Birds near Villahermosa and Palenque Mexico
March 8-16, 2007

Bare-throated Tiger-Heron Aztec Parakeet Fork-tailed Flycatcher

Double-striped Thick-knee Laughing Falcon Black-collared Hawk Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Snail Kite Scrub Euphonia Feruginous Pygmy-Owl Lineated Woodpecker

Gray-necked Wood-Rail Keel-billed Toucan Roadside Hawk

Groove-billed Ani Wood Stork Pinnated Bittern Limpkin

Bat Falcon Muscovy Duck

Black Vultures Scarlet-rumped Tanager Vermilion Flycatcher Lesser Nighthawk

Crested Caracara Long-tailed Hermit male Amazon Kingfisher

• Pinnated Bittern. We saw several of these the one day we spent birding the Jonuta Road.
• Bare-throated Tiger-Heron among lilies; Another individual; Looking straight toward the camera.
• Muscovy Duck
• Black Vultures as Monet might have depicted them; This one could model for an origami sculpture; Black Vulture getting his balance on a snag.
• Male Snail Kite; female Snail Kite; juvenile Snail Kite
• Black-collared Hawk profile.
• Roadside Hawk on a fence.
• Crested Caracara eating (I did not deliberately censor the victim!); another individual, on a post.
• Laughing Falcon  on a utility pole.
• Bat Falcon upright; another; the prey is a bird.
• Limpkins and snail kites eat apple snails. Many flooded fields on the Jonuta Road had a Limpkin and a Snail Kite in sight.
• Double-striped Thick-knee, side view.
• Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl; another. We had 3 that morning. These owls are diurnal.
• Lesser Nighthawk near the Chan Kah parking area; side view.
• female Amazon Kingfisher
• Lineated Woodpecker. We watched this individual for 10 minutes from our porch at Chan Kah; another individual and another.
• Vermilion Flycatcher unzoomed; ditto; thin looking Vermilion Flycatcher; another individual. The Mexican nickname for this species is brasilito de fuego (little coal of fire); female Vermilion Flycatcher; another female; yet another.
• Fork-tailed Flycatcher
• Female Scrub Euphonia; male Scrub Euphonia; another angle; Scrub Euphonia pair.
• Scarlet-rumped tanager on the public road near Chan Kah's entrance.

A Sampling of Other Bird Species Sighted:

• A Neotropic Cormorant has feet that can grasp as well as swim.
• Cattle Egrets
• Green Heron with raised crest. This Green Heron is tugging at something; Got it!
• Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks are dabblers.
• A pair of Blue-winged Teals plus another female.
• Sora
• Purple Gallinule
• Jacanas. Get a load of those feet!
• Royal Terns
• Pale-vented Pigeon (I think); another.
• female White-fronted Parrot (My tentative ID)
• Slaty-tailed Trogan
• Ringed Kingfisher; female Ringed Kingfisher; another female.
• Belted Kingfisher
• Golden-fronted Woodpecker; Note red vent area; browner-looking individual; underside of that same individual; upside-down individual, seen from our porch at Chan Kah.
• Tropical Mockingbird; investigating the post; another individual
.
• Yellow-bellied Flycatcher; another angle. Photographed from our porch at Chan Kah.
• Great Kiskadee (I think)
• Social Flycatcher
• Tropical Kingbird, a.k.a. T.K.
• Mangrove Swallows; one swallow; another.
• Brown Jay; another; an immature Brown Jay
• Clay-colored Robin; another angle.
• Black-and-white Warbler
• Wilson's Warbler
• Black-headed Saltator
• White-collared Seedeater; Another individual
• Melodious Blackbird; another.

Birds in Flight:

• Neotropic Cormorant
• White Ibises
• Black-bellied Whistling-Duck lifting off; getting horizontal; in flight; in formation.
• Wild Muscovy Duck taking off
• Blue-winged Teal; more.
• Snail Kite flying above Black-necked Stilts.
• A Bat Falcon hung out on the tower at the Palenque Mayan ruins.
• Limpkin taking off; in full flight.
• Black-necked Stilt taking off; mass uprising.
• Juvenile Jacana; adult, wings up, and wings down.
• Aztec Parakeet (a.k.a. Olive-throated Parakeet), though Howell & Webb show pale green where this photo shows yellow under the wing.
• I had an obstructed view of the branch where this flying Masked Tityra landed. It was seen from the low rent district of Chan Kah (across the road from the main driveway, up on a hill overlooking the canopy). I did photograph a Masked Tityra perching in Panama in 2005.
• Brown Jay in flight with fruit; that individual before takeoff.

Nesting Birds:

• Bare-throated Tiger-Heron on nest with chicks.
• Green Heron
• Gray-necked Wood Rail and chick.

Multiple Avian Species in the Same Frame:

• Brown Pelican, Sandwich and Royal Terns and more.
• Bare-throated Tiger-Heron and a Green Heron
• Little Blue Heron, Ibises, Black-bellied Whistling-ducks and more.
The White-faced Ibis and Glossy Ibis look alike to me (not to Rich) in the plumages they are in in March in Mexico.
• Tricolored Heron, Black-bellied Whistling-ducks, Roseate Spoonbill
• Blue-winged Teal and Black-bellied Whistling-Duck. Quite a size difference!
• Two Turkey Vultures and a Caracara.
• Snail Kite grabbing something and Black-necked Stilts; a moment later the Kite is overhead.
• Snowy Egret and Black-necked Stilt
• Black-necked Stilts, Greater Yellowlegs and Least Sandpiper.
• Great-tailed Grackle and Golden-fronted Woodpecker
• Red-winged Blackbird and Tropical Kingbird

Unidentified Birds:

• What shorebird is this?
• What Ground Dove? Blue?
• Tough Dove.
• Hummingbird, Chan Kah
• Mystery flycatcher
• Flycatcher
• White-throated Flycatcher perhaps; same bird??
• Maybe a Dusky-capped Flycatcher.
• Is this just a TK? Same individual.
• Flycatcher from the back
• Unidenified bird photographed from our porch at Chan Kah

Poor pictures, but the birds are identifiable:

• Least Grebe
• Squirrel Cuckoo; another angle
• Acorn Woodpecker; back view; I have yet to get the hang of digiscoping.
• Yucatan Jay; another. The yellow bill indicates it's immature.
• This American Redstart female hung out near our porch.
• A Hooded Warbler visited our yard and porch at Chan Kah repeatedly, yet I never got a good photo of it; top down.
• Red-throated Ant-Tanager also photographed from our porch.
• Painted Bunting I photographed this one on a country road, but we also had painted Bunting on the Chan Kah grounds.
• Hooded Oriole perhaps.
• Altamira Oriole; another.

Insects:

• Unidentified orange butterfly; another angle.
• White Peacock butterfly
• Unidentified black and red butterfly.
• Unidentified Yellow and black butterfly; Is this the same species?
• Unidentified black, yellow, and red butterfly
• Unidentified two-tone brown butterfly
• Damselfly in the car.
• Spider
• Grasshopper in the car.
• Leafcutter Ants.

• Howler Monkeys
• This lizard appears to be molting.
• Rose-bellied Lizard; another angle.
• Similar, but with a splash of red.
• Lizard with stripes.
• Another anole/lizard/gecko type animal
• Scorpion Mud Turtle from above; from below.
• Snake; snake eye
• Walking back from dinner in the dark at Chan Kah we heard something and turned our flashlight on it. It was a furry arboreal animal with very large eyes, upright ears, and a long tail. The next day we described it to the staff--though we did not have much Spanish nor they any English. They called it a "zorros." I know zorro means fox, but The Ecotravewllers' Wildlife Guide to Belize and Northern Guatamala by Les Beletsky, seems to apply it to Opossums too. We think we may have seen a Central American Woolly Opossum. Belize is about 200 miles to the East, and the Mexican state of Chiapas (where Palenque is located) borders Guatamala--Palenque looks to be about 120 miles from Guatamala as the crow flies. By the way, we touched on the Mexican State of Campeche the day we birded our way from Jonuta through the Usumacinta marshes to Hwy 186 and thence back to Villahermosa (Capital of the state of Tabasco).

People

• Caballeros: Through the rear-view mirror; working the marsh; Cowboy
• They paddle standing; a dog at the helm.
• Stauffer dining in Jonuta.
• Rich at the Jonuta restaurant.
• Rich and Herman
• Herman, Stauffer, and Rich
• Rich showing Herman and Eva a calling Ferruginous Pygmy Owl. Photo by Stauffer.
• Herman, Rich, and Stauffer on the Jonuta Road.
• We never saw the Least Bittern, but this is where we heard it just yards away.
• Herman on our porch at Chan Kah. It overlooked a stream. An Agouti crossed our yard while we were sitting there.
• Herman birding the road to the ruins.
• Herman at Palenque.
• Birding the highway
• Herman near the Misi-ha waterfall
• Fellow birders

Farm animals:

• Cow and nursing calf with a Cattle Egret lookout.
• Free range poultry: Hen with chicks; Turkey
• Goats
• Pig

Places and Things:

• The Mayan pyramid at Palenque was built without pack animals, metal tools, or the wheel!
• More Mayan ruins. A Bat Falcon hung out on that tower.
• The restaurant where we lunched in Jonuta. Eva's chipotole con robolo was delicious; fresh fish. (Spotted Gar)
• TV
• Lighthouse at the mouth of the Grijalva River.
• This is a side road off the road from Pakal and La Liberdad.
• The swimming pool at Chan Kah
where Eva enjoyed a swim every evening.
• Towel sculpture at Chan Kah.
• Pescata a la plancha; The fish and the fruit at Chan Kah are particularly good.
• House with a bridge.
• Bridge with a handrail.
• Footbridge in Mexico.
• Enhanced motorcycle.
• People on the trail behind the Misi-ha waterfall.
• Eva took this picture from behind the falls.
• The Cabeza de Maya is a major Palenque landmark.
• Statue of a Mayan woman.
• Statue of a Mayan man.
• One of the marshes where we failed to see a Masked Duck. They're said to feed at dusk.

Sinage:

• Jonuta, the City of Quality Adult Education.
• Urination forbidden
• Vermilion Flycatcher on the Pantanos Biosphere sign

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Wildlife sketches

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The photos on this page were taken with my Canon Digital Camera w/ 12X zoom lens.

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This page has been accessed times since May 17, 2007

Last revised: August 8, 2019