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Puerto Penasco - The Final Morning

 


For our last day in Puerto Penasco, we elected to bird the first few hours to the NW of town before returning to the hotel to cool off and pack for an hour, before driving back to the USA.

We started off at the Islas del Mar resort. The semi-tidal lagoon and single freshwater pond here proved slightly disappointing, although we saw a good number of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons here. The area of trees around the entrance buildings, combined with the green lawns looked like a great migrant trap and did not disappoint. Despite being very early in the season for this far south, we racked up over a dozen species of typical western passerine migrants, with the most interesting being Willow and Gray flycatchers and Black-throated Gray Warbler. A pair of Curve-billed Thrashers seemed a bit out of place and I suspect this species has taken advantage of the resort plantings in the area to achieve a minor range extension.

We then headed down to Playa Pelicano, an area of broad mudflats being progressively covered by the incoming tide. The location we chose to watch from was probably not as optimal as being a half kilometer to the north or south but still provided great birding. There were good numbers of shorebirds including less common species such as 165 Short-billed Dowitchers, 3 American Oystercatchers, 8 Wilson’s Plovers, 13 Red Knots and 14 Ruddy Turnstones. A couple of rocky reefs offshore were eventually covered by the tide and presumably accounted for singles of Surfbird and Black Turnstone. There was a nice selection of herons, gulls and terns as well, although far fewer of the latter than at the Estero de Morua.

Wilson's Plover

There were several “Large-billed” Savannah Sparrows present in the patches of saltmarsh and along the beach. This distinctive taxon breeds in the area and is an uncommon late summer and winter visitor to California, occasionally showing up in my home county of Santa Barbara.

Large-billed Savannah Sparrow

After cooling off in our hotel we made the return trip to the Lukeville border crossing. The undoubted highlight here was arriving to find only one car ahead of us. We got across in two minutes, unlike the nightmare two-to-four hour crossings at Tijuana.

Ultimately, we didn’t have time to do Puerto Penasco justice from either a birding or general tourism perspective. However, I saw enough that I would want to return. The gull, tern and coastal shorebird selection and numbers were very good and there is clearly great potential for migrant landbirds. If the sewage ponds can get more exposed mud at times, that would add an additional set of migrant shorebirds to the pot. We were disappointed by the apparent lack of Tricolored and Little Blue herons. A spot that I had noticed on Google Earth that looked to have good potential for rails and sparrows on a very high tide looked much less promising once I got there. We never visited Punta La Choya, which would potentially be a good seawatching spot as well as holding more rockpipers.

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