We became bird watchers in Mexico in 2011. One of the things that excited us most about returning to Oaxaca was the idea of really seeing the birds here, now that we're more experienced observers.
So, how has it been going?
On the bright side, we've added two or three birds to our "life lists" every time we've made a serious attempt to go birding, where "serious" just means that we're spending a couple of hours entirely focused on birds. We've seen some pretty amazing new birds!
On the downside, in the best locations we've quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of birds we can hear but not see, or see but not identify. Our e-bird lists have included 10, 15, or 20 different species in places where we could easily have recorded twice as many if we'd had any idea of what we were doing. We spend as much time on our birding outings looking at our phones (Merlin Bird ID or our other birding apps) as we do looking at birds, and our conversations tend to revolve around which kind of kingbird we've just seen.
(And yes, before you ask, all three of these species are possible here, as is the Cassin's Kingbird. :-))
Basically, in Mexico we're beginners all over again.
To some extent we anticipated this. Before we left Canada we tried to figure out how to get some mentorship. Any local birding groups? Not in Oaxaca or Xalapa at least, or not that we could find. How about organized birding tours? We were hoping for one or two day ecotours, similar to the kinds of city tours or ruins tours that are common in tourist hotspots.
We had a bit of luck there, and found and booked two different one-day tours out of Veracruz. Alas, one was led by a biologist who didn't know a huge amount about birds (it was more of a kayaking/nature tour). The other suffered from a scheduling mixup that meant we missed the day's best hour of birding, and while our guide was an expert birder, he spoke only Spanish and could only tell us the scientific names of the birds we were seeing (which we could not easily cross-reference to English or Spanish names on the fly).
We also tried to find professional birding guides. Unfortunately for us, the vast majority of bird-based tourism is 7-14 day all-inclusive tours exclusively focused on birding. These are often organized out of the U.S., even when they use local guides, and are priced accordingly. (For example, one relatively economical 14 day birding tour of Oaxaca state cost the same as the entire budget of our 6-week trip.) But at least some birding guides have full-time jobs doing something else and do guiding on the side. So we tried to contact local guides in the hopes that they might willing to do a one or two day outing for us on a weekend. No dice. The guide we found in Xalapa never answered our email. The Oaxacan guide wouldn't quote prices, and lost interest when he discovered that we weren't looking for a private 7 day all-inclusive trip.
Oh well, we thought. We can visit local parks and use eBird to find local hotspots. We did a bit of research on what birds we might find in various locations, and did some studying on what they looked like. We headed out to our first eBird hotspot in Xalapa with high hopes! Only to discover that birding is hard. :-)
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