Stephen Ingraham (who?)


the unofficial site for birders and digiscopers using Zeiss equipment.

North American Ornithological Unions Joint Meeting
Veracurz, Mexico
The River of Raptors

Once every so often all of the North American Ornithological societies and organizations come together for joint meetings. This year, the River of Raptors drew them all to Veracurz, Mexico, for the "Wings Without Boarders" conference. 1700 ornithologists, biologists, ecologists, and students gathered for 4 days of seminars, meetings, presentations and networking.

ZEISS provides three Student Achievement Awards for students who are selected from among the winning presentations and posters each year at the AOU Meeting. This year, in light of the combined meetings and the numbers of awards given, the three Victory FL binoculars went to three Latin American students.

Those participants who were lucky enough, or who had preplanned for the opportunity, got out of the city of Veracruz and the World Trade Center where the meetings were held (wonderful as that is) to observe and bird in the countryside of the state of Veracruz. From seashore to foothills and mountains, from dry thorn and dry tropical forest to shade-grown coffee and remnant cloud forest, amazing varieties of habitat were within a few hours drive. A bit longer journey (requiring an overnight stay to do it right) put you in rainforest.

It was my first trip that far south, to at least the edge of the true tropics, and I was amazed and delighted.

And the "river or raptors" was everything it was claimed to be. I went to the hawk watch in Chichicaxel two afternoons. On the second a kettle of hawks developed that must have contained close to 10,000 birds. It took 10 minutes, once they began streaming off the top, for the stream to go over...and it really did look like a river of hawks in the sky. They counted 500,000 hawks passing overhead that day.

The country is beautiful. The people are friendly. They are used to tourists and equipped for them. The birds are wonderful. Veracruz is certainly on my list of places to return to.

As always, bird (and bug) images below have a larger version available with an click on the image.

The booth at the World Trade Center

Crowds could be intense.

The foothills: the biological reserve at La Canadas

Rental huts beside the river in La Canadas

Wedge-tailed Sabrewing (presumed immature)

88s feeding on fallen fruit.

Social Flycatcher at the La Canadas lodge.

Remnant Cloud forest at Rancho El Mirador

Shade grown coffee and banana trees below the remnant forest.

Collared Aracari (I also saw Keel-billed Toucan here)

La Catalana (an abandoned housing development just north of Veracruz city): Altamira and Orchard Orioles, Blue-gray Tanager, Band-backed and Rufus Naped Wren, Anis, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Social Flycatcher, Squirrel Cuckoo, etc. etc.

Groove-billed Ani

La Mancha: Biological Research Station and the restaurants at the end of the galaxy (well, a 2k, all but impassable, dirt track.

The view inland.

Vegitated dune habitat.

A really complicated tree. This is where the oropedolas were.

Black-headed Trogon (what a dull name for this bird)

Montezuma's Oropendola: difficult to catch in the canopy

The hawk watch at Chichicaxel: that open mouth in wonder expression is common here!

Mexican Sheartail Hummingbird (female)

One 40x field of a kettle of at least 10,000 hawks.

Our guide the second day at Rancho El Mirador

Remnant cloud forest: right full of eastern warblers in October: hooded, wilsons, black and white, black-throated green, american and (not eastern) slate-throated redstart, etc. etc.

The gorge at El Mirador

 

 

Univ. of Veracruz Ballet: traditional folk dance at the ending Fiesta

Zeiss Student Achievement Awards went to three Latin American Students who received awards for their presentations or posters.