Five Birds in Five Minutes in Mazatlán

I didn't expect to be very busy when I discovered my year-end holiday cruise was stopping in Mazatlán on Christmas Day. While the cruise line was selling excursions for the day - a city tour, a trip to villages in the nearby Mountains, etc. - I remained incredulous that the tour guides and bus drivers would actually want to spend their Navidad working.

Well it turned out that while much of this Mexican port city's population was certainly at home celebrating the holiday, for many of the people it was just another day to wait tables, sell crafts, and drive tourists to the beach. Nonetheless, I decided to have a very quiet day with a leisurely breakfast on the ship followed by a morning stroll through the oldest part of town.

While so much of the United States was experiencing dangerously cold temperatures and blinding snowstorms, Mazatlán was unbelievably pleasant with clear skies and temperatures in the 70's. I couldn't give myself a more wonderful Christmas present.

On my last trip to the city, also via a cruise ship, I went birding in the harbor, through the nearby estuaries, and on pastoral Stone Island. Memories of cinnamon hummingbirds and tri-colored herons filled my mind when I lugged my heavy 400mm zoom lens off the ship. I was bound to spot some birds on my city walk.

However across the quiet neighborhoods and through the charming historic city center, all the way to the shoreline cliffs with commanding views of the Zona Dorada and its beachfront hotels, I used the camera only once. It was to catch a cliff diver in mid-dive, a shot that cost me a dollar's contribution to a solicitor for a divers' fund. There were very few birds except for pigeons feeding in the plazas and pelicans gliding over the surf.

Quite a while later, almost back on my cruise ship the Koningsdam, I finally noticed a hummingbird in a home's front yard. Breaking the cardinal rule of never directing your lens toward a private residence's window, I took aim at a feeder and its visitor: a broad-billed hummingbird. I was relieved to finally do some real birding in Mazatlán!

The species wasn't new for me, as its breeding range extends into the southern part of Arizona. I've even seen it in northern Pinal County. Yet it was rewarding to witness it in an area that it calls a year-round home. And at last, I could justify carrying the heavy weight of my camera and lens all morning.

But it wasn't going to be a "one and done" kind of birding day for me because only a minute later, the distinctive calls of parrots drew my attention to the canopy of trees above the quiet street's median. Overhead was a pair of orange-fronted parakeets, another native species to that region of Mexico. In fact, it was another example of a bird I was familiar with, having seen it earlier in the year in Yelapa, a tiny village on the rugged Pacific coast south of Puerto Vallarta.

I don't know what it was about that tree - some kind of pine - but over the course of only a couple minutes, I identified three other species of birds hunting throughout its needled branches. Two were quite common in Arizona also, a male lesser goldfinch and an orange-crowned warbler. However it was the third one that most intrigued me because it would take some research to later identify: a cinnamon-rumper seedeater. A bird I've never seen or even heard of - now that's what I call exhilarating birding!!

American seedeaters are in a family with tanagers and mostly live in Central and South America. One exception is the Morelet's seedeater which used to be quite common in South Texas and only very recently has reappeared. The cinnamon-rumped looked very finch-like in terms of size and bill.

Five fun finds in the span of five minutes: was it a Christmas Miracle? As long as you know where to look, it was probably just another beautiful winter day in Mazatlán.