Category: Uncategorized

28 January 2013. We’ve returned to the steamy Pacific coast to wrap up this very enriching holiday. Getting from the City of Oaxaca to La Crucecita (the non-resort settlement part of Huatulco) was an epic event, 6 hours on a small bus, climbing and circling mountainsides, twisting and lurching as we went. It’s hard to get a good look at birds on a bus trip and I soon gave up trying.
But back here, on the coast where the daytime temperatures are the stuff of all-inclusive gated resorts, there’s plenty to see. I left our hotel room early, just as it was getting light, and headed away from the main streets.
The hillsides adjacent to La Crucecita are forested, dry, scrubby and tangled habitat. A happy place for many birds with plenty of cover and food. From a quiet roadside I stood and watched for a couple of hours as all shapes and sizes of birds came and went. Among the most notable were several White-throated Magpie Jays floating from treetops to streetlamps and back. I can only think they were finding scorched and ready to eat moths that had been drawn to the light. Whatever the reason they seemed to spend a lot of energy exploring for something. Magpie Jays are a compelling and entertaining parody of all that’s best in Blue Jays and Magpies, they command wherever they chose to alight, they fly with a floating lightness and in flight they call to each other with something between a screech and a growl. I managed to get several pictures including one of a tree-full of them.

Orchard Orioles in flocks wandered around in waves. it took me quite a while to realize what I was looking at, they moved so quickly, and a few Bullock’s Orioles joined them just to confuse the issue.
I puzzled over a small brightly coloured bird skulking low through some scrub, I took a couple of photos to help me identify it later and made a detailed mental note of its plumage and mannerisms. After breakfast I was able to conclude that it was a female Orange-breasted Bunting; quite beautiful. I’d seen one a week or so ago near Tehuantepc, but then only fleetingly, so todays was a bonus.

There were many more interesting sightings including a pair or White-fronted Parrots, several chattering Banded Wrens and some Golden-fronted Woodpeckers. But the Birds of the Day was a pair of breathtaking Pale-billed Woodpeckers. Looking much like our familiar Pileated Woodpecker, large and business-like, these two spent just a few moments bashing at a dead tree right in front of me.

We spent the hot afternoon lazing at friends’ hotel, avoiding the searing sun. A couple of Tropical Kingbirds visited us to drink from the pool, while Magnificent Frigatebirds, Brown Pelicans and Black Vultures wheeled overhead. I suppose I could have just spent two weeks lying by a pool and still have a bird list; a dozen or so nice species anyway.

24 January 2013. This morning, really early, we set out to sample the birds of the Sierra Norte, the high mountain range that flanks the eastern side of Oaxaca Valley. My companion was a local birder who had heard of my quest to squeeze little bits of birding into what is otherwise a more fabric-arts focussed holiday.

As we made our way to the summit on a really fine road we could see that there was an unusually strong wind tugging at the pines and oaks. And when we got out of the car at the top it was like a return to November birding in Ontario. I had been cautioned that it could be cold and to dress warmly, but neither of us expected it to be that cold. As a rule I’m philosophical about birding with watering eyes and stiffening fingers, it’s part of the price you pay for good birds and fresh air. But my Oaxacan companion was a little more thin-blooded and very happy to beat a retreat after a delicious cup of hot chocolate, which by the way is almost the national drink (apart from mescal, limonade and cervesa) and nothing like the powdered, packet stuff foisted on us northerners.

So we retraced our steps downhill and as the warming sun peered over the tree tops our knuckles softened up. Soon we were in full birding mode. “There’s a –.” “It just moved down”. and “Beautiful bird! out in the open now at about 9 o’clock.” Birder talk.
One of our first birds was a Ruddy Nightingale Thrush, a Catharus species and therefore a close relative of ‘our’ Wood Thrush and Hermit Thrush.  Like its cousins, it’s rather shy and, as birds go, more soothing than exhilarating. Exhilaration came a little later though when a small oak tree in front of us suddenly filled with Hermit Warblers and Olive Warblers, we could hardly believe it. As my companion said it was like in the movies. One after another, in front, behind, up high, down low, all over the place; and then, flit they were gone. But in the trees around were a flock of Red Crossbills (really) a Greater Peewee and a Plumbeous Vireo; a feast of mostly new birds to me.

Familiar birds, also in retreat from winter’s worst efforts, included: Wilson’s Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Spotted Towhee.

The nominees for Bird of the Day included the Plumbeous Vireo, because I have a soft spot for this frustratingly difficult family, an inadequately seen Black-headed Grosbeak and a glorious Bullock’s Oriole spotted picking at the scarlet flowers of a Coral Tree.

But the best of the day was a slightly different type of flycatcher and to set the stage here’s a few words about flycatchers in general. We lump most of our familiar flycatchers, a whole load of similar insectivorous birds, into the ‘tyrant flycatcher’ category. Perhaps the most confusing of these are about a dozen in the genus Empidonax, which in Ontario includes the Least, Willow and Alder Flycatchers, all pretty much lookalikes. Then there’s the Phoebes, the brilliant Vermilion Flycatcher (see 2 or 3 postings back) and the big, upright genus Myiarchus, which includes our familiar Great-crested Flycatcher. The kingbirds are another group and I’ve enjoyed getting acquainted with both the Tropical and Cassin’s Kingbirds; and the wonderful Great Kiskadee is in this mega-group too.

What all of this has to do with my Bird of the Day is only that I’ve encountered a couple of really breathtaking flycatchers in the past few days: an extremely elegant ‘kingbird’ the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher which has two long streaming forks to its tail; in flight it looks like an errant wind-borne ribbon. And today’s Bird of the Day is actually not part of the tyrant group at all and is more closely related to the Cedar Waxwing, it was a Grey Silky Flycatcher. It looks a bit like a tall and long-tailed Tufted Titmouse, oyster-grey with light peach belly and head and, best of all, its feathers lie seamlessly smooth just like that of a waxwing. I was unable to get a photograph of it but never mind there’s plenty in Google Images.

This was the last day of our guided excursions and we spent it at cultural sites in and around the busy and texturally rich city of Oaxaca. It is the land of the Zapotec people who, like so many meso-American cultures, including the neighbouring Mayans and Aztecs, had developed a society of humbling cultural sophistication and wealth; that is until Hernandez Cortez and his armies spread catastrophe across the land, some at the end of a sword and some unwittingly through disease. We spent the morning exploring Monte Alban, the site of an ancient Zapotec ceremonial centre, then later the workshop of a traditional potter. The afternoon took us to San Augustine, a village with such an abundant supply of spring water as to make it unusually lush and green and which at one time supported a (now bankrupt) cotton weaving industry.
Water also attracts bird life and it was in San Augustine that I was suddenly distracted from the guide’s itinerary by a tree full of warblers: Yellow-rumped, Tennessee, Nashville, Townsend’s and Orange-crowned among them. Then the Hooded Oriole came along for an obliging and breathtaking photo-op, behind it was an unidentified hummingbird and a little later a White-throated Thrush and a probable Slate-coloured Solitaire foraged in the dense foliage of an Indian Linden tree.
As we returned to Oaxaca at the end of the day (with me vowing to go back) our guide asked what we’d liked best and notwithstanding some astonishing historical artifacts and exquisite ceramics, my immediate and almost-without-thinking response was “Hooded Oriole”; my undoubted Bird of the Day.

January 22 2013. This is the dry season in the State of Oxaca, and maybe all of Mexico for all I know. The fields and byways are a dusty ochre and there are few trees in full leaf anywhere; a good thing for those of us on the look-out for birds.

But we had some rain last night and it was still overcast when we set out on a pre-breakfast walk through the farm and scrub lands behind our hotel.  Perhaps it was that refresher, a glimpse of spring to come, that set several birds singing. Curve-billed Thrashers have a rich and complex song every bit as strident as the Brown Thrasher’s though not as regular in its phrasing. An unseen but clearly heard Eastern Meadowlark had me puzzled for quite a while with a high and liquid song similar to, but not quite the same as, the “spring-of-the-year” calls that is its hallmark in Ontario; it was only when I finally spotted it that I made the connection.
The scrubby cactus and mesquite-lined tracks held many White-throated Towhees, Lark Sparrows and the rather rare Boucard’s Wrens. The Towhees were working the grassy margins looking for seed and the Lark Sparrows always flew a hundred yards or so away at our approach. Boucard’s Wrens are only found over a very limited range right here in central Mexico, indeed they are a much sought-after species for those who maintain lists.  Paradoxically, for me they were the common wren of my walks these past couple of days. I think they may even have been nesting because they were often found in pairs and sometimes more, and I spotted one, carrying a beak-full of food, fly to a pile of cactus, mesquite and construction rubble. They seemed to pop up to inspect us as we walked by and they announced our progress with sharp electric buzzes, they were the Bird of the Day despite many other interesting sightings.

Central America may be the centre of the wren universe, my field guide lists 46 species: there’s 9 quite large wrens, including Boucard’s, in the genus Campylorynchus; 16 in the genus Thyrothorus which includes the Carolina Wren and the perhaps eponymously named, Happy Wren; and 7 in the genus Trogolodytes, which is where we find our familiar House and Winter Wrens.

We’re staying at the home of a rug weaver and natural dyer in Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. As we settled in to our accomodation I was more than a little surprised to see that our host had a copy of the Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. No field guide this one, it’s 850 pages of all you need to know about the 1070 species you just might run in to. He has a great story to tell how he came to be the proud owner of this marvellous book, the upshot of which is that he was given it as a gesture of thanks for services rendered to a group of itinerant birders. Discovering this resource got us off to a good start. He readily understood where my interests lay and volunteered to take me to a nearby watercourse and reservoir at cockcrow this morning; I quickly accepted.

So this morning he dropped off a small group of us at a pond edge, explained the lay of the land and then left us to explore on our own and walk the kilometer or so back in time for breakfast. It was a perfect arrangement, his only caution to us was to watch out for rattlesnakes.

I ended up going there twice today, morning and late-afternoon, it was so good. The Bird of the Day was easily the Vermillion Flycatcher; there were dozens of them. If they weren’t so splendid, both males and females, I could almost have become quite dismissive and shrugged them off, but they are really cool birds. The male is an eye-popping scarlet and black number while the female is, if anything, even more beautiful in a subtly delicious way. The photos will explain better than I possibly can.

There were many more memorable sightings. In the morning the small bushes along the creek held many Wilson’s Warblers, Aztec Doves and a Black Phoebe. A Northern Mockingbird caught my attention atop a cactus and moments later a strikingly handsome House Finch perched nearby.

A group of White-throated Towhees was scratching for seeds along the dusty farm track on my evening walk. Later a couple of Loggerhead Shrikes, a small group of Greater Kiskadees and a hovering Laughing Falcon made for a great spontaneous birding trip. I even managed to find a quiet place to sit and watch to see what might pop up but the light started to fail, so I headed back. And, by the way, no rattlesnakes.