Birdwatching in Mazatlán's Parque Central

Ever since my last visit to Mazatlán a year ago, my thoughts were on a tufted jay, an endemic bird found in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Sinaloa and two neighboring Mexican states. During that trip, the tour guide taking my ship's group to the mountains even saw one from our bus as we took a busy highway out of the bustling port city. I never witnessed the bird myself, even when we stopped at several towns in mountain communities like Concordia and Copala.

On my return to Mazatlán this month, I sought out the assistance of a birding guide to take me around the area in pursuit of the tufted jay and other endemic birds. Unfortunately no one was available to escort me on the single day that my ship was in port. However the tour company Birdwatching Mazatlán did offer me advice on where to go birding in the city. As a result, for only a ten-dollar taxi ride, I found myself in the city's Parque Central, an extensive expanse of landscaped parkland within sight of the towering hotels and condominiums that line the sun-drenched beaches of the city. After almost two hours gazing up into the park's trees, I could happily attest that birdwatching remained the biggest single attraction for me in Mazatlán and Sinaloa.

However the very first birds that caught my attention in the park were actually big disappointment; the grackles, pigeons, house sparrows, lesser goldfinches, and house finches already lived in almost every city park in the world. Even the Gila woodpeckers were the very same species visiting my yard back home in Phoenix. Some yellow-colored warblers were examples of migratory birds that were wintering in the area after spending at least part of their summers in Arizona. In that general category was also what I later identified as a plumbeous vireo, finally a brand new bird for me. In addition, the great kiskadees and tropical kingbirds gave me some hope, indicating I was in the tropics, far from home.

I aimed my camera into the trees to observe, snap, and identify them all, distracted only by the noise of busy traffic on the adjacent Avenida Leonismo Internacional bordering the entire length of the park, almost a full mile. I was also surprised by the large number of maintenance staff and construction workers which apparently were part of a team finishing renovations to the grounds. Security personnel and, shortly after, machine gun-toting soldiers from the Guardia Nacional also appeared in the mix. Using some basic Spanish, I discovered there was a VIP touring the park at that very moment. I heard the word Presidente but I'm pretty sure Claudia Sheinbaum wasn't there. Instead, I later learned, it was probably the city's Presidente Municipal, the term Americans often translate as mayor or county executive. News stories the week before reported on a Mexican mayor's assassination amidst the pervasive drug cartel violence so I guess I was witnessing the necessary precautions.

I walked along a fresh water lagoon that bordered the other side of the park where I identified American coots, yet more common birds residing in my hometown. Soon I veered into a copse of trees that sheltered restrooms and other small buildings like the one hosting a local astronomy club. Another seemed to house barking dogs in cages better suited to display zoo animals. Amid some flowering plants I snapped shots of a female broad-billed hummingbird, a species that doesn't range as far north as Phoenix but that I've witnessed between Tucson and the Mexican border. And then a flash of yellow alerted me to a streaked-back oriole, and then a swatch of rufous color amidst some leaves to an orchard oriole, two birds almost impossible to see in Arizona. They were also two species I'd never seen before so I finally was on the trail of some intriguing discoveries.

Two more observations of local birds, a northern grey saltator and a cinnamon-rumped seedeater gave me yet another chance to see more endemic birds of Mexico and the region. I was meandering close to the Parque Central's southern end, near Mazatlán's public aquarium, when I followed the shrill calls of a raptor and identified a gray hawk. It was a striking, tropical species that occasionally ranges into the United States but where I've never witnessed it. A nearby ash-throated flycatcher didn't appear threatened by the hunter at all. Neither did some tanagers, either female or immature, that could have been of the summer variety. But I don't think they were flame-colored tanagers, an immature male example of the family which I soon spotted. It was an exciting, first find and a bird I'd probably only ever encounter south of the border.

As I made my way to the park's exit - the same as the entrance, one way both in and out - I spied some noisy orange-fronted parakeets in a tree fifteen feet above my head. They weren't the tufted jays I had hoped to find on my short day in Mazatlán, but they were colorful and animated. I was near the very start of their habitat that stretched from right about there, near the city, south along coastal Mexico and Central America all the way to Costa Rica.

Along that coast the next day, in the mountains south of Puerto Vallarta, I'd encounter at least three different jay species, including a brand new one for me, the black-throated magpie jay. But first I'd have to navigate past the Mexican marine infantry with their truck-mounted machine guns stationed at the park's entrance in order to reach a taxi stand and, finally, my ship.