Birdwatching, Part 2

 We finally got out birding with someone who knows local birds!  On Tuesday November 29th had a full day's birding with Edgar Del Valle, a professional birding guide whom we found via a poster at the Oaxaca Lending Library.

Edgar makes part of his living from birds: in addition to guiding, he's a bird bander.  He's one of a small group who sets up nets weekly at Monte Alban and at the Oaxaca Botanical Garden.  He's even been to Canada, to the Long Point Bird Observatory in Ontario, as part of a banding exchange program! His day job used to be teaching university-level English at a private university.  Now he only does that part time.

We saw upwards of 70 different species of birds with Edgar, at least 20 of them for the very first time.  

Bullock's oriole

Curve-billed thrasher

It was a great day, and Edgar helped us learn how to identify Cassin's kingbirds, which had been puzzling us.

After our day with Edgar, we headed up into the mountains to Capulapam.  Harvey did some asking around at Hoofing it in Oaxaca, and found a birding guide based in Capulapam who was willing to take us out for a day.  We visited and enjoyed Capulapam in 2012, and were happy to return.  

Capulapam is a "Pueblo Magico", which is a designation that the Mexican government gives to beautiful villages that have a focus on tourism.  Capulapam had this designation in 2012, and continues to live up to that standard today.  The town itself is pretty, both in its setting and in its construction.

The town has friendly people, nice restaurants, eco-cabins only a 1 km walk from the centre of town, and well-organized activities available.  Our hostess, Eunice, told us that 90% of the tourists are Mexican.  There was a group of about 10 from Guadalajara in town doing all of the sights while we were there.

Our birding guide Leonel Bautista helped us find about 50 different species of bird, including a Mountain Trogon! We've wanted to see a trogon of any description since about 1995, when we aspired to find a quetzal.  No picture of the trogon, of course, but here's us birding in the rain with Leonel.

We saw a variety of fabulous birds that day, like the red warbler, red-faced warbler, and the extremely cute tufted flycatcher. To top off our visit after our official day of birding was done we spotted a bat falcon from the deck of the hotel where we were staying.