Puerto Morelos--RED-BILLED PIGEON, LESSER YELLOW-HEADED VULTURE, YUCATAN JAY

YUCATAN JAY

Our friends' house sits about two blocks from the Caribbean and across the street from an extensive mangrove. My routine each morning we were there would be to get up just before sunrise, when it was relatively cool, and walk north a few blocks, out of the residential section and along a road that cut through the mangrove. Usually, I'd walk about a mile and a quarter, sometimes a little longer, but after about a mile and half you start to come an enclave of resorts and the birding dies down and noise goes up. 

A few days, instead of just retracing my steps, I'd go on one of the short paths that lead to the playa and walk south before cutting over to the town to go back to their house. Even though they're extremely common, I really enjoy watching kettles of Magnificent Frigatebirds hoover overhead and lower down, big flocks of Brown Pelicans swooping close in over the beach. You see pelicans in New Jersey, of course, though much later in the summer, but they're not as numerous, and they tend not to float so close to the beach as they do down there. Also, overhead you see vultures. Because I see vultures constantly at home, I never particularly paid attention to the vultures down there, but looking through the sightings, I saw that not every vulture in Puerto Morelos is a Turkey Vulture. Once I was primed to look closely at the vultures overhead on the beach, it didn't take me long to find my first life bird of the trip: a LESSER YELLOW-HEADED VULTURE, which looks very similar to the familiar Turkey Vulture, but is whiter at the wing tips and, as the name implies, has a much lighter head than the Turkey Vulture. Once you know what to look for it isn't hard to find a few. One eBird the Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture is listed as infrequent, but I bet that's because so many birders just aren't looking hard enough.  It took me to my fourth trip down there to realize what I probably was missing the first three times. 

White-fronted Amazon

Walking along the streets there it is easy (very easy) to find Great Kiskadee, Tropical Kingbird, Couch's Kingbird (although you can only identify those two kingbirds by voice), Tropical Mockingbird, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, White-fronted Amazon, and Plain Chachalaca, in good numbers, all along the wires and atop the buildings. What I inexplicably missed until this trip, though, was another very common street bird--YUCATAN JAY. Walking past a federal agricultural station a little north of town I heard and saw a commotion in the trees and when a big blue and black bird flew out, I knew I had another lifer. My friend was surprised that it took me so long to find them, since they're practically a nuisance at his house with their loud cries--but then so are the kiskadees, the Eurasian Collared Doves, and even the Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls, which call through the day. It's like living in an aviary. 

The first time I saw the jays they were jumping around in the mangrove, and I couldn't get decent photos, but the next day, along that same stretch of road the jays were picking up scraps off the road and flying back into the trees, so I was able to document them. Shari wanted to walk up with me to get them for her list, but it wasn't necessary since one afternoon, while we were having cocktails, a small flock decided to hang around just outside the house and she was able to get good close looks of them.

The day we were to leave, I took a last walk and came across some birds I hadn't seen in Puerto Morelos like Mangrove Vireo and Northern Yellow Warbler.  But the one that stopped me was a heard only bird--I heard a cooing that I knew wasn't either the collared dove or a White-tipped Dove. Merlin says it knows 86% of the birds in the Yucatan, and I was lucky that RED-BILL PIGEON was one of the ones it knew. It was deep in the mangrove and I never got eyes on it, but down there, in thick vegetation, you often have to settle for hearing. Never saw the owl either, even though it sometimes sounded like it was in the tree next door to the house. 

Just for my walks through the Puerto Morelos mangrove I had 36 species:

Plain Chachalaca

RED-BILLED PIGEON

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Ruddy Ground Dove

Magnificent Frigatebird

Roseate Spoonbill

Brown Pelican

Osprey

Black-headed Trogon

Yucatan Woodpecker

Golden-fronted Woodpecker

White-fronted Amazon

Olive-throated Parakeet

Dusky-capped Flycatcher

Brown-crested Flycatcher

Great Kiskadee

Social Flycatcher

Tropical Kingbird

Couch's Kingbird

Rufous-browed Peppershrike

Mangrove Vireo

Green Jay

YUCATAN JAY

Barn Swallow

Gray Catbird

Tropical Mockingbird

Hooded Oriole

Bronzed Cowbird

Melodious Blackbird

Great-tailed Grackle

Northern Waterthrush

Black-and-white Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

American Redstart

Magnolia Warbler

Northern Yellow Warbler