Guided Birdwatching near Puerto Vallarta

Encountering another dozen new bird species was exactly what I wanted to do on my single day off the Royal Princess cruise ship in Puerto Vallarta. Of course I only dreamed that was what the day had in store for me when I booked Alejandro as a birdwatching guide almost two months earlier. While planning the visit, I had let him know that I was hoping to see some tropical birds in Mexico's interior like trogons, parrots, motmots, and hummingbirds - with only one exception, that's exactly what I accomplished.

On the same cruise a year earlier, I had visited the Vallarta Botanical Gardens where I encountered at least sixteen different bird species, eleven of them new-to-me tropical varieties like yellow-winged caciques and San Blas jays. Only a half-hour drive southwest of the busy port city, the garden showcased a variety of cultivated plants in a mountainous forest preserve bisected by the rainy season rapids of the Rio Los Horcones.

I was excited to explore more of Puerto Vallarta's surrounding sylvan landscape with Alejandro but was surprised when he decided to forego the itinerary we had discussed via emails. Instead of visiting sites between the Mirador Mojoneras and Rancho Las Vegas to the east of town, we drove south and began our tour in a parking area directly across the road from the Vallarta Botanical Gardens. In a way, I was disappointed when two already familiar denizens of the park, a San Blas jay and a great kiskadee, appeared overhead. But I trusted my guide and his reputation and looked forward to our day together.

We were actually at the start of a steep, rutted, dirt road that cut into the forest and which we started hiking. In dense foliage we heard the calls of blue mockingbirds and happy wrens. I photographed a streaked-back oriole and a greenish elaenia, a flycatcher found throughout Latin America. Golden vireos and blue-gray gnatcatchers flittered within the bushy trees along the road. Meanwhile mosquitos feasted on my exposed arms and legs. I was relieved to get back in the car to exchange my shorts for pants and to layer a long sleeve shirt over my t-shirt before we began the drive into the mountains.

Alejandro stopped the car when he spotted a common black hawk swoop into the woods. There were also vultures overhead and a social flycatcher perched nearby. When he pointed out a groove-billed ani, I quickly jumped out to photograph it. I had never seen an ani, a bird in the same family with the cuckoo.

Further along the road we entered a dark expanse of forest where tall trees towered over a steep hillside. For the second time, Alejandro played bird calls from a loudspeaker clipped to his shirt. It hadn't worked too well back in the mosquito den but it soon drew the attention of a Colima pygmy owl, an endemic bird only found in Western Mexico. The diurnal bird reminded me of an elf owl that by contrast is active at night. Right after this discovery, we watched a bat falcon, a diminutive raptor named for one of its favorite prey.

Driving precipitous and storm-ravaged roads, we stopped when a squirrel cuckoo appeared in the bushes ahead. I was reminded of my first encounter with this bird earlier in the year in the Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. It made me start to think we were finally on the trail of some especially exciting discoveries.

We next entered a sparse settlement called Ejido Emiliano Zapata, a track of communal land where locals lived and farmed. It was also a gateway to trails that lead into protected habitat for jaguars. We walked across a suspension bridge crossing the Rio Los Horcones looking for kingfishers but failed to sight a single bird of any kind. However there was no shortage of butterflies at that location or any of the other stops throughout the day. I would never be able to keep track of the many varieties we witnessed, but I was in awe of one especially large white species that my guide attested was the largest in Mexico.

Back in the sleepy community a protective dog was still barking when Alejandro started playing another recording to attract endemic black-throated magpie jays. At first we only noticed some West Mexican chachalacas in the untended garden patches. But soon curious San Blas jays, yellow-winged caciques, and green jays all materialized in the surrounding trees. Before long, loud squawks drowned out the loudspeaker when three black-throated magpie jays flew overhead and landed in a tall tree beside us. We couldn't miss their floppy crests and their strikingly-long tails trailing in flight. I had missed seeing the tufted jay in Mazatlán the day before, so this encounter was a wonderful consolation prize.

We seemed to be at the end of the road in this small corner of Puerto Vallarta but we weren't finished finding birds. A russet-crowned motmot perched quietly on a branch in the shade of a grove of trees while a golden-cheeked woodpecker hunted higher in the canopy. I identified at least one dove, an Inca, photographed my first Sinaloa wren, and witnessed one more squirrel cuckoo while several orange-fronted parakeets passed noisily overhead. Alas no luck finding any pale-billed woodpeckers or lilac-crowned parrots.

As we made our way back down the rutted road, those trogons from my initial wish list were still on our minds. I thought I spotted one fly into the forest as the car approached a hairpin turn but the foliage was too dense and dark to confirm anything. Fortunately Alejandro still had ideas up his sleeve.

We stopped outside a walled compound where we spied another groove-billed ani among some black birds that might have been grackles. Overhead were boat-billed flycatchers and thick-billed kingbirds sitting on spindly tree branches. My guide played some recordings that sounded like clucks while he peered across the road into the forest.

We were calling trogons but instead we soon encountered a male masked tityra, one more brand-new bird for me. However within a couple of minutes we succeeded in attracting at least one elegant trogon, a brightly-colored male. I was overjoyed even though I've seen the species back home in Arizona where they range into the southern part of the state. He was difficult to photograph behind branches and leaves but I succeeded in capturing two decent shots.

It was good practice with the camera because Alejandro's loudspeaker attracted one more trogon, and this time it was a new bird for me, the citreoline. This male was quite far away, and showed only his emerald-green back from our position, but when we walked up the road we got a better view of his bright yellow torso and eyes. Awestruck, we observed him for close to ten minutes before we decided to leave this trogon hotspot.

We had been birdwatching several hours and there was still time in the schedule to visit Rancho Primavera, a popular location for Alejandro's tours. With the new jay and the new motmot and then the new trogon, all of them quite showy birds, I was feeling satisfied. Of course I'd only seen one unidentifiable hummingbird high in a tree, but I was also starting to miss the comfort of my cruise ship. So we decided to call the outing a half-day tour instead of a three-quarter one and head back to town and the port.

The Vallarta Botanical Gardens appeared as we joined the main road to the city and we soon reached the coastline. We passed the buildings near Mismaloya Beach where Alejandro had pointed out some Sinaloa martins that morning. Suddenly turning off the road and driving into a community that hugged the steep hillside, Alejandro mentioned something about finding hummingbirds in the neighborhood. Instead we watched military macaws fly overhead and land in the trees lining the lane. I had plenty of time to exit the car and snap some first-time shots of these stunning parrots.

The macaws were a spectacular end to a fantastic customized birdwatching experience in Puerto Vallarta that included dozens of different species. And wolfing down a big slice of New York-style pizza was a fantastic way to celebrate back on my ship. New hummingbirds like the golden-crowned emerald and the plain-capped starthroat would just have to wait until my next visit.