Birds & Words: Rio Lagartos--AMERICAN FLAMINGO, BARE-THROATED TIGER-HERON, BOAT-BILLED HERON, MANGROVE YELLOW WARBLER

AMERICAN FLAMINGOS

The birding highlight of the trip came a couple of days after we arrived when the four of us drove about 3 1/2 hours to the fishing village of Rio Lagartos on the north tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. The attraction there is a long, shallow lagoon that meets mangrove wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico. Part of the Ria Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, it is famous for the large flocks of AMERICAN FLAMINGOS and chock full of other waders. We had a 4-hour boat trip booked, emphasis on the birds, not the crocodiles that so many other tourists are anxious to see (though we saw plenty of crocs along the way).

The boat was just a long fishing boat with a tarp to keep the sun off and an outboard motor--perfect for getting in close to shore and moving around the sandbars. There was even a pole for some of the places where the motor had to be taken up lest it drag in the sand. We started off heading west to have the wind at our backs. The first sandbar we came to had Black Skimmers, Gull-billed Terns, & Sandwich Terns loafing on it, along with Double-crested Cormorants and Neotropic Cormorants sitting on some of the fishing boats that were beached there. Out a little farther we saw a Reddish Egret. Before our guide could identify it, I knew what it was just by the crazy dance it was doing--a treat for me and Shari and a wonderment to our friends who had never seen one.

We went across the lagoon toward the mangroves--Roseate Spoonbills along with both white egrets were feeding in the shallows. Getting nearer the beach we had Little Blue Herons and a couple of Green Herons roosting in the red mangrove trees. A couple of little birds were flitting around in a scraggly tree on the beach and once the engine was cut, Andrea (our guide) identified by voice MANGROVE YELLOW WARBLER. Mangrove Yellow Warbler is a recent split from Yellow Warbler (which is now Northern Yellow Warbler). I had Yellow Warbler on my Mexican list, but since I hadn't identified it to subspecies, it became a "slash" after the split, so I really wanted to get that one back. Within a couple of minutes two of the warblers came out into the tree and the difference is striking--their heads are red, so I'm pretty sure all the yellow warblers I previously saw would have fallen into the familiar species from New Jersey. Another warbler was on the sand, pumping its tail--Palm Warbler, which is actually "infrequent" in the area, and then into the same tree a Mangrove Vireo appeared.

We moved on toward an inlet that led to the gulf but didn't enter it, instead going toward another fishing village called San Felipe. Here we got a few FOY shorebirds running along the jetty--Least Sandpiper, Willet, and Spotted Sandpiper, along with Ruddy Turnstones. By this time, Andrea could tell we were really interested in birds, so she started asking if we had seen this or that wader--one she threw out was BOAT-BILLED HERON. Oh, never seen that? She motioned to the helmsman to turn around toward the mangrove again and pointed into a tree--it was hard to find in the foliage but eventually we all got on a bird that looks like a Black-crowned Night-Heron with a gigantic honker.

Andrea had the boat docked at a place called Cenote Kambulnah. A cenote is a collapse in the limestone roof, exposing groundwater below. Cenote Kambulnah is a rather old one, so it looks more like a pond than the classic cenotes farther south. A boardwalk through the mangrove took us to the pond where a crocodile was lazily drifting in the water--a younger croc was half-buried in the mud. Hard to believe, but a huge hawk was flying through the dense trees--I only saw it for moment and figured it was gone, but Andrea spotted it up in the canopy--a Common Black Hawk, almost as big as eagle. We were to see others later in the day in more open spots but not having seen one in almost 10 years (I had to look it up), I thought it might have been another lifer. Ferruginous Pygmy Owls were calling to each other, a couple of American Pygmy Kingfishers were crisscrossing the boardwalk, and to impress my brother the lepidopterist, Andrea spotted an endemic, threatened butterfly, the Yucatan Cracker, which due to the dim light and its coloration, looks very much like the tree bark it was on.

Andrea took us up a narrow stream into the mangrove, the channel twisting and turning. It got very quiet and still, but not particularly steamy. Eventually the channel ended and we had to back out, the branches of the mangrove just above our heads.

By now we'd been out about 3 hours and I figured that flamingoes weren't going to be on our list, since their area was to the east of where we started. Andrea had said at the beginning that the high season for them had already passed. We were passing a place called Playa Bonita when something went wrong with the outboard and we drifted for 15 or 20 minutes while the helmsman fussed with the engine. We were never clear what happened, but once he got the motor going, he started racing back to Rio Lagartos, the flat-bottomed boat slapping the water. Amazingly, for someone prone to seasickness, I was absolutely fine except for the jolts to my kidneys. As we were close to the dock, Andrea asked if we had any plans for the afternoon. When we said no, she suggested we continue on, even though time was up. I think she was having fun and didn't have any tour for the afternoon. After a restroom break, we headed east toward Los Colorados.

BARE-THROATED TIGER-HERON

Common Black Hawk

Again, Andrea got coy. Finding out that BARE-THROATED TIGER-HERON would also be a life bird for all of us, she directed the boat to turn around and pointed at a certain tree where she knew one was on a nest. Drifting by we got great looks but with the rocking of the boat, I wasn't in a good position for photographing it, so Andrea kindly took my camera and got some pictures. In was in this area that we also saw a couple of Common Black Hawks perched high in dead trees.

We continued on, past sandbars and abandoned fishing docks until we passed under a bridge. There were men standing under the bridge monitoring the boat traffic, since there was a toll to get into that section--we had Tyvek bracelets on to prove that the tour company was paid up. As we motored slowly through the shallow water another tour boat approached from the opposite direction. The guide in that boat made a sign with his hand, moving it as if it were a mouth--this meant "Crocodile" in their sign language and Andrea nodded in the affirmative that they were on the beaches behind us. Then she made a movement with her hand, bending in over so that her knuckles faced the water. He nodded yes. Flamingos were ahead.

At first, they were just bright magenta dots in the distance, perhaps a dozen against a mangrove backdrop. Andrea, I think, was playing with us a little because she looked dubious about getting much closer. Stilt, we creeped along, and more flamingos appeared to our right and then a couple were pretty close and then somehow, all at once, we were in the midst of a loose flock of perhaps 50 of them. Nothing compared to high season when they number in the hundreds, but as Birding Law #6 states, "You only need one," and here we had dozens. Again, because of my position in the boat, I wasn't able to get decent shots, so Andrea took my camera and clicked away. When a couple of flamingos flew close by the boat, exposing their black wing tips, the entire boat emitted a collective "Wow!" So that was our fourth lifer of the day.

We were now well past the 4 hours we'd signed up for and with the climax of the flamingos we turned around. In about a half hour we were back at the dock with a day count of 51 species. It was one of those rare days of birding where everything is perfection.

The birds we saw (and heard in the case of the owls):

Eurasian Collared-Dove
Black-bellied Plover
Spotted Sandpiper
Willet
Ruddy Turnstone
Least Sandpiper
Laughing Gull
American Herring Gull
Black Skimmer
Gull-billed Tern
Forster's Tern
Sandwich Tern
Royal Tern
AMERICAN FLAMINGO
Magnificent Frigatebird
Anhinga
Double-crested Cormorant
Neotropic Cormorant
White Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
BARE-THROATED TIGER-HERON
BOAT-BILLED HERON
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Western Cattle-Egret
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture
Osprey
Common Black Hawk
Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl
Belted Kingfisher
American Pygmy Kingfisher
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Olive-throated Parakeet
Mangrove Vireo
Green Jay
Bank Swallow
Great-tailed Grackle
Northern Waterthrush
American Redstart
MANGROVE YELLOW WARBLER
Palm Warbler