The job of leading a birding tour is 20% birds, 80% people. No matter how good the birding, if you don’t take care of people’s needs and provide them with good service, they’ll hate the trip. It’s why leading a birding tour isn’t just some blow off job where we get paid to look at birds. Rather we get paid to show birds to people.

I’ve put up pictures from the week. On my scouting trip to Mexico I took over 600 pictures. This week I took 21. That’s the difference when you’re leading a tour.

I found many humbling things to reflect on as I traveled back to the places I scouted a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps most humbling was the realization that for some of the older participants, this was perhaps their last (and for many first) opportunity to visit a place far from home like Mexico. As a guide, it’s too easy to get a little frustrated with how difficult it can be to get people on the bird you’re seeing. Old age, combined with little birding experience, make it much harder for some to see the birds. It’s humbling though to realize that things I take for granted, whether they’re birds I’ve seen many times or places I’ve been before, can bring such joy to participants. That’s the joy of leading trips I think. You experience that happiness for the first time again through a participant’s eyes. Even my body’s abilities, such as my hearing, eyesight, and endurance are a gift I too often take for granted. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’m alive and I’m back home. I’m going to make a couple of posts to catch up on what I did the last couple of weeks.

First of all, pictures from my week in south Texas are up.

Red and yellow kill a fellow…

The birding festival went very well, albeit with one major scare. A friend of mine, who was a guide, made the dumb mistake of picking up a coral snake while out on a field trip. Now this friend has regularly handled snakes for a long time. In addition to being a birder, he’s somewhat of an amateur herpetologist. But my philosphy has always been that a snake can only bite you if it gets the chance to. So while anyone might get unlucky by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I figure that when I see a poisonous snake, admiring it from a distance helps keep the odds of not getting bit in my favor. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have time to write about the events of today. They were good. I’ll post when I can.

I’ve been working on pictures all evening, and have posted my pics from my scouting trip to Mexico. This is the last time I’m going to try to put up so many pictures while I’m out trying to enjoy my trip.

Enjoy.

I’ve been working on my pictures from Mexico this evening. They’re about half done, but it’s going to be another day before I can process all of them, so in the meantime, here’s an update with a couple of funny stories.

Today I went on a trip upriver. The driving time there and back was long and the birding very slow. Perhaps our best bird of the day was a Clay-colored Robin at San Ignacio. That made most of the participants very happy. That was good, since we missed White-collared Seedeater everywhere we tried for it and couldn’t even get sparrows at Starr County Park. As Michael Retter, a friend and fellow leader said, “That warm wind is the kiss of death.”

I also am baffled at just how good chiggers are at what they do. I’ve been liberally using DEET - on my feet, lower legs, and around my waist. The little buggers just kept on crawling and bit me on the butt today.

There were several other memorable moments of the day, dealing with people instead of birds.

We had a teenage kid from France that was probably 6 foot 8. He was accompanying his grandmother to the festival. He spoke excellent English (albeit with a slight French accent), and was very enthusiatic about birding, seeing something like 23 new birds today.

“Are you from England?”

When we rolled into Starr County Park for lunch, we noticed a sign that said “Park Fees - $2.00.” We figured this was only if you were camping overnight, but seeing as we had a very full bus and didn’t have $115 for an entry fee if they demanded it, Richard Gibbons and I hopped off the bus to go talk to them and make sure everything was okay.

Richard was chosen just because he’s a genius and good at everything he does. I was chosen partly for my Texas accent and deep understanding of the culture (something foreign and often baffling to the other guides from the northeast and west coasts). At least that was the plan. I don’t know where the couple watching over the park were from. They had an RV, and were friendly enough. After getting the OK to unload the bus, Richard went back before people got restless, and I staid to talk with them because, well, they were still talking to us when Richard left.

“Are you from England?,” the lady asked me. I paused for a very long moment, looked at her and said, “No maam, and nobody’s ever asked me that before.” She then remarked to her husband, “He sounds like a cockney. Now it took me a fair amount of googling to figure out what a cockney is, but I was still pretty sure even when I heard her say it that I didn’t qualify, and I assured her I had lived my whole life in Texas. All the other guides and I laughed about it the rest of the day. Michael and I figured out that my response to her question should have been, “Yes, I’m from England, but the panhandle. They sound different there.”

“I ruptured an artery on Monday”

You think I’m crazy about birding? We had a couple that was following us today in their own car, instead of taking the bus. I’ve never seen this in my three previous years of guiding here. It’s just not done that way. At the end of the day, I asked why they were in their own car. Her reply shocked me.

“I ruptured an artery on Monday - at Laguna Atascoa. Tripped over a curb and fell. My leg was squirting blood everywhere, and my husband drove 90 to the hospital and got me to there in 10 minutes. The sutures are still leaking,” as she showed me her white canvas shoe with blood soaking into the side of it, “and the car’s in case we have to make another quick trip to the hospital.”

With as straight a face as possible, I responded, “Well, the important thing is that you’re back in the field. Glad to see it didn’t slow you down any.”

She and her husband were very friendly. She kept up all day and never complained. But I do believe if that happens to me anytime in the next two weeks, I’ll be in the hotel ordering room service.

Here’s a short post… I’m back in the US. It was a long day that had a few humerous moments. I wish to tell them at some point, but I’m leading a trip tomorrow “up river”, towards Falcon Dam. I’ll be waking up at 4am, leaving at 4:15 to catch the 5:00 bus, and returning around 4pm. All this means that I may blog slightly less, and it may take me an extra day to get up pictures. I promise I will though. (I have a nice high speed internet connection in my hotel room, and I’m using my laptop once again).

I’ve seen so many people that I haven’t seen in a year. It’s already been wonderful to catch up and hear what everyone’s up to. I look forward to many good conversations in the days ahead.

A little something the uninformed may find humerous.

If you’re traveling in Mexico, it’s getting late and you need a place to spend the night, do you know the difference between a hotel and a motel?

Hotels are places where you spend the night. We’re very familiar with the concept in the US. Motels on the other hand tend to be brightly colored, often with high concrete walls, and are rented by the hour. (I’ll let you, my intelligent reader, figure that one out). Many of them even feature a garage, or a curtain, so that when you get out of your car, you have total privacy. I don’t know if they’re used primarily for extramarital affairs, or just a little gettaway for husbands and wives wanting a little privacy. I’d guess it’s a little of both.

One of the nicest places I’ve ever spent the night in Mexico was a motel in Veracruz, coming back up from Oaxaca after a long trip. The price was 30 bucks for the night, and we shared it amoung 6 guys. (That’s 5 bucks a piece for those intimidated by mathematics). One entire wall was covered with a mirror, the bathroom featured a heart-shaped bathtub, and there was a picture straight from 1982 of a guy massaging a super-model’s shoulders on the wall. Why was it so nice? Well the main thing is that it had hot water. Hotel Mante, where I’m staying now, has warm water, at best. (It’s not bad, just not hot). [Update: I just took a shower in the morning, and the water's actually hot. It's been luke warm in the evenings.] The other thing that made it nice was a king size bed, which three of us shared comfortably.

The people that rented us the room either thought we were seriously deviant, or completely clueless. In actually, we were gringos who just didn’t care what they thought, and wanted a nice place to stay after three weeks in the field. And trust me, after three weeks in a tent, this motel was the nicest place I’d ever seen.

I just thought it worth posting about because we don’t quite have an equivalent in the US.

Llera is the name for a large area of lowlands below Gomez Farias. Like most of the lowlands along the eastern slope of Mexico, it was long ago cleared for sugar cane production and cattle ranching. Good habitat remains in places though, particularly along the two rivers that run through Llera: the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Frio.

Saul couldn’t take us this morning, so he lent his car to a friend named Daniel, who would accompany us today. As we were headed up the road to Gomez Farias (the region below Gomez is part of Llera), Saul’s car began to make a peculiar clicking noise. Now I had noticed some interesting things about Saul’s car these last few days that we’ve been with him. The odometer reads 282,745. Permanently. I would really like to know how long ago it stopped working. No doubt it’s been some time. Now this number is in kilometers (just like the speedometer that doesn’t work), and with a quick calculation that should be about 180,957 miles. Apparently his car decided this morning that it didn’t enjoy running without water circulating through the engine, and that’s what that clicking noise was all about. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors can be fun. Mel and I were looking over MexBirds, the birding email list for Mexico, and today there was a post reporting a sighting of Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis). This magnificent woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, was (is?) the largest woodpecker in the world at 24 inches, even larger than the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (also long thought to be extinct and rediscovered this spring in Arkansas).

Perhaps the best source to learn more about the Imperial Woodpecker is an article by the late James Tanner, an ornithologist most known for his studies on Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, published in The Auk, 81: 74-81. January, 1964 (pdf format).

Also, while searching around on the net, I found this article about Imperial Woodpeckers in the wake of the Ivory-billed’s rediscovery. One of the most depressing but informative things about this article is a map showing the distrubution of old growth pine forests (Imperial’s habitat) in Mexico in 1880, and one showing what’s left of this habitat in 1995. Also depressing is the amount of hope if this species does still exist. Martjan Lammertink, a scientist involved in the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed who’s looked for Imperial states: Read the rest of this entry »

After breakfast at the Cafe “San Francisco”, which has excellent coffee and biscuits, we headed over to Ocampo. We birded briefly in town, but headed up towards the highlands (over 4000 feet elevation), where we wanted to bird before it got late.

I made a new friend today named Guzman. He lives in Ocampo, and has been interested in birds for about a year now. I think he’d like to become a bird guide one day. Guzman had a great sense of humor and accompanied us throughout the day.

On our way up, we saw a campaign slogan that read “Vota para Pedro”. If you’re under 30 and have seen the movie Napolean Dynamite, you’ll appreciate the humor I found in this message.

Also on the way up, we ended up behind a pickup truck which had a bumper sticker that I found shocking. It had an american flag on the left, a confederate flag on the right, and words in the middle which took me a while to make out.

Yankee’s - 1
Rebels - 0
Halftime

I wasn’t shocked so much by the bumper sticker (unfortunately, I’m all too accustomed to this type of stupidity having grown up in Texas), but rather by the fact that the person driving the truck in all likelihood has no understanding what the sticker means. Mexico has a thriving after-market for cars once they’ve reached the end of their life in the US, and no doubt the sticker came with the truck when it was bought by it’s new owner.

We hit the jackpot for birding on a road down to the small town of Gallito (at least Saul and Guzman tell me that’s the name of the town) off Highway 66 between the cities of Ocampo and Tula. This road was notable for two reasons. First, we got great looks at species which can be very hard to see (Blue Mockingbird, Mountain Trogon, Crimson-collared Grosbeak, and many more). Second, the birding stayed good throughout the morning. This was an exciting change from the other mornings of feast or famine.

Mel and I observed a fascinating interaction between a Wedge-tailed Sabrewing (5 inch hummingbird) and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (woodpecker) that defied belief. The hummingbird would swoop at the woodpecker, to chase it off, and then land on the side of a tree like the woodpecker! It spread its tail, and drooped its wings, and sat on the side of a sizeable tree branch like it was a woodpecker. The sapsucker would then swoop at the sabrewing, to chase it off. This behavior continued for several minutes before the sapsucker left the area.

After getting tired and hungry, we headed up to Tula to get lunch. This town is over 400 years old, and looked different than typical Mexican cities. The streets were much narrower, and the whole city was placed atop steep hills, such that walking around was a tiring experience, either going up or down. I continue to eat like a king, and if it’s possible to gain weight while hiking 5 to 10 miles a day, I’ll probably do it.

After lunch, we birded areas lower in elevation down Highway 66, finally reaching Ocampo. Though we found some birds hear and there, it was very slow once again. Since we plan on spending a good deal of time in the lowlands of Llera (we’re scouting there tomorrow), we may come back to the Hotel a bit early on the day we bird this area on the post-festival trip.

Here’s the day’s list for those interested. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we birded around El Naranjo, including areas accessible from Highway 80 (notably the road to El Maguey de Oriente, the small town of Plantanillo, and the higher (and dryer) regions around Agua Zarca), and along the river coming from El Salto Falls.

The elevation at the spots along Highway 80 is higher than Gomez Farias. The montane forests in these locations are filled with Oak. By the time you reach the region of Agua Zarca, the forest becomes quite dry. I really enjoyed Agua Zarca. I found it to be a nice change of habitat. Whereas birding in dense forests can become tiring because of the difficulty in locating and tracking birds, Agua Zarca’s open spaces and grasslands provided easy viewing to a very birdy area. The habitat (and accordingly the species) are less “tropical” than one might imagine for Mexico, but there are still some good target birds to look for, such as Spotted Wren, which we saw well today.

The birding overall in Mexico has been harder than usual. There are many good species to be found, and I’m confident that the upcoming festival trip will be a success. At times though, the birding has been slow. It may very well be the time of year. It also may be affecting higher elevations more than lower. For example, the road to El Maguey de Oriente saw intense bird activity this morning from about 7:30 to 9:30. After that though, it was very quiet. Whatever it is, our strategy will be to bird areas as long as they’re productive, and move to new locations if things slow down.

The proof that there are still nice birds to be found is in today’s list. I’ve included it for those interested. Read the rest of this entry »