Saturday, November 26, 2011

The RAREST bird


Lately I’ve been playing the role of the hawk-watcher in place of bander.  This has been a pretty good chance to learn, and my bird-watching in general has improved more in the past two months than it has in years.  Seeing hundreds of thousands of migratory birds is equally exciting as handling a few.  Still, there is something awesome about having a little bit of “hawk in hand.”  Here is the cool hawk I have to brag about.  (Yeah, I'm not *that* ego-less.)

 

Veracruzano Highlands


Veracruz has existed in my mind as the humid costal plains around Chichicaxtle, Cardel and San Isidro for as long as I’ve known it years that I have had to know it.  Around here, a person gets so accustomed to the wilting heat that any temperature below about 24 degrees C is cause for putting on a jacket.  On clear days, however, it is still possible to see snow on top of the Pico de Orizaba about sixty miles to the west.  There are altitudes in Veracruz that rival and then surpass those of the western US.  This year I’ve had the pleasure of discovering this side of Veracruz, which is probably the most beautiful part of this state.

One of the sites I have come to know best is La Joya, a favorite birding spots among the VRR crew.  The town itself is charming on it’s own.  It is composed of a lot of wooden building and is bifurcated by the highway to Mexico city where vests and hats are always being sold.  It features a lot of restaurants that serve rabbit, a freakishly high concentration of cheese shops, and a lot of homes heated by wood stoves.  It’s the kind of aesthetic that I appreciate.

 The main attraction however, is a gravel pit surrounded by second-growth pine forest just outside of the town of La Joya.  Sentiments about private property are somewhat different in Mexico, so a person can freely walk into the gravel pit and around the trucks and start birding, but we usually ask for permission at the office anyhow.  Usually the response is a mixture of warm welcome and total confusion as to why gringos with binoculars chose here as a tourist destination. 

For a Californian birder, the mixture of species in La Joya is a strange amalgamation of familiar birds, seemingly familiar birds, and stuff you have never seen before.  There are Stellar’s Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers occupying the soundscape just like in the Sierra Nevadas, and many things such as the Mountain Chickadees and the Dark-eyed Juncos have just been replaced by their equivalents the Mexican Chickadees and Yellow-eyed Juncos.  Then there are things like Gray-silky flycatchers, trogons, and the fabled Red Warbler that have no parallel in California.  It is a pleasantly surreal feeling to be amongst the familiar and the strange, to be in Mexico wearing a coat and battling the wind and rain rather than the heat and humidity.  It is a beautiful place with a little bit of both of the places I love.

Sorry I don’t have a camera to share photos.  Soon!