Skip to main content

Baja: The Vizcaino

 


We spent a few hours in the morning checking various areas in Guerrero Negro. This proved to be fairly dull although we saw our first Northern Waterthrushes of the trip, along with some gulls, shorebirds and herons. We next headed out towards Vizcaino Junction, where we checked out the sewage ponds. Once we averted our gaze from all the floating diapers, we found several birds of interest, including a flock of 19 Aleutian Cackling Geese, 3 Pectoral Sandpipers and a few Yellow-headed Blackbirds as well as all three species of teal.

We next headed out into the Vizcaino proper. It was very evident that the desert had received a fair amount of rain from the hurricane and when we stopped at the pumping station at Bombeo, Kurt remarked that he had probably never seen so much water there. The small pool there was alive with drinking White-crowned and Brewer’s Sparrows and Wes turned up a couple each of Green-tailed Towhee and Clay-colored Sparrow, which eluded me. We then headed out to Bahia Asuncion on the coast, arriving in the late afternoon.

The next morning started off with a motley group of hybrid oystercatchers that had everything from almost pure Blacks to almost pure Americans. We then proceeded to work the gardens and parks in the town for migrants. These were mostly Yellow and Orange-crowned Warblers, with the best being a Tennessee and a couple of Black-and-whites. Leaving town, we drove towards Bahia Tortugas near the tip of the peninsula. As we headed northwest, the scenery became more arid as we escaped the path of the hurricane. We eventually reached the isolated ranches famous for Asian strays such as Arctic Warbler and Little Bunting. These proved to be fairly birdless with Rancho San Miguel being the best with a Gray Flycatcher, Swainson’s Thrush and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet – a rarer bird here than further north and a Baja California Sur tick for Kurt. Wes and I were getting numerous state birds as our birding in BCS has been fairly limited.

Broad-winged Hawk

In the afternoon, we arrived in Bahia Tortugas. After finding a hotel and having a excellent lunch featuring a local fish filet, we did some exploration of the town to determine potential birding areas. We didn’t see much of interest in the hot and windy afternoon, but hoped for better in the morning. A thorough check in the morning turned up two each of Tennessee and Black-and-white Warblers and a Warbling Vireo, but nothing of real note. As we headed out of town, we noticed a draw with a number of pepper trees growing in it and decided to look it over. As we reached the edge of the draw, a raptor flew out and began to thermal up – a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk! Finally a (little) bit of quality.

Heading back towards Guerrero Negro, we checked out the isolated ranches again. This time we had a little more luck when a Gray Catbird came into a mobbing tape, although there were again very few migrants present. As we approached closer to the base of the peninsula, we checked out a couple more ‘oasis’ in the barren desert. We asked to enter “El Eden” and were given permission to bird. We had very little for the first 20-30 minutes and I decided to try a mobbing tape in one last group of trees, which turned out to be next to some fruiting date palms. After two to three minutes of playing the tape, I realized a few birds had come into the palm tree directly over my head. These were two Orange-crowned Warblers – the commonest warbler out in the Vizcaino – and a Northern Parula, another eastern vagrant, albeit one that I see pretty much annually in Santa Barbara. Fortunately, better was to follow when a male Black-throated Blue Warbler appeared. I rushed back to get Wes and Kurt, who had already headed back to the car. Fortunately, both birds hung around and Wes got some cracking shots of the BT Blue. This is a bird I have seen only about 20 times in my life and the last time I saw a male was almost 10 years ago on Cozumel. A few miles further along, we stopped to check out another oasis, known as Hugo’s Ranch. A Red-shouldered Hawk seemed pretty out of place, while a Summer Tanager provided some minor interest.

Lonely Black-throated Blue Warbler looking for a date

We headed back into Guerrero Negro for the night to prepare for the long drive back north.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Identification of Dowitchers in Santa Barbara County

  Over the years I have been asked about how to separate dowitchers by a number of local birders as well as seeing requests for help with dowitcher photos posted on local on-line forums. As probably the most active birder in the county with respect to looking at shorebirds, I wanted to put down some thoughts here on my process for separating these two species. Also, as a local ebird reviewer, I would like to reduce incidences of less experienced observers making obviously incorrect claims of the species. There is already a significant amount of published material available on how to separate these two species. This paper by Lee and Birch is pretty comprehensive: https://www.aba.org/birding_archive_files/v38n5p34.pdf I will cover a subset of the identification criteria presented in the above paper, so you can focus on learning a few key features. If you can effectively master these features, you should be able to identify 90%+ of birds correctly. Given that both species are re...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Visit to “Booby Island”

  When I first moved to Goleta in 2000, boobies of any species were barely annual in coastal southern California. Starting around 2013, that situation began to change and significant numbers of Cocos (formerly the brewsteri race of Brown Booby) began to occur on Sutil Rock, off Santa Barbara Island. These subsequently began to breed along with odd pairs of Blue-footed Booby. A period of warm water also greatly increased records of Masked, Nazca and Red-footed Boobies with the result that sometimes four or five species of booby might be seen in a single boat trip and all five have been observed roosting on Sutil Rock. Since the booby colony represented a significant detour from the preferred routes of pelagic birding trips out of Ventura harbor, we recently started running some dedicated trips out to Santa Barbara Island. Since Santa Barbara Island is over 40 miles offshore, the journey out and back is in itself quite good for pelagic bird species, providing the optimalroute is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Few Butterflies from Spain

On my previous trip to Spain, I ended up seeing about 60 species of butterflies. I was surprised to find that I was still able to recognize a few. Once Paul arrived, we spent 20-30 minutes or so at both Monfrague and the Sierra de Gredos to photograph cooperative butterflies.   Two-tailed Pasha (by Paul Thompson) At Monfrague, the main highlights were Two-tailed Pashas and an abundance of hairstreaks. We also saw a number of Spanish Gatekeepers and a couple of Cleopatras, although the later eluded the camera. Unfortunately, on closer inspection, the hairstreaks all seemed to be just the same two species. Spanish Purple Hairstreak (by Paul Thompson) False Ilex Hairstreak (by Paul Thompson) Southern Gatekeeper (by Paul Thompson) I then found another butterfly that looked rather like a Common Snout, a species that occurs in America. We saw several of these and they turned out to be Nettle Tree Butterfly, which is in the same sub-family as the Common Snout. Nettle Tree Butterfly (by Pa...
Post a Comment
Read more