VERACRUZ 2010: From the Coast to the Mountains

We arrived at sunrise and started right away seeing many new local residents such as Altamira Oriole, Band-backed Wren, Social and Boat-billed Flycatchers and the other look-alike, Great Kiskadee. We continued on along the undulating and winding road, enjoying a pleasant walk, with great views of Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (above), many Orchard and Baltimore Orioles, Yellow-winged Tanagers, and a nice migrant warbler here and there. It was good to see that the local birds seemed to have fared well after Hurricane Karl.

The hurricane had damaged many of the trees, creating a number of broken treetops, which were good for perching raptors. These included Roadside Hawk and and Gray Hawk including this spectacular adult (above).

We continued on to one of our hummingbird spots along the road. Here several flowers attracted a wonderful mix of butterflies, and where a favorite hummingbird flower, known locally as “Manzanita” (little apple, for its fruit), drew in several Buff-bellied Hummingbirds. With a little patience we waited for a Mexican Sheartail (above), a Mexican endemic with a small isolated population in central Veracruz, to appear. It was not long before a beautiful male showed. Although back-lit, we had a lovely look at this bird as it perched nearby for quite a while.

We then continued to the beach, where unfortunately there was quite a bit of damage caused by the recent storms (above).

By late morning we had traveled back to Cardel and were on the hotel rooftop watching hawks (above). The flight was very good, a stellar day for most years, but hard to compare to yesterday’s mingle boggling numbers – 473,944, numbers posted on www.hawkcount.org Pronatura Veracruz’s 9th highest daily total in the last 10 years! After lunch we packed and moved on to Chichicaxtle for some afternoon hawk watching before heading into the mountains to Xalapa.

Following a short drive of about 40 minutes, but a climb of about 4,000 feet, we arrived in Xalapa with a couple of hours of light remaining. We visited the “new” 300-acre city park, “Parque Natura,” on the eastern edge of town, which was rescued from new development!

The birding was very good, and we immediately saw new birds, different from what we had been seeing in the coastal plain for the last few days: Wedge-tailed Sabrewing, Golden-crowned and Rufous-capped Warblers, Rusty Sparrow, and Yellow-throated Euphonias. On our lovely walk we reached a more forested section and added Spot-breasted Wren, a shy and hard-to-see tropical wren, and later on we first heard and then saw the Mexican endemic Bronze-winged Woodpecker (above), ending another very full day.