BIRDS AROUND THE RESERVOIR
(at Jalpan, Querétaro)
Last Sunday I walked around Jalpan's reservoir,
taking about five hours, listing the birds so you can get a fix on what species are
commonly seen here.
It wasn't a good birding day. It'd rained all night, unusual for the heart of the dry
season, and all morning it was so dark, misty and drizzly that I missed several species
just because I couldn't see their colors. When I started out at 8 AM it was 60°, dropped
to 55° when I climbed upslope into the cloud-fog, and was 60° again when I returned five
hours later.
Usually I list birds as I see them, so you can enjoy watching how the bird-species mix
changes as I walk through one habitat after another. However, this time all the birds came
from the lake's edge where scrub and disturbed areas met the water. When I climbed the
slope to get to the road on the lake's other side it was so foggy and drizzly that birds
weren't too evident and I saw nothing different. Therefore, the following list is
"phylogenetic" -- theoretically ancient bird-types coming first, newly evolved
species coming last -- the way most field guides represent them. This way, if you want to
fill your head with pretty colors, interesting designs and miscellaneous bird-thoughts,
you can look up the following species in your own guide to North American birds, starting
at the front of your field guide and working toward the end.
- Neotropic Cormorant, 2 on a snag in shallow water
- Great Blue Heron, like a statue at water's edge
- Snowy Egret, 2 atop tree at water's edge
- Cattle Egret, 2, each riding a cow's back
- Wood Stork, stalking along water's edge
- Blue-winged Teal, ±15 noodling weeds at water's
edge
- American Kestrel, atop a maguey's dead flower
stalk
- American Coot, 14 scattered, paddling
independently
- Spotted Sandpiper, wagging tail on mud bar
- White-winged Dove, many flocks of 10-20 flying by
- Inca Dove, on ground in fallow cornfield
- Elegant Trogon, female snatching cherry-like
fruits
- Golden-fronted Woodpecker, atop cement power pole
- Tufted Flycatcher, snatching bugs along shore
- Eastern Phoebe, snatching bugs along shore
- Social Flycatcher, 3 in different trees, one
calling
- Violet-green Swallow, several swooping low over
water
- Green Jay, complaining JEHRRR JEHRRR JEHRRR in
scrub
- Ruby-crowned Kinglet, snatching gnats in scrub
- Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, abundant in scrub
everywhere
- Brown-backed Solitaire, beautiful crescendo call
- Blue Mockingbird, lustily singing from hidden
perch
- Cedar Waxwing, ±15 high-pitched ZEEEEEing in
treetops
- Nashville Warbler, brightly yellow, showing rusty
cap
- Yellow-rumped Warbler, several debugging acacia
fls
- Black-and-white Warbler, foraging on tree-trunks
- Wilson's Warbler, very common in scrub along
shore
- Northern Cardinal, bright male in scrub along
road
- Black-headed Grosbeak, nibbling cherry-like fruit
- Indigo Bunting, ±10 in scrub, males mottled blue
- Melodious Blackbird, singing in tip-top of tree
- Great-tailed Grackle, several loudly calling
- Brown-headed Cowbird, 2 in tree next to pasture
Every species in the above list is also found somewhere in the US -- though sometimes
the distribution extends only a few miles north across the border. Species not found in
North America do occur here, but I didn't see any. I'm not too surprised by this, since
the Eastern Sierra Madres can be followed all the way north into western Texas and beyond,
where they become the Rocky Mountains. In other words, no major ecological barriers block
birds from flying between here and Texas.
The "star" of the above list is certainly the Elegant Trogon, sometimes known
as the Coppery-tailed Trogon, its distribution extending into the US only in southeastern
Arizona and extreme western Texas. The female I saw was feeding in the typical trogon
manner: After quietly perching, she'd suddenly fly up to a fruit, take it into her beak as
she fluttered in mid air, then let herself drop, so that her weight helped snap the fruit
off the tree.
When you make any such list often you miss a few very common species and see others
that are rare. It's hard to believe I saw no Pied-billed Grebes on the lake or Vermillion
Flycatchers in the scrub. However, my first sighting of the Elegant Trogon at this
location made up for that. |