird-watchers to visit are from late February to June, when the lagoons shrink to a string of pools, forcing wildlife to congregate for food and water.

In the middle of the reserve, straggling around the shores of a lagoon, 5km from the main road, is the village of CROOKED TREE - effectively an island in the lagoons but linked to the mainland by a causeway. At the end of the causeway is the Sanctuary Visitor Centre, where you pay the US$4 entrance fee. One of the oldest inland villages in the country, Crooked Tree's existence is based on fishing and farming - some of the mango and cashew trees here are reckoned to be more than a hundred years old - though the main attraction for visitors is simply strolling through the sandy, tree-lined lanes, and along the lakeshore, where you'll see plenty of birds.

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Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary
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