Go to Daveed7's photostreamNorthwest Mexico Trip Report
August 11-18, 2011
This is the second year in a row that we’ve run this trip to the beautiful and little visited region of the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua and Sonora. Of
The Pine Forest Parrot!
all of our trips, this is one of the more remote ones we run. We had a great group of five people: David Hursh, George Wall, Kathi Sanders, John and Barbara Perry. David MacKay and Rafael Arenas Wong lead the trip.
Day 1 – Tucson to Nuevo Casas Grandes: We got out of Tucson right on time and it was a beautiful morning for a drive south through the green Sonoran Desert. Our first stop was the Safeway Benson where a few of us took advantage of the Starbucks while we all ordered sandwiches from the most detailed (read: SLOW) sandwich maker in Arizona! Then off we went for a rather meager birding stop at the Davis Ranch before deciding it was time to head for Douglas, the border and Agua Prieta, Mexico! We did make a gas stop in Douglas where I treated David H. to his first ever Scorpion lollipop which he enjoyed all the way to the stinger, although with some trepidation!
We ate our very good Safeway sandwiches on the side of Mexico highway 2 in prime Juniper Titmouse habitat. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned this to the Titmice, so I am still missing this bird for Mexico, although I imagine that a lot of people still are!
It became obvious soon after lunch that Chihuahua had been enjoying some fantastic summer rains! There were pools of water everywhere and eventually we found a big one near Los Mimbres with good off highway access where we spent an easy hour and a half scoping the scene. There were a number of Mexican ducks, several Killdeer and hoards of Western and Cassin’s Kingbirds. Eventually a squadron of 15 Wilson’s Phalaropes entertained us with an airshow that included multiple laps around the pond, and later we heard the call of a Scaled Quail in the brush behind us and eventually got pretty good looks at it before it flew off over the road. We also saw a couple of Black Terns at this location, a bird that is often times hard to find in Mexico.
A rare summer visitor to Chihuahua: Snow Goose
Then it was on to Nuevo Casas Grandes and the Laguna Fierro. Not as much diversity as we have seen in the past but we did see a wayward lone Snow Goose and a distant flyby of a Marbled Godwit.
The Hotel Hacienda was just fine with large rooms and a decent restaurant that was attended by a fantastic staff that took great care of us.
Day 2 – Nuevo Casas Grandes to Madera: This morning we left the west edge of the central plateau and headed south and up in elevation and into the Sierra Madre. Along the way we stopped in Buenaventura along the river next to the horse race track where we got good looks at a couple of Painted Buntings and a Yellow-breasted Chat.
Then on to the archeological site, Cuarenta Casas, for a nice lunch a view of the fantastic cliff dwellings and a several high elevation species including some Bridled Titmice, Painted Redstart, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Hepatic Tanager and Pygmy
The awesome cliff dwelling; 40 Casas
Nuthatch.
At Presa Pinitas, we ran into a big flock of Black-eared Bushtits and another flock of even more Band-tailed Pigeons before heading into Madera for our last stop at the pond for a Rock Wren.
Day 3 – Madera: Today was a trip to Thick-billed Parrot heaven! Hard to say if it was the previous night’s hard rain, the post breeding tie of year or just one of those high elevation mornings. Things were a bit slow getting started as we made a few stops headed up the canyon toward the home of the Thick-billed Parrots. I had hoped that we would find an Eared Quetzal on the way up the road but bird life was impressively absent as we worked our way up the road. Then it happened, some would say the way it is supposed to, but it could have been better! Out the window of the van I hear the distinctive call of the Quetzal really close to us! We all bail out of the van, scopes flying and tapes a-playing, wandering around the two track road searching the trees for the Quetzals. They seemed to be more allusive than ghosts as they allowed only the briefest of glimpses as they cruised through the dense pines! The birds did not cooperate very well. For a moment it looked like they might stick around and come in, but in the end only Rafa got a marginal look and we were forced to suffice with a great memory of the call of a Quetzal!
Thick-billed Parrot in nest cavity
Then it was on the parrot spot. This turned out to be far better! We could hear the birds long before we got to them which was a very good sign. Soon we were all gathered around scopes getting all sorts of wonderful views of one of North America’s most endangered birds! For some reason this particular bird gives me a good feeling, they seem like they are always happy, squawking about and constantly physically interacting with one another…it is pretty cool. We ended up spending a good hour and a half getting to know the parrots and then the sky started to get heavy again and this time it looked pretty serious! We scurried down the hill to the van and Rafa and I literally tossed a lunch out for everyone to wolf down quickly before the rain began to fall. After lunch, we started the long and arduous body slamming decent from the parrots back to Madera. Indeed that road is not good at all and it is debatable if it is better than walking!
Day 4 – Madera to Basaseachic: We left Madera under yet another threatening sky, but lucked out with the rain all morning and it did not start to fall until we got all the way to the Basaceachic. We made a rather nice stop at the big stock tank area outside of Matachi where we were treated to looks at Western and Eastern Bluebirds as well as Mexican and Western Scrub Jays. One of the more interesting things may have been the rather fearless Black-tailed Jack Rabbit that seem content to watch us watch him at very close range. They sure are a very strange animal!
We got to our off-the-grid casitas at Rancho San Lorenzo. It was a bit too early to check in but we were welcome to use the ramada to set up
Basaceachic Falls in the Fog
lunch, a good thing too because it was raining HARD. After lunch there were enough casitas ready for some of us to move in. Then Rafa, David H. and I decided that we could use a thrashing so we headed off to see if we could hike to the bottom of the Basaseachic Falls and back before dinner! As we left, I didn’t really think that there was any chance that we would actually hike all the way down, and felt even less optimistic as we took our sweet time birding and taking in the dramatic views of the canyon. At one point I realized that indeed we were going all the way down and we had better do it quick if we were to actually make it back before dark!
As luck would have it the rain started back up with a vengeance as we reached the bottom of the falls, but it was a bit hard to tell because the spray from the 1000 foot drop of the waterfall in full flood made it hard to decide what was getting us the wettest. At a certain point, none of it mattered any more…we were soaked! David H. found an acrobatic Dipper working the slippery hyper vertical wall of a smaller waterfall, picking bugs out from under vegetation. Rafa found an Elegant Trogon female just as we hit the bottom, and about right then two plump birds flew up and vanished down towards the fog shrouded creek below us. I was a bit dumfounded by the way they flew and Rafa was pretty sure they were Black-headed Siskins, but I thought they were bigger. In any case they left, unidentified at least for now.
The power and intensity felt by being just a few meters from this massive waterfall is rather awesome to say the least, and it was a hard place to leave. Well, maybe it was because we knew we had a good 1500 foot climb ahead of us to get back to the parking area!
A family of Hooded Grosbeaks!
Not 100 meters down the trail I saw that weird bird, that had been loosely identified as a Siskin fly off the trail in front of me, but this time it landed on a cable handrail not 12 feet in front of me. Immediately, I thought that it was a Hooded Grosbeak, but it was a juvenile and lacked all the white in the back, and honestly looked more like an Evening Grosbeak. Then the adult flew on to the wire and indeed it was a family of Hooded Grosbeaks! It was amazing that my drenched camera continued to work at all at this point, but I got a couple of marginal ID photos for the world to see! A big surprise for us to find this bird, the farthest north I have ever encountered it.
It was a bit like a death march getting out of that canyon, but we managed to pull it off in a little over an hour and a half, tired but excited about all that we had found down there!
Dinner was held in the big dining hall at the ranch and we had the place to ourselves. We shared some wine and enjoyed some good home cooking while the rain continued to fall.
Day 5 – Basaseachic to Yecora: Although the afternoon would be a three hour road trip to Yecora, Sonora, we had the entire morning to hike to the point where the waterfall drops off the edge of the canyon. It is not a hard hike, mostly a paved trail with some impressive suspension bridges along the way. The morning was crystal clear and the sky a deep blue. We got great views of a very cooperative Rufous-capped Brushfinch on the other side of the river, but generally speaking the birding was a bit slow. After lunch at the ranch, we were off for a
Tiger Flower or Mexican Shell Flower (Tigridia pavonia), a tropical member of the iris family.
fantastically beautiful drive to Yecora.
Day 6 - Mesa Campanero and Yecora area: Our first stop was the Yecora sewage ponds just to see if anything interesting might be around. It was a bit slow this morning with a deep, dark fog covering the entire valley. It didn’t take long to pop out of it once we started to gain elevation. The road up produced the usual suspects of Brown Creepers, Bridled Titmice, Acorn Woodpeckers and Bluebirds galore!
Our first stop on Mesa Campanero started out a bit slow, but once we rounded the corner for the top, we finally got a good flock to come in to a mob tape of a Mountain Pygmy Owl. Leading the way was a pair of Olive Warblers and lone Crescent-chested Warbler. Then came across the most talked about Olive-sided Flycatcher of all time, who never left his post on the snag directly across from us! David had mentioned a couple of times on that part of the walk that he was hearing a raptor calling up on the ridge, eventually it flew by quickly and quite a ways below us. At about the same moment a different raptor flew by going the other way, this one was a nice Zone-tailed Hawk. Soon the other raptor
This young Goshawk followed us around for a couple hours
came back and began to harass us by flying by rather close and screeching loudly. We were confused as to what it was. It was a young bird and obviously somewhat confused, almost as much as we were! It looked like a Cooper’s Hawk, but when it came increasingly closer, like uncomfortably close, I began to think it had a structure more like a Buteo. Then it hit me, not literally….but it was a Northern Goshawk! The first one I have ever seen in Sonora! And it was up close and personal. In fact, the bird hung around us nearly all afternoon, and seemed to get annoyed whenever I would put on a tape of Mountain Pygmy Owl!
We had lunch on top of Mesa Campanero and did some more birding on top of the Mesa. A pair of Mountain Trogons had set up shop in the midst of this screeching Goshawk and did not seem too concerned about it. We also had great looks at White-striped Woodcreepers and an Arizona Woodpecker.
The afternoon was waning and I, for one, was chomping at the bit to get down to the Barranca (aka the Glory Hole!) to see what might be around! Well, it was just about as good as it gets, although it seems like I think that ever time that I visit the Glory Hole, it is just a great birding sight. We had great looks at both Nightingale Thrush’s, a pair of Flame-colored Tanagers, Blue Mockingbird, Rufous-capped Warbler, Mountain Pygmy Owl, Lucifer Hummingbird, Brown-backed Solitaire and Spotted Wren. An awesome way to end the day!
Day 7 - Yecora to Hermosillo: We drove directly to the Glory Hole this morning to take advantage of the cool morning and to be there when the sun hit it. Boy, did it pay off! Besides the fact that we cleaned up on a couple of the birds we had missed the previous day, some of the birds that a few had missed before were easy to see. The entire group walked across the highway to try to get a look at a singing Blue Mockingbird while Rafa and I put out a little bit of breakfast. I don’t know why I happened to look up right as the thrush sized bird went over our table, but I did. It landed in a small bush just next to the rest of the group and I immediately called out AZTEC THRUSH! I was shocked, as I figured that we had missed it because we had not run into it up on the Mesa yesterday. Eventually, a second one showed up and everyone got on them. A great moment!
After food, a couple of us went down the road to look for Gray-crowned Woodpecker while David H. stayed back an attended to some personal
A Gray-collared Becard
business. As luck would have it, as we walked back toward the van, David appeared from the woods animated by a bird that he had just seen…a Gray-collared Becard! Immediately, I started to play tape hoping that the bird would return so that everyone could get a look. Almost right away it called back and soon enough flew across the road and into a pine tree. It took a little while to get everyone on it, but eventually we were successful! This was, so far, the bird of the morning!
Our next stop was on the road to a little wide spot called Santa Ana. The habitat is a transition from oak woodland to tropical deciduous forest at an elevation of about 2500 ft. We drove off the main road no more than a couple of miles, mostly to find a private spot for the ladies to commune with nature. We ended up at a spot that appeared to be pretty darn birdy. Indeed, we got out and almost immediately got good looks at a pair of Five-striped Sparrows working the opposing bank. Then a nice Yellow-breasted Chat that posed long enough for us to get bored of it. After a while, I decided to try the Gray-crowned Woodpecker one more time, so I played a little tape. Almost immediately, I got a response and in it came to see us! It even got comfortable and started feeding and we all got great looks, and rather lousy photos.
We bolted on down the hill and made it easily through the military checkpoint at San Nicolas, and immediately stopped at the Rio San Nicolas to see what was around. The best birds were the family of Green Kingfishers that entertained us down in the river below. But the heat was beginning to catch up with us after days in the mountains. We had finally moved down into the heat of the tropics!
That Anamis Ridgenosed Rattle snake that got a little too close to Kathy
The next stop and the last one before lunch was at the ‘junior’ glory hole at the big Guadalupe shrine. At first, it seemed like a fool’s errand to even think that a bird would be around in the heat of the day, but then all hell broke loose! It started with a BIG migrating flock of Yellow-green Vireos that numbered close to 20 birds. Then as a pair of Happy Wrens were darting in, and mostly, out of view, Rafa found the bird of the day! A beautiful Fan-tailed Warbler was wiggling its way through the branches above us giving us quite the show! A big surprise to be sure! We also had a Tropical Parula and another Five-striped Sparrow.
We did lunch under the big bridge over the Rio Yaqui. It was hotter than blazes but the only significant shade for miles around. It was hot, but something about being next to the river made it seem a bit cooler.
The last stop of the day was at the arroyo San Jose del Pima where we got a Yellow-billed Cuckoo and not much else as the heat of the day had caught up with us and bird activity was a bit slow.
We spent the night in relative luxury at the Holiday Inn in Hermosillo. After many days in very remote areas of the Sierra Madre, arriving in
Its hard to beat the beauty of the Sierra Madre in Summer
the big city was a bitter sweet! I love being up in the mountains in the summer…On the bright side, Jen joined us in Hermosillo for our last night’s dinner together and a good time was had by all.
Day 8 – Hermosillo to Tucson: Our last day was pretty much a travel day back to Tucson. It was a GREAT trip, so many wonderful birds and experiences in the back country of Mexico. Thanks to all of you for braving the bad news, and coming down to get a first had perspective of what is more of the reality of what is going on in Mexico!