Areas Birded: Between Veracruz City and Lake Catemaco and around Mexico City.
Dates: Various dates between December 17th and December 31st, 2004.
INTRODUCTION
My wife and I took our third birding trip in Mexico. This time we visited Veracruz in December of 2004. We did our birding primarily in the Lake Catemaco area in the Tuxtla Mountains. Some birding was also done in Veracruz City and between the latter and Lake Catemaco and also in the Mexico City area. We arrived in Mexico City on December 17th and returned to our home, in Boxford, Massachusetts, on January 2nd, 2005.
As usual, I only list the birds that I am quite certain I identified correctly. Many others were seen but were not identified.
Preparing for the trip: We flew to Houston and then to Mexico City via Continental. They still have food service on the plane but didn’t have a diaper change table in their bathroom for our two year old. We booked via the web with Alamo rent a car in Veracruz for four days. See more below about why I’m hesitant to use them again, even though the two times we dealt with them in Oaxaca we had a very good experience.
For background reading, once again we made use of the wonderful ‘A Bird-Finding Guide to Mexico’ by Steve Howell. For north american birds we used the big and superb book of D. Sibley while, for mexican birds, we used the bigger and equally superb book ‘A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America’ by Steve Howell and Sophie Webb. We spent a good deal of time with the latter, making up a list of possible birds.
In Mexico City we stayed at my in-laws home and borrowed their car while in Veracruz City we stayed with relatives a couple of nights and at the Holiday Inn a couple of nights. The Holiday Inn was fine and reasonably priced. In Lake Catemaco we stayed at Playa Azul (294-943-0001 or 229-984-0378). They had a problem with their phone the first night and had only one tv channel, but the room was fine. As the weekend grew closer, the noise got louder but never too bad.
The weather in Veracruz was reasonable although it rained hard one afternoon and was overcast a good part of the time.
MEXICO CITY
We were in Mexico City from December 17 to December 20 and from December 27 to January 2.
My wife’s family lives in Colonia Unidad Modelo, which is
quite well within the city limits. They
have a small garden. There is an strip
of land along the road in front of their house that held a good number of trees
and bushes and tall grass. It now has
some of the trees and short grass so it is a little less birdy. In addition to keeping an occassional eye on
the garden, I also spent a couple hours walking around the neigborhood looking
for birds. Seen in the garden: house finch, wilson’s warbler, yellow-rumped
warbler, bewick’s wren. Seen around the
neighborhood: house finch, house
sparrow, song sparrow, canyon towhee, rufous-backed thrush, yellow-rumped warbler,
nashville warbler, bewick’s wren, broad-billed hummingbird, white-eared
hummingbird, inca dove, rock dove, abeillei oriole. Also heard an unidentified thrush singing
from a yard, possibly caged.
On December 29th I went to Bosque del Tlalpan, from 10:45 to 3:45, seeing 37 species, almost
all of them in the first three hours.
This was my third trip and my previous two trips were very
satisfying. I made sure to go on a
weekday and was intent on taking a look at the part of the park which is to the
left of the entrance and reached by going uphill on the left side of the park
and then hanging a left. The area is referred
to as Tenantongo and although Howell recommends it I had not visited it before,
having visited the part of the park reached by going straight up from the
entrance, or to the right. I spent a
total of 5 hours at the park, the first three spent in the Tenantongo
part. In fact, I went to the end of the
road in the Tenantongo part, took a rock path that went a little to the left
and then took a trail through the grass which wrapped around a hill and made
essentially a complete circle. On the
back part, behind the hill, the hill is to your right and to your left, not far
from the trail, are walls of houses.
Here I saw, while at this point on the trail, relaxing and sitting on a
rock: nashville warbler, black-throated gray
warbler, black and white warbler, wilson’s warbler, townsend’s warbler, olive warbler,
orange-crowned warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, rufous-capped warbler, slate-throated
redstart, blue-grey gnatcatcher, scrub jay, black-headed grosbeak, blue
mockingbird, gray silky, ruby-crowned kinglet, audubon oriole (clearly seen and
a little out of it’s range, which is a good ways east and west of here). The warblers, ten species of which I was able
to identify, came in two waves and slowly worked their way through the treesand
bushes. This was the largest quantity of
warblers I have seen to date. The blue
mockingbird was my first of two lifers this visit to the park and I really
caught my breath when I heard and saw him in a large vertical bush not far from
me. He stuck around while I observed him
for several minutes and I saw him again later.
Making my way slowly over to the right hand side of the park I saw: western kingbird, buff-breasted flycatcher, rufous-crowned
sparrow, lincoln’s sparrow, berryline hummingbird, american robin, bush tit, cedar
waxwing, bewick’s wren, white-eared hummingbird, abeillei oriole, western
tanager, dusky, flycatcher, willow flycatcher, inca dove, house finch. The dusky flycatcher was calling which
allowed me to identify this lifer. On
the right hand side of the park I saw rufous-capped brushfinch and curve-billed
thrasher. I had seen these two species
on my earlier visits and was happy to see them again. I took a trail which runs level, on the right
side of the park, along some power lines and in the direction of some large
apartment buildings. On my previous two trips I had seen ‘waves’ of warblers on
the right hand side, but this time didn’t see any. On exiting the park I saw a yellow-bellied
sapsucker and house sparrows.
On December 31st we headed out to Paseo de Cortes, a road which brings
you up the middle of the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl volcanoes, with the
pavement stopping at the summit of the saddle between these two snow-laden
mountains. Howell describes this area as
Site 8.3 and it sounded appetizing.
While he advises against going on weekends and although the 31st
was a Friday, it was the last day of the year.
However, traffic was quite sparse.
We used Howell’s directions for the most part. In Amecameca you go straight through the
center of the town, around the glorietta or bandstand. As you continue on it is, as Howell says,
about 2km to a large road which goes to the left. However, it was not signed paseo de cortes,
but rather Tlamacas. It took us about 1
½ hours to get from my in-laws home in Mexico City to this branch. You then take the road to the left and keep
going, staying to the left when there is a fork in the road after a little
ways. You pass through a little city and
keep going to where the forest starts: til this point it is pretty much corn
fields. As the forest started we
encountered a gate with a couple soldiers.
I overhead them speaking with the car in front of me about ‘palomas’ and
the car made a u-turn and left. When
asked what we were doing I stated we were looking for some birds that were in
the mountains, and not found down below, holding up my binoculars and Howell
and Webb book. He asked if we wanted to
go to ‘palomas’, apparently a site gotten to by taking a dirt road to the right
after the barrier. I said no and he
lifted up the gate and let us through!
On the road below the gate, through the corn area, we had seen
great-tailed grackle, western bluebird, house sparrow and loggerhead shrike. The bluebirds were on top of a cone-shaped
arrangement of corn. The shrike was
actually closer to Chalco than Amecameca and was on a utility wire. We slowly worked our way up the hill. The birds we saw were, for the most part, on
the sides of the roads and there was one good sized wave that we saw. We saw:
yellow-rumped warbler, hairy woodpecker, ruby-crowned kinglet, orange-crowned
warbler, red warbler, red-tailed hawk, yellow-eyed junco, rufous-capped
brushfinch, gray silky, robin, rufous sided towhee, buff breasted flycatcher, blue-throated
hummingbird, russett nightingale thrush, ruddy-capped nightingale thrush. We were surprised at how many nightingale
thrushes we saw and were able to distinguish the two due to some being out in
the sunlight. The brushfinchs were also
a treat as I’ve usually only seen them skulking from within some brush. I imagine the red warblers will always cause
my heart to jump: like a ruby in an
emerald and quite cooperative. I wonder
if these little guys paid any attention to Cortes as he made his way in to
Mexico City to do battle with the Aztecs?
VERACRUZ
We travelled to the city of Veracruz on the 20th
of December: my wife, daughter, mother in-law and myself. When travelling with a non-birder I don’t
really keep an eye out for birds and pull over when somethings looks interesting:
only if it looks really interesting. Given
this, we didn’t take in too many birds en route. The trip was something like five hours on the
toll highway, with the tolls coming out to about forty dollars. We saw:
turkey vulture, black vulture, cattle egret, kestrel and
great-tailed grackle.
Around the city streets in Veracruz City we saw: yellow warbler, orange-crowned warbler,
mockingbird, social flycatcher, clay-colored robin. The clay-colored robin was seen at the
restaurant El Rincon de Oaxaca (The Corner of Oaxaca). There was one in a cage and one outside the
cage apparently visiting the former.
Needless to say, we got excellent looks and also heard the bird singing
a good deal.
While staying in Veracruz City we also went to the beach a
couple of times where we saw: laughing
gull, willet, royal tern and sanderling.
The laughing gulls were by far the most numerous.
Las Barrancas
On December 21 we headed south out of Veracruz City en route
to Las Barrancas, leaving our two year old daughter with our mother in law and
relatives in Veracruz City. The weather
was mild. We took the highway near the
beach in town and when we got out of town we saw where route 180 started. We thought it started in the center of town
but it appears to start on the southern part of town. Like Howell says, the dirt road at Las
Barrancas that one is advised to bird along heads towards the see and is a left
turn off of route 180 between kilometer posts 19 and 20. But nowhere did we saw, while on the dir
road, any signs of a previous railroad bed.
What was really something is that there seems to be no other public road
around that you can turn off onto.
I hope they don’t close this
road. On the way to las barrancas, along
route 180, we saw: frigatebird, kestrel,
say’s phoebe, cliff swallow, fork-tailed flycatcher, white-collared swift,
belted kingfisher, brown pelican. When
we got to las barrancas we spent a couple hours on the road, driving slowly and
stopping when birds were seen. We peered
into the marshes that were on the north side of the road. The aplomado falcon was sitting on a pole
about thirty yards from the road. After
going a while on the road we made a u-turn and I was looking on the south side
of the road to where a couch’s kingbird had flown and spotted, somewhat behind
a bush from my angle, two double-striped thick-knees, one keeping an eye out
and the other resting. The falcon and
these guys were a reall highlight. We
saw 15 species: green heron, kiskadee, little blue heron, killdeer, couch’s
kingbird, groove-billed anni, savannah sparrow, caracara, jacana, aplomado
falcon, great blue heron, great egret, double-striped thick-knee, wilson’s
warbler, tree swallow.
Lake Catemaco and
Sontecomapan
After our stop at Las Barrancase we were feeling pretty good and headed back on the road to Lake Catemaco; specifically, Playa Azul Hotel. We stopped at a restaurant at the beginning of the twon of Lerdo de Tejadas on the main highway which had good food. On the trip to Lake Catemaco we saw: roadside hawk, laughing falcon, brown pelican, rock dove, white-facted ibis, yellow-fronted woodpecker, tri-colored heron, magnificent frigatebird. There are some places near Alvarado where you can drive a very short dirt road over the little hill separating the highway from the ocean. The laughing falcon was a lifer and was just perched nicely on a leafless tree a ways off the highway.
We arrived at the hotel with about an hour to go before the
light was too poor to bird anymore. The
hotel was adequate, with a full restaurant.
We stayed for three nights and did a little birding around the grounds,
where we saw: yellow-throated euphonia,
royal tern, golden-crowned warbler, tri-colored heron, great egret, hooded
warbler, melodious blackbird, belted kingfisher, spotted sandpiper, plain
chachalaca. The pair euphonias we saw
just as they were going to bed it appeared.
During the course of our stay we also took a look at the lake from the
shore other than at the hotel and saw:
least grebe, lesser scaup, roadside hawk. There were about a dozen least grebes and
fifty or more of the scaup, with the grebes and scaup viewed from the downtown
catemaco shoreline.
Our first morning at Catemaco we got up at 5:30 and at 6:30
headed to La Jungla, which is quite
close, about 15-20 minutes, using the directions in Howell (3 ½ hours, 34
species). We looked at the Arroyo Agrio
bottling plant before stopping at La Jungla, but there was a gate and we didn’t
feel too comfortable going over it. It
was still not good lighting when we got to La Jungla. We parked outside and walked the road all the
way to the shoreline. We birded the
shoreline area, which was productive, for a while and then made our way back. At the entrance to La Jungla it says it is 40
pesos for nature viewing. At the
shoreline there is a nice grass area with trees in which you can camp at. It’s really quite nice. And while there are trees there, some have
been removed so there is good lighting for birding. While birding in the camping/shoreline area
we were approached and asked to pay the 40 pesos each, and were given two proof
of payment slips. We have birded in
jungle before, but on a hillside where there are often spots that light can get
through due to the angle. But on the road
at La Jungla it was dark most of the time and the one big wave of birds we saw
was tough to get good looks at. We saw:
brown jay, hooded warbler, wilson’s warbler, northern waterthrush, wood thrush,
white-bellied wood wren, red-throated ant tanager, rose-breasted grosbeak, golden-crowned
woodpecker, montezuma’s oropendula, redstart, kiskadee, social flycatcher,
coot, baltimore oriole, catbird, yellow-breasted chat, lesser greenlet, yellow
warbler, jacana, ringed kingfisher, least grebe, great blue heron, great egret,
snowy egret, common moorhen, osprey, plain chachalaca, collared aracari,
neotropical cormorant, cedar waxwing, black-throated green warbler,
yellow-throated warbler, grey-crowned yellowthroat. The hooded warblers were easily seen and
quite curious. Wood thrush was seen a
few times. The oropendulas were quite active and noisy and the aracaris were
seen just as we were leaving, near the paved road. The grey-crowned yellowthroat was seen in
deep grass to the right of the water slide as you’re looking at the lake.
After La Jungla we drove a ways around the lake, to Tebanca, where Bastonal is. We were in a Volkswagon Jetta and weren’t sure if we could give a shot to going up the mountain. But when we got to Tebanca it was clear we didn’t have a chance at trying. About half way to Tebanca is Coyame, a village which has a bottled water, and flavored soda, plant. You can buy their products in stores around the area. We turned around, drove back by La Jungla and wound up where, in the morning, there is a fork to go to La Jungla or to Sontecomapan. We now turned onto the branch to Sontecomapan. We took a look at the only candidate road to Ejido Vista Hermosa, mentioned in Howell, and it didn’t look doable in our Jetta. We drove into Sontecomapan and were greeted by some children in the street asking if we wanted to go on lanchas, or boats, in the lagoon. I stated we wanted to go with Ismael, who is mentioned in Howell, and one of the children’s father was Ismael. We met Ismael and indicated we wanted to see sungrebe. He said to come back early in the morning when the tide will be low and they will be easier to see. We planned on being back at the dock between 6:30 and 7am and ate lunch at the restaurant next to the dock.
After lunch we decided to go to La Barra de Sontecomapan. This
is where the lagoon meets the sea. To
get there we proceeded as in Howell. We
took the main street which turns to dirt just after the town. You then keep going on a quite rough dirt
road, crossing two little bridges over little rivers and then you cross a
larger bridge over a larger river, after which you will take a right hand turn
right after the bridge and proceed to the ocean. The third bridge is made of metal and has
grooves in it while the first two are concrete.
None of them are very large. We
took our time after making the right turn and birded this stretch of road on
the way to the beach and back and also birded some on the beach, while also
enjoying a shrimp cocktail there. As is
the case often in Mexico, you may get the feeling the beach is private, but you
can park at the end of the road, making sure not too black anybody, and just
walk alongside the restaurants to the beach.
On the way out the day was winding down, but there was really no sign of
darkness, and at one point on the road we saw three raptors perched in three
different trees, with good simultaneous views from the road. We saw 25 species, some of them very much
enjoyed: sanderling, black-necked stilt,
aplomado falcon, caracara, laughing falcon, frigatebird, pale-billed
woodpecker, golden-fronted woodpecker, yellow-throated warbler, gray-crowned
yellowthroat, indigo bunting, yellow-rumped warbler, laughing gulls,
great-tailed grackle, black vultures, brown jay, snowy egret, great blue heron,
cattle egret, little blue heron, hook-billed kite, white-tailed kite, altamira
oriole, band-backed wren, bare-throated tiger heron. Be sure to scan the marshes on the side of
the road between the third bridge and the barra; this is where we saw the tiger
heron. The black-necked stilts were seen
in a farm pond by a house. We then made
our way to Hotel Playa Azul.
On December 23, 2004, we got up at about 5:15am and made it to Laguna Sontecomapan at about 6:40, after leaving the hotel at 6 and not driving very fast. The boat dock is, again, in the center of this small town and the road is paved all the way until the end of the town. Ismael got us out on the lagoon at 7:00 and we went up one of the rivers, came back to the lagoon and checked out a birdy sandbar, and then took another river. On the second river, we were stopped after some ways by a downed tree that Ismael knew about and relaxed near it for about 20 minutes. During this period is when the two toucans flew in and perched with excellent views! The whole trip was 3 hours and Ismael asked and got 500 pesos. Ismael is the only boatsman there that knows the birds and when/if he retires it will be a considerable loss. We got a sungrebe on the first river: what a beautiful/cute water bird! We also got one on the second river. Ismael was helpful in not only knowing where/how to find the sungrebes but in having a keen, unaided, eye for birds. We saw: ringed kingfisher, amazon kingfisher, grey-headed kite, common black hawk, masked tityra, limpkin, sungrebe, roadside hawk, redstart, red billed pigeon, northern waterthrush, white ibis, neotropical cormorant, brown pelican, osprey, yellow-crowned night-heron, pale-billed woodpecker, grey-fronted woodpecker, keel-billed toucan, montezuma’s oropendula, squirrel cuckoo, violaceous trogon, laughing gull, great blue heron, blue heron, cattle egret, great egret. There were also a few flybys by parrots but we couldn’t id them as they were fast and the sky somewhat overcast. The yellow-crowned night herons were seen on the second river and there were many: fifty and possibly more. We also saw a racoon. Afterwords we had breakfast at the restaurant by the dock and it wasn’t as good as the lunch we had the day before.
After breakfast we headed down the dirt road out of town in
the direction of La Barra de Sontecomapan but didn’t turn right after the third
bridge but, instead, went straight up into the hills with the road being just
barely good enough to get up it with the Jetta, albeit at a snails pace at
times. We were headed to the UNAM Biological Station to get in some
tropical mountain birding. We made the
mistake of popping our heads into the building areas. Two guards said everyone was on vacation and
we couldn’t walk on the trails. We
thought about going anyways but they actually left the buildings and were
following us at a distance. From what it
seemed you had to go onto the station grounds to access the trails. So we decided to forget about it. We continued just a little bit on the dirt
road, going downhill now, and took the turn to Laguna Escondida. It was raining lightly but got heavy now and
their was a large downhill portion of the road, at which point we turned
around. We got back on the main dirt
road and continued heading to the ocean, which brought us to Montepio. The road between the station and Montepio is
fairly nice. The rain also let us
somewhat. On the road from the station
to Montepio we saw 16 species:
yellow-throated vireo, ruddy ground-dove, black-throated green warbler,
black-headed saltator, grey hawk, violaceous trogon, rose-throated becard,
baltimore oriole, band-backed wren, yellow-winged tanager, hooded warbler,
redstart, kiskadee, roadside hawk, masked tityra, catbird. By this point we had seen a good deal of
hooded warblers and they were all quite curious, responding to pishing.
The road in Montepio ends at the beach, where we saw, after
walking a little north where there is a little bay/lagoon: laughing gull,
franklin’s gull, royal tern, sandwich tern, common tern, forster’s tern,
osprey, black-necked stilt, willet, spotted sandpiper. We asked the owner of a small restaurant on a
corner of the main road, just near the beach, if there was another way to get
back to Catemaco. He gave us a local map
and showed how we could go along the coast, on what turned out to be a nice
highway, and then go west and hook back up onto the highway from Veracruz to
Catemaco, not far from San Andres Tuxtla.
We ‘ran into’ two sugar cane trucks and it took a while to pass them,
but otherwise the trip was fine. We
stopped in the latter city to pick up a few cigars at a cigar factory on the
main highway. From Montepio to the main
highway to Catemaco we saw: caracara,
red-billed pigeon, aplomado falcon, groove-billed anni.
On December 24 we checked out of Hotel Playa Azul and headed
towards Veracruz, with a planned stop at Las Barrancas again. En route to Las Barrancas we saw: black-necked stilt, greater yellowlegs, lesser
yellowlegs, killdeer, jacana, white ibis, white-faced ibis, eurasian collared
dove, roadside hawk, osprey, great blue heron and some unid’d peeps (little
sandpipers). The Eurasian Collared-Doves
are not in Howell and Webb. We saw them
south of Alvarado, perched on a wire and got really good looks at them.
Las Barrancas
While eager to get back to Veracruz City to see our daughter
and relatives we stopped at Las Barrancas for a couple of hours. This stop was, we were surprised, even better
than our first. It helps to really try
to look over the land near the road and into the marshes that, in some cases,
are a ways away from the road. We also
tried the road that veers to the right and didn’t find it very productive with
the exception that we saw an aplomado on the ground very close to the
road. Again it was basically birding
from the car except when we saw a wave of birds in some bushes near the car and
decided to get out to walk the road a bit; we saw in this wave three male
painted buntings, a rose-throated becard, white-collared seedeater and others. On the way out, with about a kilometer to go
to the highway, a group of about a half-dozen birds flushed from the side of
the road, showing yellow. One perched on
a wire and we got excellent looks at a grassland yellow-finch, one of the
couple of species we were hoping to see.
We saw 23 species: vermillion
flycatcher, yellow-throated warbler, aplomado falcon, kestrel, roadside hawk,
tree swallow, northern rough-winged swallow, yellow-crowned night-heron, great
blue heron, great egret, cattle egret, rose-throated becard, palm warbler,
meadowlark, green heron, little blue heron, savannah sparrow, yellow-rumped
warbler, fork-tailed flycatcher, painted bunting, eastern peewee, grassland
yellow-finch, white-collared seedeater.
Ruins
What’s a trip to Mexico without seeing some ruins? Between our return from Catemaco and our trip
back to Mexico City, we decided to spend a day ruin-trekking, on December
26. The star ruin of Veracruz has got to
be El Tajin, but it is a bit too far of a trek north for this trip. So we decided to check out Quiahuiztlan and
Cempoala. The former is not touristy and
resides on an interesting mountain/hill with great views of the ocean and some
bird filled lagoons near the sea which we didn’t bird, while the latter is on
flat ground, touristy, not birdy, but interesting nevertheless. Quiahuiztlan is about 1 ½ hours north of
Veracruz at most, and Cempoala is even closer.
Both sites play a role in the arrival of Veracruz and my understanding
si that both are Totonaca, an indigenous peoples from which Cortez got a good
deal of help in fighting Moctezuma. A
few birds at Quiahuiztlan went unid’d, but we did see: cardinal, blue-gray gnatcatcher, indigo
bunting, bell’s vireo, brown jay, eastern phoebe, groove billed anni,
white-collared seedeater, black-throated green warbler, yellow-bellied
flycatcher, wilson’s warbler, clay-colored sparrow. At Cempoala we saw white-collared swifts. Remember: ruins and museums are closed on
Mondays in Mexico.
Sidenote on Veracruz:
In talking to some folks from Veracruz it seems that the passing of drugs through Veracruz to the USA is increasing. Indeed, when we went to La Barra de Sontecomapan we were stopped by three vehicles of soldiers who ‘registered’ our rented Jetta. Basically, they just want to know what you’re doing and they will take a look at the car, possibly looking in the trunk and glovebox. They were friendly, so we didn’t get very stressed. Another item which we heard about is the increasing number of persons from Chiapas going to Veracruz to escape poverty. We were told that a large percentage of the persons selling/performing in the streets are from Chiapas.
Here is our list of 167 species. Somewhere, I can’t recall where, we also saw a group of vaux’s swift flying around. Tweny five species were new for us; and are in red. Eleven of the species are endemic to Mexico and northern Central America and are in bold.
PODICIPEDIDAE
least grebe
PELICANIDAE
brown pelican
PHALACROCORACIDAE
neotropical cormorant
FREGATIDAE
magnificent frigatebird
ARDEIDAE
bare-throated tiger heron
great blue heron
great egret
snowy egret
little blue heron
tri-colored heron
cattle egret
green heron
yellow-crowned night-heron
THRESKIORNITHIDAE
white ibis
white-faced ibis
ANATIDAE
lesser scaup
CATHARTIDAE
turkey vulture
black vulture
ACCIPITRIDAE
osprey
grey-headed kite
hook-billed kite
white-tailed kite
common black hawk
grey hawk
roadside hawk
red-tailed hawk
FALCONIDAE
crested caracara
laughing falcon
american kestrel
aplomado falcon
CRACIDAE
plain chachalaca
RALLIDAE
coot
common moorhen
HELIORNITHIDAE
sungrebe
ARAMIDAE
limpkin
BURHINIDAE
double-striped thick-knee
CHARADRIIDAE
killdeer
RECURVIROSTRIDAE
black-necked stilt
JACANIDAE
northern jacana
SCOLOPACIDAE
greater yellowlegs
lesser yellowlegs
willet
spotted sandpiper
sanderling
LARIDAE
laughing gull
franklin’s gull
royal tern
sandwich tern
common tern
forster’s tern
COLUMBIDAE
rock dove
red billed pigeon
inca dove
ruddy ground-dove
eurasian collared dove
CUCULIDAE
squirrel cuckoo
groove billed anni
APODIDAE
vaux’s swift
white-collared swift
TROCHILIDAE
broad-billed hummingbird
white-eared
hummingbird
berryline
hummingbird
blue-throated hummingbird
TROGONIDAE
violaceous trogon
ALCEDINIDAE
ringed kingfisher
belted kingfisher
amazon kingfisher
RAMPHASTIDAE
collared aracari
keel-billed toucan
PICIDAE
golden-fronted woodpecker
yellow-bellied sapsucker
hairy woodpecker
pale-billed woodpecker
TYRANNIDAE
eastern peewee
yellow-bellied flycatcher
willow flycatcher
dusky flycatcher
buff-breasted flycatcher
eastern phoebe
say’s phoebe
vermillion flycatcher
great kiskadee
social flycatcher
couch’s kingbird
western kingbird
fork-tailed flycatcher
COTINGIDAE
rose-throated becard
masked tityra
HIRUNDINIDAE
tree swallow
northern rough-winged swallow
cliff swallow
CORVIDAE
brown jay
scrub jay
AEGITHALIDAE
bush tit
TROGLODYTIDAE
band-backed wren
bewick’s wren
white-bellied wood wren
SYLVIIDAE
ruby-crowned kinglet
blue-gray gnatcatcher
TURDIDAE
western bluebird
russett
nightingale thrush
ruddy-capped nightingale thrush
wood thrush
clay-colored robin
rufous-backed
thrush
american robin
MIMIDAE
blue
mockingbird
grey catbird
northern mockingbird
curve-billed thrasher
BOMBYCILLIDAE
cedar waxwing
PTILOGONATIDAE
gray
silky
LANIIDAE
loggerhead shrike
VIREONIDAE
bell’s vireo
yellow-throated vireo
lesser greenlet
PARULINE
orange-crowned warbler
nashville warbler
yellow warbler
yellow-rumped warbler
black-throated gray warbler
townsends’s warbler
black-throated green warbler
yellow-throated warbler
palm warbler
black and white warbler
redstart
northern waterthrush
grey-crowned yellowthroat
hooded warbler
wilson’s warbler
red
warbler
slate-throated redstart
golden-crowned warbler
rufous-capped
warbler
yellow-breasted chat
olive warbler
THRAUPINAE
yellow-throated euphonia
yellow-winged
tanager
red-throated ant tanager
western tanager
CARDINALINAE
black-headed saltator
northern cardinal
rose-breasted grosbeak
black-headed grosbeak
indigo bunting
painted bunting
EMBERIZINAE
rufous-capped
brushfinch
rufous sided towhee
canyon towhee
white-collared seedeater
grassland yellow-finch
rufous-crowned sparrow
clay-colored sparrow
savannah sparrow
song sparrow
lincoln’s sparrow
yellow-eyed junco
ICTERIDAE
eastern meadowlark
melodious blackbird
great-tailed grackle
audubon oriole
altamira oriole
baltimore oriole
abeillei
oriole
montezuma’s oropendula
FRINGILLIDAE
house finch
PASSERIDAE
house sparrow