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.
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.
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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