Birding the Yucatán, Part 9
The Sian Ka'an Biosphere and more
Three-quarters of a million acres of category 1A IUCN protected reserve - that’s what Sian Ka’an is. Good thing that nobody has to mow it. Much of it is water, but there are also significant reefs and land, such as Cozumel. It means “Gateway to Heaven”.
We have bonefished inside the reserve many years before, some distance up the coast. It was an amazing place where the sky can be the same colour as the sea, and there was no horizon.
Today, we are here early, very early, in fact, as the sun is not yet up. We will cross the lagoon in front of us, then go down a connecting river into the next lagoon. This is not your typical wetland visit to pad the list with common waders. We are here early because our boat captain has been seeing a Jabiru Stork sporadically and believes our chances are better earlier. Jabiru Storks are HUGE and only visit the Yucatán, which doesn’t have much surface water, in years of high rainfall. This is one such year, so the area around the river will be especially marshy, to the delight of the Jabiru’s dietary items.
This morning we are not targeting huge numbers of species, but several special birds.
The first ones come creeping out of the bushes around the jetty as the first rays of the sun emerge. These are Russet-Naped Wood Rails. Colours are a little exaggerated due to low light.
Aramides albiventris, meaning “White-Bellied resembler of a Limpkin [a Limpkin is a kind of heron]”. It’s a Middle American specialist, quite a large rail that doesn’t seem too concerned about our presence. It is silent, a pity, as its song is described as “a varied, rapid, crazed-sounding, rollicking, popping, and clucking series”.
Our captain shows up, and we get going, speeding across the lagoon. The first thing we see is a large raft of Lesser Scaup ducks. We chase them around until we can get a decent look. Why “Scaup”? No one knows. Its scientific name is also perplexing: Aythya affinis, meaning “related to an Aythya (an unknown seabird mentioned by Aristotle)”.
It’s one of the Americas’ most common and widely distributed species, although definitive pronouncements are hard to make as most people have trouble distinguishing it from the Greater Scaup in the field.
We carry on across the lagoon and briefly see a medium-sized bird far off in the mangroves. No idea what it is. We motor over, which takes a while, but is well worth it as it is a Mangrove Cuckoo, a cool and quite hard-to-see bird.
The species is widespread, ranging from Florida through both coasts of Mexico and Central America to perhaps as far as the mouth of the Amazon. It’s not limited to mangrove habitats, although this individual seems to like them. However, it’s very discreet, still, and skulking, and eBird says, “Its natural history remains almost a complete mystery”.
It’s always good to try to catch cuckoos in the early morning as they spread their wings to catch the sun and warm their thick feathers.
Gmelin called it Coccyzus minor, but as Strickland explained in his 1882 code, you shouldn’t use relative terms. This cuckoo is way bigger than many of the Asian species.
“Comparative names ... Specific names expressive of comparative size are also to be avoided, as they may be rendered inaccurate by the after-discovery of additional species. The names ... maximus, minor, minimus, etc. are examples of this objectionable practice” - Hugh Edwin Strickland, 1882
“Smaller cuckoo” is not really very helpful.
We see another bird in the crown of a tree at some distance and motor over to take a look. It turns out to be a Peregrine Falcon, which lets us approach and then wings off across the lagoon. Where have I seen them? Australia, the US, the UK, Singapore, Borneo, and India…it’s truly a ubiquitous species.
We start heading for the bank, which is alarming until, at the last moment, the captain makes a jog, and we are in a very narrow river, barely wider than our boat.
We sneak down the river, startling a couple of herons, and then we see the Jabiru! It’s black and white, so if it’s there, you can see it. But it’s blocked by a screen of plants. The captain eases us around the bend, I climb up in the prow, and there it is, so close.
It’s extraordinary - so big and rather weird-looking. We watch it wandering around feeding until it is lost from sight behind some bushes.
Most believe the name comes from the Tupí word Jabirú for “very big (bird)”, although Wiki says it is Tupí–Guaraní for “swollen neck”. It seems to me the most notable thing when you see it is that it’s big. Neck assessments come later. Over the years, the name has been confounded with storks from Africa, Australia, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
When I say it’s big, I mean it stands five feet tall, like a Rhea, and has a wingspan slightly less than a condor. It can weigh almost 20 lbs. So, it’s big. Oh, and it has a funny swollen-looking throat. They have to eat a lot to sustain that body, so they have particular requirements of flooded marshes that can provide them with a diet of fish, snakes, lizards, small caimans, mice, snails, and insects.
Its populations are scattered throughout Mexico and Central America, but most reside in South America, east of the Andes.
What a privilege to have this uncommon and striking animal close and active for an extended period. Although it’s hard to photograph because it’s white, we still have early morning light, so it works out.
As we progress, we see a Belted Kingfisher close. I have many shots from Florida and Maine, but those birds tend to be spooky. This one has confidence.
She is a female, as you can tell from the brown on her tummy. A migrant, the species has an enormous range, all the way from the Arctic Circle to Venezuela. They have a very distinctive “rattle” call.
As we’ve reached the further lagoon and we’re behind schedule, we turn around and head back up the river to a small stone building.
This is a place where Common Tody-Flycatchers are often seen. Sure enough, we hear a call and then see a pair of them.
We saw these in Ecuador - big-headed bulbous little Tyrannids with a pretty song. There are nineteen species of Tody-Flycatchers, and eight subspecies of this species, so they seem an effective design.
Now, we set off down a boardwalk, searching for an endemic subspecies of the Gray-Crowned Yellowthroat warbler—all except Kim, who stops to look at and photograph an orchid for Danny.
This Yellowthroat is apparently furtive and spooky, and we must keep our eyes peeled. One appears at a distance, and I fire off some shots.
It sees us and comes closer…and closer. I have to zoom out considerably. It’s RIGHT THERE.
It flutters its wing at us several times - not sure what this means.
It’s actually got a bit of a crest.
This is Geothlypis poliocephala (“Gray-headed ground bird”) of the palpebralis (“eyelid-flutterer”) Yucatán SS. The subspecies don’t seem very secure - I think the clumpers will be after them unless the molecular geneticists can come up with something.
Relative to Common Yellowthroats I know, this has a much stouter bill and is a bigger, longer-tailed bird. It is one of fourteen species of yellowthroats. One reason for this wide speciation is that it is mainly sedentary, so natural barriers create disjunctive populations that speciate.
We climb back into the boat and head off up the river, pausing to admire a Yellow Warbler.
Miguel mentions at one point that people like to float down the length of this river contemplating nature, and he wonders whether we might be interested. We think maybe not.
On arrival at the dock, we startle an Ant-Tanager.
It’s a reasonably common under-story bird that moves through the undergrowth in groups, and you normally hear it before you see it. A lot like laughingthrushes. A good name: Driophlox fuscicauda (“dusky-tailed flame of the bushes”). Probably the insularis subspecies, named for its occurrence on offshore islands.
So, that was Sian Ka’an. What a stork.
Lunch! We go for tacos. We like the chaya and ask for chaya and egg…and other good things. There are also chaya plants in pots.
So now what? Miguel knows some places and has a feeling…so off we go. We visit a couple of spots, one on the approach road to the airport and another some distance away, but the distinction isn’t important, so I will combine the results here. We hope to find the Red-Capped Manakin but have no luck, even though we are accompanied by the bloke who performs animal relocations for the airport and knows the area. We see our first Northern Schiffornis but don’t get a good picture. It defines the category of Little Brown Job.
Here’s a Bright-Rumped Attila. “Golly, is that Attila as in the Hun?”, you ask. Actually, yes it is. It apparently behaves in an aggressive manner, although we didn’t see any evidence of that during our time with multiple birds over the trip. It’s a tyrant flycatcher, Attila spadiceus, or “chestnut-coloured Attila”. As its range extends down into central Brazil, it was named in 1789 by Gmelin, much earlier than more localised Yucatán birds.
I’m guessing this is SS gaumeri after George Franklin Gaumer (1850–1929, U.S.), a zoologist, naturalist, botanist, and physician who lived in Mexico after 1884 and collected in Honduras and Mexico. He reported from Bonacca and Roatán. Gaumer contributed most of James Bond’s observation data from Honduras - and how many of us can say that?
Another sighting is of several aracaris. One of them squares up for a good look. Smaller and more social than bigger toucans, aracaris range across all of South America in various species. This is the northernmost species: Pteroglossus torquatus erythrozonus, the Yucatan SS “Red-belted collared feather tongue.” Miguel pronounces it with a hard C, although Andres in Ecuador pronounces it with a soft C. Maybe there is a Brazilian influence? It was originally spelled as araçari, but then jacana was originally spelled as jaçana, so who knows?
Also, we see some flitters around the undergrowth and mid-story. There are many reasons for complaining about bird names, and here’s a new one: too much information. Here are the Stubtailed Spadebill and the Eyeringed Flatbill. Try keeping that pair straight for more than about a minute. At least they look different…no, never mind.
They are both tyrant flycatchers (because not tanagers). The spadebill is a relatively common Middle American bush lurker whose scientific name means “short-tailed flatbill”. The flatbill is the same in all respects, except more mid-story, and its scientific name Rhynchocyclus brevirostris means “short-billed flatbill”. Rhynchocyclus is an anagram of the generic name Cyclorhynchus, but it’s unclear why. The things these guys get up to!
Now, we move again to that super-cool bird, the Rose-Throated Tanager, which we met in Yucatan Part 2. As you recall, this bird is endemic to the Yucatán. We see a pair of these sitting openly in a tree.
I think this is the nominate SS. The two others are located in the islands and in the more humid southern forests.
That leaves us only with a visit to Miguel’s home in the late afternoon. He has built himself a hobbit house with many reclaimed materials and good energy sources and planted bird-attracting trees. We spend some time with him and his wife and son, then go outside to chase the local Wedge-Tailed Sabrewing around.
Here it is perched up. You can see the long wings.
That’s our last day in the north for a while. Tomorrow, we will head south to Calakmul with a new guide., looking at habitats containing more humid forests and less dry scrub.
That aracari! I feel sad that when I travelled Central America I wasn’t into birding yet! Love to read your adventures.
Orchid sp duly admired!! That Rose throated Tanager is just amazing. And the pics of the grey crowned Yellowthroat are fabulous.....especially the one with the feather shadows on its flank. What a fabulous area. No bitey things tho??