We also had good looks at a scrub euphonia, and masked tityra.
Up at the coffee plantation we were less successful than on our previous visit. There were not nearly as many birds around, and when we finally heard a rosy thrush-tanager, we were totally unable to get it to come out for a viewing. After about 90 minutes we decided to try some new spots including a group of abandoned shrimp ponds. I had to take a picture of Dan Sanders in his house slippers scoping the ponds. He was having trouble with a sore toe, and decided to wear his slippers--this had to be a birding first for me.
The ponds were pretty productive for waders including our only reddish egret of the trip, and a couple of American avocets.
Later in the day we visited a place that had been good for gray-crowned yellowthroats. It did not disappoint, and we also had good looks again at white-collared seedeaters. We kept looking for ruddy-breasted seedeaters as well, but never found any that definitely could be identified.
We saw another laughing falcon, and finished our day hearing and finally getting a brief look at a lesser ground-cuckoo.
Most of day 9 was spent at a place called Tecuitata--a ridge road that we walked along for quite some distance. It was often shady, so the day was very delightful from a temperature point of view.
Our main target here was the San Blas jay which we did see initially at some distance, but then we were able to get much closer looks at this fine bird.
We saw many of the same birds we had seen during the trip like gray hawk, which was a daily bird for us, but also squirrel cuckoo, and rufous-backed robin.
Late morning a pick-up truck came by, and Dave had a short conversation with the people in it. He told us they were on the way over the hill to the beach. It turned out they had been hired by him to make us lunch which we discovered when we rounded a corner an hour later to find them cooking chili rellenos (photo taken by Laura Keene). This is a favorite Mexican dish for me, and these were the best I have ever eaten!
There were 2 huge fig trees on each side of our lunch table that kept dropping tiny figs on us. They also attracted lots of birds including a magnificent lineated woodpecker.
Our lunch spot looked out the the Pacific ocean, and at one point we watched a group of white pelicans soar by us.
After lunch we worked our way back down the road, and then went back to San Blas to take a very short boat ride over to Peso Island. It is called Peso Island because it originally cost 1 peso to ride over on the boat. Inflation of course has now raised the price to 20 pesos/person.
It was a very pretty weekend afternoon so you would have thought there would be lots of people on the beach. To our surprise we had the place to ourselves. Dave told us that other than Easter week, Mexicans do not spend time on the beach. A group of 15-20 Wilson's plovers popped up.
There was of course a gull flock that had terns mixed in, and also we found the ubiquitous ruddy ground dove. We walked out to the breakwater, and figured we could just walk back along the beach to the boat, but discovered that was not possible half way along. This caused us to cut through a pasture while fighting off the mosquitos that were coming out as the sun set.
It was hard to believe that Monday was already day 10, and our last day of birding. Before making the drive back up to Mazatlan, we had another boat trip which went up the Rio San Cristobal. We were on the river early on a blue sky day with a nice breeze.
Green kingfishers and black-crowned night-herons were seen often.
We had been hoping to find mangrove cuckoos, so we were pleased to get very good looks at one.
We saw more snail kites, and had a close up fly over from a roseate spoonbill.
We also got to view a wood stork rookery.
We still had 2 other target birds to find--spotted rail and hook-billed kite. We took our boat into a side channel that opened up into a large shallow wetland. When we heard a spotted rail calling, we worked for quite some time to draw it to us. As it moved closer and closer making intermittent calls, we did see common gallinule and a Ridgeway's rail. We also had 2 hooked-billed kites fly across the open area at some distance giving very unsatisfying looks for those of us who were facing in the right direction as they quickly passed us.
After maybe 20 minutes of patiently waiting, the spotted rail stuck its head out of the vegetation very near our boat, but when it looked up and saw us, it immediately turned around, stopped calling and disappeared. Unfortunately not all of our group was able to see it.
We needed to make our way back to the boat dock, and then return to the hotel for a final meal before starting for Mazatlan. We were on the road by about 1 PM for the 3+ hour drive. We decided to make one last stop at a place we had visited on day 1. Our target birds were rosy thrush-tanager and flammulated flycatcher. 2 or 3 of our group briefly saw the thrush-tanager, and all of us had good looks at the flycatcher.
We returned to Hotel Siesta in Mazatlan for our last night. We enjoyed one more meal together drinking margaritas and cold Mexican beer. We all were very happy to have had such a good trip together, and particularly to have seen so many birds that are only seen rarely and often not very well in the ABA birding area. We had such good views of some of these birds that we started talking about not life birds for our lists, but life looks meaning the best view we had ever had of a species. The total species count of seen and/or heard birds came to 299. I know that I saw over 50 new life birds.
As the meal wound down, we said our good-byes because Dave was taking Neil, Dan and Doreene to the airport at 4:30 AM, and then driving home to Alamos. Bert, Laura, Marty and I were not flying out until 11:45 AM. I would highly recommend this trip guided by Dave to anyone wanting to dip their feet into what birding in Mexico has to offer.
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