Halfday of Birding Near Merida, June 2019.
Jason Hoeksema, a professor from Oxford, Mississippi, came to Merida for a few days for some work-related things. Jason got in touch with me for a morning of birding near Merida, so I asked for his target list and I designed an itinerary.
I picked up Jason at his Hotel at 6:30 in the morning and we drove for half an hour to a park just outside the city of Merida. We spent 40 minutes birding there and we got a total of 20 bird species, including: Northern Jacana, Neotropic Cormorant, Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, Yucatan Woodpecker, Social Flycatcher, Couch's Kingbird, Hooded Oriole and Blue-gray Tanager.
Link to eBird checklist:
Birding at Animaya Park, Jason and Luis.
Yucatan Woodpecker (Melanerpes pygmaeus).
After that, I took Jason to one of my favourite birding hotspots, the "Camino a Misnebalam" where we did some walking and some slow driving. After an hour birding, we saw and heard 35 bird species. Highlights for Misnebalam include: Black-throated Bobwhite, Groove-billed Ani, Lesser Roadrunner, Lesser Nighthawk, Turquoise-browed Motmot, Yucatan Flycatcher, Tropical Kingbird, Rufous-browed Peppershrike, Mangrove Vireo, Ridgway's Rough-winged Swallow, Orange Oriole, Gray-crowned Yellowthroat.
Link to complete eBird checklist here:
Birding at Misnebalam Jason and Luis Trinchan (Yucatan Birding Tours)
Ridgway's Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripenis).
We continued driving until we reached the north coast of the Yucatan state. Our first stop was the beach, it was quality over quantity, as we didn't get many birds, but we had both endemics Yucatan Wren and Mexican Sheartail. We made some extra stops at some other places nearby that I knew were good for birds and then we started slowly driving back to Merida taking the Sierra Papacal-Chuburna Road, there we added some new birds to the list including a group of 85 American Flamingos.
Highlights for the coast include: American Flamingo, Reddish Egret, Roseate Spoonbill, Mexican Sheartail, Magnificent Frigatebird, Royal Tern, Mangrove Swallow, Olive-throated Parakeet, Yucatan Wren, Mangrove Vireo, Orange Oriole, Mangrove Warbler.
Yucatan Wren (Campylorhynchus yucatanicus).
Our last stop was the "Acuaparque", another ecological park inside Merida with an artificial swamp. We spent about an hour and had 25 bird species including: Vaux's Swift, Cinnamon Hummingbird, Limpkin, Northern Jacana, Tropical Kingbird, Green Jay, Yucatan Jay, Lesser Goldfinch, Hooded Oriole and Grayish Saltator.
Yucatan Jay (Cyanocorax yucatanicus).
After this, I took Jason back to his hotel and the halfday birding tour was over. The overall total of bird species seen and heard was 74.
Jason helps running a nonprofit called "Delta Wind Birds" which works with private landowners to provide habitat for migratory shorebirds in the Mississippi Delta, if you want to know more about it here's the website:
Written by Luis Trinchan Guerra.
