[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TAS BirdBoard ] [ FAQ ]
Posted by Elsa Alvear on 15:38:36 02/03/10
I was lucky enough to go on a five-day trip to El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on a birding trip sponsored by the Edinburg World Birding Center, Edinburg, Texas. Bird guide Roy Rodriguez and bird & butterfly guide Javier De Leon from Texas, and Ricardo Jimenez from Mexico, were superb, just fantastic, and the Mexican towns were beautiful and the people super friendly ("Buenos dias!" as you walked down the street). El Cielo starts with rivers, has a bunch of mountains, and cloud forest on the mountaintops. The bird & butterfly maps to the area are great. Twelve people, three guides, many many lifers and many endemics. There was a Miami Herald article about Roy Rodriguez back in Oct. 11, 2009; he is a professional guide for Texas, Mexico, and has taken people to Alaska, Korea, etc. Javier could have shown us a lot of butterflies but it was 45 degrees... they weren't flying.
List that I saw (additional species seen by others listed at the end):
Snow geese
Mexican Duck
Plain chacalaca
Least grebe
Pied-billed grebe
Neotropic cormorant
Double-crested cormorant
Bare-throated tiger heron
Great blue heron
Great egret
Snowy egret
Cattle egret
Green heron
Boat-billed heron
Roseate spoonbill
White ibis
Wood stork
Black vulture
Turkey vulture
White-tailed kite
Northern harrier
Sharp-shinned hawk
Cooper's hawk
Gray hawk
Harris's hawk
Roadside hawk
Short-tailed hawk
White-tailed hawk
Zone-tailed hawk
Red-tailed hawk (rufous and western)
Collared forest-falcon (heard)
Crested caracara
Laughing falcon (quite the wow!)
American kestrel
Aplomado falcon
Bat falcon (eating a bat!)
Common moorhen
American coot
Sungrebe
Northern jacana
Spotted sandpiper
Rock dove
Red-billed pigeon
Eurasian collared-dove
White-winged dove
Mourning dove
Inca dove
Common ground-dove
Blue ground-dove
White-tipped dove
Green parakeet
Military macaw
White-crowned parrot
Red-crowned parrot
Red-lored parrot
Squirrel cuckoo
Greater roadrunner
Groove-billed ani
Tamaulipas pygmy-owl
Ferruginous pygmy-owl
Mottled owl (heard)
White-collared swift
Vaux's swift
Canivet's emerald
Broad-billed hummingbird
Buff-bellied hummingbird
Mountain trogon
Elegant trogon
Blue-crowned motmot
Ringed kingfisher
Belted kingfisher
Amazon kingfisher
Green kingfisher
Golden-fronted woodpecker
Bronze-winged woodpecker
Lineated woodpecker
Pale-billed woodpecker
Ivory-billed woodcreeper
Spot-crowned woodcreeper
Tufted flycatcher
Greater pewee
Gray flycatcher
Least flycatcher
Eastern phoebe
Vermillion flycatcher
Dusky-capped flycatcher
Great kiskadee
Boat-billed flycatcher
Social flycatcher
Couch's kingbird
Rose-throated becard (my nemesis bird, finally seen last day)
Masked tityra
Loggerhead shrike
White-eyed vireo
Blue-headed vireo
Rufous-crowned peppershrike
Green jay
Brown jay
Tamaulipas crow
Chihuahuan raven
Tree swallow
Canyon wren (heard)
Spot-breasted wren
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Blue-gray gnatcatcher
Clay-colored thrush (or robin, if you prefer old-school)
Northern mockingbird
Orange-crowned warbler
Tropical parula
Yellow-rumped warbler
Black-throated green warbler
Townsend's warbler
Yellow-throated warbler
Black-and-white warbler
Northern waterthrush
Macgillivray's warbler
Common yellowthroat
Altimira yellowthroat
Gray-crowned yellowthroat
Wilson's warbler
Golden-crowned warbler
Rufous-capped warbler
Yellow-breasted chat
Hepatic tanager
Summer tanager
Western tanager
Flame-colored tanager
Blue-gray tanager
Yellow-winged tanager
White-collared seedeater
Yellow-faced grassquit
Rufous-capped brush-finch
Lincoln's sparrow
Grayish saltator
Black-headed saltator
Crimson-collared grosbeak
Rose-breasted grosbeak
Black-headed grosbeak
Blue bunting
Indigo bunting
Varied bunting
Painted bunting
Red-winged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Melodious blackbird
Great-tailed grackle
Bronzed cowbird
Hooded oriole
Altamira oriole
Baltimore oriole
Yellow-billed cacique
Scrub euphonia
Yellow-throated euphonia
Elegant euphonia
Lesser goldfinch
Hooded grosbeak
House sparrow
Also seen: chickens, burros, chihuahuas (so cute!), turkeys, horses, cows, piggies.
Seen by others on the trip, but not by me (*@#*$!!)
Thicket tinamou
Crested guan
Northern bobwhite
Northern harrier
Aztec parakeet
Green violet-ear
White-eared hummingbird
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Hammond's flycatcher
Hutton's vireo
House wren
Brown-backed solitaire
Swainson's thrush
Gray catbird
Blue mockingbird (this one really hurt)
Crescent-chested warbler (heard by others)
Ovenbird
Blue-black qrassquit (Paul B- what is it with me and grassquits)
Olive sparrow
Chipping sparrow
Lark sparrow
Savannah sparrow (I had a bad cold on sparrow day)
Northern cardinal
Bullock's oriole
[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TAS BirdBoard ] [ FAQ ]