Mexico and Belize: a slightly different tropical adventure. Pt II

Yellow-faced Grassquit

Our couple of days on Cozumel were more than successful. We bagged not only the two endemic species, but also a few of the endemic subspecies.

Before, I go on, I should mention a quick note on the pronunciation.  In English, many people pronounce it "cah-zu-mel".  In Spanish, the "O" is always long, and locally, it is pronounced "co-zoo-mel" with the long "O" and the accent on the first syllable.

But back to my story...


We arose early, just before sunrise, and headed straight to an abandoned suburb of the town that was never developed. This made it easier to traverse the rather thick scrub habitat. On the way, we picked up a couple endemic Cozumel Emeralds:

As is typical of abandoned areas, there was trash strewn everywhere. Everything you could think of was strewn on both sides of every path. We picked our way along while keeping an eye out for birds.
Black Vultures were common, sitting up in the open letting the morning sun warm their feathers.

As we walked, suddenly, a lone Roadside Hawk sailed over low and kept going out of sight. Unfortunately, it was the only one to grace our presence during our time there. The subspecies is endemic to the island.

We picked our way through Grassquits, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and tons of White-eyed Vireos in search of our quarry.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 

Gnatcatchers were fairly prevalent on the island and the Yucatan endemic Black Catbird was so ridiculously common as to be almost not worth mentioning... Ok, just kidding, they're pretty awesome:

Black Catbird

It was interesting to see them right next to their cousins, Grey Catbirds, which were almost as common:

Grey Catbird

Fortunately, birding on Cozumel isn't terribly difficult and the endemics are common and we quickly turned up the other endemic species, Cozumel Vireo:

Cozumel Vireo

Bananaquits were also present in decent numbers

Bananaquit

It's always interesting to see the regional geographic variation in this species. The colors and patterns change with some regularity.

Here's a few examples of three subspecies in the same general area, separated only by water that look different from the ones on Cozumel:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46789814@N05/7604370266/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vivekk00/3293990439/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/75378295@N07/6950837736/


That evening, we went looking for nightjars. We didn't fail, but came up with only Paraque, which is common in the southern part of Texas. Ethan did manage to get an awesome, point-blank recording of it though.

Paraque 

Our second day of birding (morning really as we took off after birding for a few hours) on Cozumel landed us a much wanted endemic subspecies:

Cozumel Western Spindalis 

Stripe-headed Tanager is a fairly strictly caribbean species and was recently (I say recently, but I don't remember exactly when) split into a few species and renamed Spindalis.  The one that occurs on Cozumel is Western Spindalis. It's a bird I've been wanting to find in Florida for some years now and I was happy to finally see one, albeit in Mexico.

Generally, flycatchers were hard to come by on the island, but I did manage a nice photo of this Caribbean Elaenia:

Caribbean Elaenia

After spending a few hours birding, we hopped it back to the docks and caught the next ferry back to the mainland.  No band this time, but we did have another pleasant cruise across the ten miles of unbelievably blue water.

Arriving back at the mainland, we hopped aboard the next bus to Felipe Carrillo Puerto (often known simply as Puerto Carrillo among the locals).  Arriving in town just about mid-afternoon, we we stopped in at a local Super (supermarket) to stock up on supplies and were stymied by a burst of rain that left us sheltering under the supermarket's roof almost until sunset.

It's interesting who you meet and talk to when you travel.  As we were waiting for the rain to stop, a european guy biked up and parked. It turned out that he was a few days into an epic bike (I mean bicycle) trip that would take him all the way from Cancun to Tierra Del Fuego.  I love traveling, but I can't say I'm quite that ambitious. He didn't speak much english or spanish, so hopefully he's getting along somewhere, probably in Guatemala by now.

As evening came, the rain stopped and we finally ventured to hail a taxi to the edge of town at the start of the world-famous Vigia Chico Road.  This road starts in Puerto Carrillo and ends in the Caribbean Sea, traversing its way through the famous Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve.  Without a car, we didn't make it as far as the reserve, but had the taxi drop us at the edge of town where we grabbed our gear and hiked down the road for a couple miles until we found a secluded, hidden milpe just off the road where we could pitch camp for the night.

It was a slightly sketchy spot, but it was secluded and proved to be pretty decent birding.
As we settled in for the night, a Collared Forest-falcon called in the distance and Thicket Tinamous sent their harmonic humming laconically languishing through the evening air.


In my next post, I will cover our two days on Vigia Chico Road and our long bus ride to Mountain Pine Ridge Reserve in Belize.


Til next time, Happy Birding!

Backpacking Mexico and Belize: a slightly different tropical adventure

Mexico has always been a country I've wanted to visit. It boasts many endemics and has the finest infrastructure of any country I've yet been to south of the border, but we'll get to that later.

This trip came about when my friend Ethan Kistler decided he needed to get out of the country, chose Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and Belize to visit, and then kindly invited me along.  A month's worth of planning (and the addition of my friend Eric Ripma) later, I found myself on a direct flight from Chicago to Cancun.  I arrived rather late at night and checked into the first hotel I found nearby the airport.  After a quick dinner, I settled into my room. Ethan and Eric wouldn't arriving til late the next morning.

When the sun came up, I jumped up early and went straight to the window that overlooked the courtyard. As I opened the window, I almost had to duck as a Great Kiskadee came very close to hitting me, banking up and away just at the last second.

I quickly dressed and headed outside where more birds greeted me cheerily.  Melodious Blackbirds called from all around and the pair of Kiskadees regarded me suspiciously.  As I birded around the pool area and adjacent forested courtyard, I picked up a mix of both familiar and foreign species.  White-eyed Vireos and a Summer Tanager were first, but quickly followed by Social Flycatcher and a lone Masked Tityra. The next bird to drop down appeared at first to be a Red-eyed Vireo, but the color wasn't quite there, it appeared much darker.  Subsequent checks of the field guide showed what it was; a Mangrove Vireo.  Similar to Red-eyed and in the same family, but far more common in the Yucatan.

After spending a couple hours birding, I headed over to the airport to meet up with my friends.
We quickly caught the next ADO coach bus to Playa Del Carmen.
Playa Del Carmen is famous around the world for its white-sand beaches and is one of the top tourist traps in Mexico.  Fortunately, we didn't have to spend very long here as the ferry to Cozumel left about an hour after we arrived at the ticket booth.

The ferry ride to Cozumel was amazing to say the least.  After hearing way too many stories of rough crossings and people getting seasick, we were pleased to be able to sit on the upper deck and enjoy the sunshine, the fresh ocean breeze and waters as calm as a millpond.  The bonus was having a local band playing a mix of favorites, providing a tropical flair to our first day of the trip.

Playa Del Carmen from the ferry

This trip was really my first time seeing the waters of the Caribbean sea.  In most places in the USA, the water you see from the coast is the Gulf of Mexico and those waters are often green in color.  The Caribbean was completely different. The water was a deep blue that is almost impossible to describe and so clear that 20 or 30 feet of water didn't do a thing to obscure the sandy ocean bottom.

This adds a very real meaning to the often heard term "deep blue sea" 

Isla Cozumel is a Caribbean emerald just ten miles off the coast of Mexico.  Ten miles isn't very much, but it is enough to create endemics of the birds and other animals that live there.

Cozumel boasts two full species endemics and several endemic subspecies.  Cozumel Emerald and Cozumel Vireo are the two that are found nowhere else in the world. Cozumel Roadside Hawk and Cozumel Stripe-headed Tanager (now known as Western Spindalis) are just a couple of the endemic subspecies.

One other endemic subspecies that presents an interesting conundrum is Cozumel Wren.  Currently, this species is lumped with House Wren and is considered an endemic subspecies. Having now seen this bird, I treat it as a full species on my personal list. Not having DNA analysis handy, I can see nothing in this species that even resembles the House Wrens I know and have seen in multiple countries. The bird not only looks and sounds different, but also lives on an isolated island in completely different habitat, has different habits, and likely has a differing diet and foraging habits. It would seem to me that some dedicated studies of this species would provide enough evidence to elevate it to full species status.


But back to my narration:

Isla Cozumel

About 45 mins later, we docked at the ferry terminal on Isla Cozumel.
Grabbing our gear, we started the long hike to the other side of the island where we were staying with a local Couchsurfer (Couchsurfing is an awesome social network if you ever get the chance to become familiar with it).  The hike was a little longer than we expected, due to having to walk about half a mile or so down past the cruise ship pier before turning inland, but we made it.

Our host for the night worked at the second of the two universities on the island.
After some fashion, we made it to the university and asked for Oscar.  We were told that he worked upstairs at the end of the hall. We found the room dark and locked. Returning downstairs we asked another person who said he was in another building. Not finding him there either, we returned and were eventually directed to someone who spoke english. He then informed us that Oscar was not on the island and would be gone for a while. As you can imagine, we were slightly unnerved by this news, but insisted that we were supposed to meet him at the university that day.  After a little bit of discussion, we learned, to our relief, that there were two Oscars who worked at the university and we had been directed to the wrong one.  We were quickly sent to Oscar (the seconds') office where we found him.  After waiting a little bit for him to finish up, we all walked back to his house.
Oscar's house was simple and nice, nothing too fancy. It was just about everything a single guy would need.  We dumped our gear and drew straws for the couch.  I drew the short straw and set up my sleeping pad on the tile floor (which proved to be not entirely uncomfortable.  I was glad I brought it.)

Oscar was a very friendly and very generous host and treated us to a homemade local dinner of tortillas, beans and Chicharrones, which is an interesting concoction consisting of fried pork skins, salsa, peppers, etc, cooked together in a shallow saucepan.  Corn tortillas are rolled and used as a second utensil.  It was a cool introduction to some local flair that tourists often miss.

We settled in for the night and set the alarm for very early the next morning in order to maximize our time on the island.

For anyone visiting Cozumel, I would recommend getting away from the cruise ships and the tourist areas of town and exploring the rest of the island. It's quite a different experience than you would get if you just stayed by the beach and the docks.


Til next time, Happy Birding!