Birding around Mante
Well, our transportation turned out to be a little different than I was expecting. Our contact Saul (”pronounced just like the name in the bible — Sa-ool”) had an obligation this morning, so he dropped Mel and I off at Nacimiento, which is the birth place of the river that runs through Mante. The birding was slow, and we ended up spending too much time walking through agricultural areas in a vain attempt to reach habitat that hadn’t been cleared to the ground for cattle. Highlights of the morning included Northern Jacana, Amazon Kingfisher, Melodius Blackbirds, Blue-gray Tanagers, Scrub Euphonia, Roadside Hawk, and a host of other birds familiar to US birders. Seeing as the birding was slow, I turned my attention on photographing butterflies, and got some wonderful shots. (I’ll have to get back to the US before I can share them). One that was just spectacular is called Blue-eyed Sailor, and is a rare stray to south Texas. I managed to find pictures of the upperside and underside on the net, though my pictures are better. Males are golden green above, and their pattern below is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Saul (remember, Sa-ool, not Sawl), picked us up late in the morning and took us to his restaurant for lunch. Given an open invitation to the menu, I tried the Rib-eye. Though a tad tough, it tasted good. I learned that Saul is well connected with the tourist board and one of the people working to bring people down to Mexico for the “post-festival” trip. After lunch, we met with several officials who are helping with the festival trip coming up. We met with a nurse who’ll be available should anyone need help, and with a lady who’ll come with us to speak on the history of the places we’ll be going.
After lunch, we headed back out and Saul drove us to places in the vicinity of Mante. The reason for doing this is to decide if, on the festival trip, we’re going to fit in a brief stop somewhere near Mante on our day driving back to the US. Highlights of the afternoon included Pale-billed Woodpecker, Yellow-throated Euphonia, Green Parakeet, Ruddy Ground-Dove, Gray Hawk, and Groove-billed Ani. If you’re reading this list and thinking things sound slow, you’re right — they were. However, we had two memorable encounters late in the day. The first was a pair of Bat Falcons that had an insatiable appetite for dragonflies. The falcons would take turns, coming off a radio tower like bullets, returning in under a minute with another dragonfly. They’d rip the heads off, eat the bodies, and let the wings slowly flutter to the ground. We must have watched for 30 minutes.
The highlight of the day came on our way back, when we encountered four Aplamado Falcons that put on quite a show. They were chasing each other, calling, diving, and spinning in mid-air. It was something else. Aplomado’s are big, like Peregrine Falcons, but have much longer tails. These guys were just too graceful. Driving back for dinner, we saw another Aplomado, bringing the total for the evening to five!
Though the birding was slow, we still managed 73 species today. It’s just that most of them can be found in the US. Tomorrow, we head for Gomez Farias and the higher elevations of Alta Cima. This should be excellent birding, with a good diversity of Mexican species that do not reach the US. Seeing as we’re waking up at 5am, I should sign off and go take my first shower in three days.
Adios y via con Dios.
Thanks for posting. Good report. We’re looking forward to your pictures. Hope tomorrow goes well.
So is Saul going to drive you wherever you need to go for the rest of your scouting trip?
Three days with out a shower, no wonder there were no birds!
Jay, the reason I have two posts above is that I posted from my iPAQ and after the first post, a security page came up asking me to enter a security code which I did. Only it would not accept it. I thought my post probably had not gone through, so I re-posted the message as you can see. Don’t know what the deal was since both posts were on my iPAQ.
Great reply Amy!!! Wish I’d thought of it. Hope he showers a little more when he’s leading the tour groups.
OK, I’m reading your posts, too. Only I don’t have a pithy reply, this time.
I sent you an email to toxostoma. Is that the one you’ll check there or should I use [edited]
Saul may very well drive us everywhere we want to go. He’s one of the people that’s worked to set things up down here in Mexico, and has a business interest in the trip. (We’ll be using his restaurant for many of our meals). The trip will also be bringing a lot of money to other businesses, like the hotel. So I get the feeling that Saul is half interested in keeping an eye on us just to feel good that everything’s planned.
As far as your experience trying to post from a PDA, I have a very good comment spam filter running, and one of the things it tries to do is create a javascript key that it passes back to itself. Spam bots often can’t support javascript, and apparently your PDA doesn’t either. This spam filter also rewards people who post often, so you may experience less problems as it begans to “trust” you.
Amy, I got your email and have responded.
I think I figured it out. The first time I tried, I was posting from my RSS reader on the iPAQ. The next time {when it worked} I posted from NetFront. Thanks for your explanation. I know what to do now.
Keep up the good work. Glad you had a good day birding. Looking forward to seeing your pics.