Alamos: An Alamos Sample, and Heading Back to Arizona

 August 5th: An Alamos Sample

Arroyo Uvalama really kicked our ass!  For our last full day, August 5th, we still had some hardcore birding plans, and also lots of chill time because we were freaking tired.  The plan for the 5th was to spend a few more early hours at the Puente side of Rio Cuchujaqui to try for a remote possibility of Crane Hawk, as well as to try and get visuals on Purplish-backed Jay after getting one as a heard only on August 2nd.  Another bird I was hoping for (a lifer) was Black-vented Oriole, which are around Alamos in solid numbers.  A birding trip isn't a birding trip without a miss from a bird that is more expected.  After birding the river, the day was "play it by ear" and we then had set plans to go owling at night to try for Mottled Owl and Middle American Screech-Owl. 

After sleeping in a little longer than usual, we left after 6 and arrived at the Rio Cuchujaqui via Puente at 6:56 A.M.  The humidity was very bad during this morning, and at times uncomfortable.  Regardless, the location was very active "as usual" as we hung out by the bridge while watching and listening.  When I took a bathroom break, Caleb and Scott had two larger, darker swifts fly over.  Caleb felt like they were likely Black Swifts.  When I walked away from the bridge again, a call coming from one of the slopes struck me as a Purplish-backed Jay, and immediately Caleb yelled it out.  I ran back to the bridge and we could hear the Jay calling on the slope north of the bridge.  Luckily, the bird emerged from the surrounding TDF and flew across the open, and we had good looks at it in flight.  As we kept patient, the Purplish-backed Jay kept moving closer and closer to the road as it foraged.  Eventually, we got great looks at this striking bird.  After Caleb and Scott walked back down to the bridge, it continued to give me great views for several minutes as it was inquisitive.  Surely a fun, cool-looking bird.  The Purplish-backed Jay has a small range and is confined to West Mexico (more northwest Mexico, really).  We spent 1 hour and 15 minutes at Rio Cuchujaqui as the humidity was not fun.  And of course, we were freaking tired from the Sierra De Alamos climb at Arroyo Uvalama.  In the shorter time we spent, we had a good variety of 55 species.  The species present were similar to those that were present during our first morning here.  And in a fun way, still no Black-vented Oriole!  Caleb mentioned how awesome the Cuchujaqui is during the winter time, too.

Sierra De Alamos in the background, we were all the way up there previous day!

Crested Caracara

The Purplish-backed Jay!

Canyon Wren at the Puente bridge

From the Birding Journal

We went back to El Pedregal for breakfast, and they had an awesome small restaurant setup in the main building.  An omelette breakfast was my choice of food, and it was epic.  Following breakfast for the next few hours, it was chill time for Scott and Caleb, but it was birding time for me.  Even though it was very humid, I went out to hike the trails of Parque La Colorado for a few hours.  My goal was to find Russet-crowned Motmot one more time-I love that freaking bird.  I birded the trails for 2.5 hours starting at 9:55 A.M.  At times the humidity got to me so bad I had to take breaks, and at times I could feel my heartbeat in my eardrum.  And on this hike, I couldn't find any Motmots.  I went back to the spot where we had them on August 2nd and searched slowly and listened for them without any luck.  There were other fun birds present though, and to my surprise came an epic find when I stumbled across a Lesser Roadrunner on the trail at a very close range.  It was shy at first and went into thick cover, only to come back to the trail again to cintinue foraging.  At times it was 15-20 feet away from me, and it was gathering large caterpillars an bugs, perhaps feeding young nearby.  The encoutner was epic and lasted for about 10 minutes before the Roadrunner ran out of sight.  Further into the hike I heard the/or another Lesser Roadrunner in song for about 10 minutes, and it was a good opportunity to study it's audio.  This wasn't a bird I expected here, and it was awesome.  I had 38 species for this hike.

Elegant Quail

Common Ground-Dove

White-tipped Dove

Lesser Roadrunner!

Gray Hawk

Yellow Grosbeaks

Tortoise on the trail

After Scott and I went into town (Caleb stayed at the Lodge) and got lunch (spaghetti for me, and it rocked!) and a few groceries, I came right back to Parque La Colorado again.  It had become cloudy as a monsoon storm was coming in.  After starting at 2:52 P.M., I spent the next 1.5 hours pursuing Russet-crowned Motmot more.  This effort was tunnel visioned and I went quickly to that spot where we had them.  Almost right when I walked around the spot, I heard a Motmot calling!  It was back in thick TDF, close to the trail but off the trail well enough to where I couldn't see it.  I decided to bushwhack through the habitat, and I found the Motmot sitting there in a shaded perch as it called.  As I made another movement the bird flew back toward the trail.  It didn't stay there long, and it flew over the trail and toward another trail, just below the trail that I was on.  Another Motmot started calling and it kicked up and flew toward the direction the other one went.  Both birds started calling in between both trails and were hard to locate.  Music that started blasting from a nearby party in town below the slopes I was on made it harder to continue hearing them.  The Motmots played "hard-to-get", and eventually I caught sight of them as they flew over the lower trail.  One of them landed trailside after the other did the same thing, but they were both very shy and weren't giving me long looks at all.  I walked back and fourth for awhile, and it started raining a little.  It was impressive to see a flock of Black-throated Magpie-Jays flying right over me as I hiked, and one of them perched eye level for me and I was able to snap a few pictures.  Seemingly out of the blue, one of the Motmots came back, and flew into a tree along the trail.  It was silent, and I had a few good views before it flew right up to the upper trail.  At this point, I could hear them vocalizing again, and I went up to the upper trail.  As I got closer I moved slowly toward the calls, and on an overhanging branch right over the trail, sat one of the Motmots.  It was a great view of the entire bird, and it twitched it's tail from side-to-side like a pendulum a few times as I watched it.  I was able to photograph this sequence too, and it was awesome to see the racket tips at the end of the Motmot's tail.  And then the rain started up more and there was lightning in multiple directions-meaning-it was time to head back.  It was an awesome time to see and learn more about Motmots in the field.

Russet-crowned Motmot!

Elegant Quail

Thick-billed Kingbird

Black-throated Magpie-Jay

From the Birding Journal

Caleb, Scott, and I then went and got dinner in Alamos not long after I got back.  An Alamos dinner was awesome yet again, and after going to the lodge to get stuff for owling, we made our way to go owling.  The location we went to was in Upper TDF habitat, and was about a 10 minute drive.  We went up a dirt road from a dump with burning trash, and we parked at a gate where hiking was permitted past the gate (cords: 26.995608, -108.941457).  Caleb told us this area was great for Mottled Owl, and a little lower in elevation along the same road was good for Middle American Screech-Owl.  When we started owling, it was 8:01 P.M. and it was raining.  The rain wasn't bad, but was more than sprinkling as we hoped it wouldn't increase.  Minutes after we started, Caleb pointed out a Mottled Owl calling in the valley below us.  The bird was far away, and it was unlikely that we'd be able to call it in.  We walked past the gate and into the middle of the upper TDF habitat.  In the first stop we tired at, we didn't have any owls, but the second time was the time.  As Caleb tried calling them in, a Mottled Owl called close by.  I turned my light on and shined it up to where the call was coming from, and there the Mottled Owl was!  It was about 30 feet up in the tree, and it stared back at us some.  It vocalized often with it's typical loud and harsh hoot calls, and it also gave a series of calls that are somewhat similar to Western Screech-Owl.  It was freaking awesome, and this was my 20th life owl and the first outside of the United States.  Getting this owl was something I've really wanted for a long time-to see an owl outside of the U.S.  Mottled Owl is in the strix genus, a genus which includes Spotted and Barred Owls (and even Great Gray Owl).  These owls are fairly large, but as I watched them in the field I believe they are smaller than Spotted Owls.  Mottled Owls range from much of Mexico (absent in some areas) and throughout much of the tropic of South America.  They've even been found a few times in southern Texas as their range in east Mexico is close to the Texas border.

Mottled Owl 🦉!!

As we watched this Mottled Owl, it was joined by another, and then another pair flew in and investigated.  The calls were loud and they were always close as they called, but the habitat made them surprisingly hard to find.  We climbed on the slopes to try and see them better and it was still hard to find them visually.  What a fun time it was.  In the 1.5 hours we spent, we also heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo calling away.  We also tried for Middle American Screech-Owl for about 30 minutes without luck.  What a way to close out the final full day of the trip-with 5 Mottled Owls and with awesome views of one of them.  When we got back to El Pedregal, I was freaking exhausted from Arroyo Uvalama and from more extended hiking when searching for Motmots.  We initially planned to owl more (which included the Parque La Colorado Trails for Screech-Owl), but all of us were pooped and lost interest after the first 2 hours of owling.

From the Birding Journal

August 6th:  Heading Back

August 6th was the day where we headed back to Arizona.  What an awesome 4 full days of birding that we had, and we headed out of Alamos around 7 A.M. and would drive almost straight back to Arizona.  We did have one more mini expedition that we would attempt, and that was to look for Cinnamon-bellied Saltator right in the town of Alamos.  This was another potential life bird for me, and in Alamos they like weedy areas and garden areas in midst of neighborhoods.  Caleb explained that they are quite skulky, but they do have a loud, distinctive song.  We went to a weedy field area in midst of a neighborhood to look, and it didn't take us long to hear a Saltator singing as we drove in.  Once we gt out and birded in the weedy areas, we heard another start singing and it was much closer to us.  Scott then spied it singing from an exposed perch and we all got decent looks at it before it dropped down into the surrounding neighborhood yards.  It was cool to see, and it became the first member of the Saltator family I've seen.  This bird ranges from west Mexico south to Central America.  The Saltator seemed like it went about it's way and didn't stay up long enough for a photo, and we decided to call it a birding trip.  In 13 minutes at the Saltator spot starting at 7:02 A.M., we did have a solid list that included Bronzed Cowbird chicks being fed by a Tropical Kingbird, numerous Painted Buntings and Blue-black Grassquits, and a Cinnamon-rumped Seedeater.  It took us about 8 hours to drive back to the border, and then we had to wait over two hours in line to get back into Arizona.  What a trip.  Thank you Caleb and Scott.

In one of the best birding trips I've been on, we recorded many species in Alamos in a relatively short time.  For my personal list, I got 126 different species.  Alamos was filled with awesome birds from birds that are common in Arizona, common birds in Alamos that are rare in Arizona, and an awesome cast of species found in the tropics as we birding in the northern edge of the tropics.  29 new birds became lifers for me, and my now "World" life list stands at 679 species.  It feels freaking awesome to have birds on my list that have never been recorded in the United States. 

Out of my 29 lifers, 21 of them haven't been recorded in the United States.  The 29 life birds I got were: Rufous-bellied Chachalaca, Elegant Quail, Lesser Roadrunner, Squirrel Cuckoo, Mangrove Cuckoo, Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, Mottled Owl, Russet-crowned Motmot, Lineated Woodpecker, White-fronted Parrot, Lilac-crowned Parrot, Mexican Parrotlet, Military Macaw, White-striped Woodcreeper, Social Flycatcher, Black-throated Magpie-Jay, Purplish-backed Jay, Sinaloa Crow, Happy Wren, Blue Mockingbird, Brown-backed Solitaire, West Mexican Euphonia, Black-headed Siskin, Rusty-crowned Ground-Sparrow, Rusty Sparrow, Yellow Grosbeak, Blue-black Grassquit, Cinnamon-rumped Seedeater, and Cinnamon-bellied Saltator. 

More "expected" lifers that were missed on the trip were Colima Pygmy-Owl, Gray-crowned Woodpecker, and Black-vented Oriole (biggest miss of the trip, fun, I'll get one next time).  Scarcer Alamos species that are possible that we kept an eye out for were Elegant Euphonia, Ivory-billed Woodcreeper, Crane Hawk, Laughing Falcon, Middle American Screech-Owl, Gray Silky-Flycatcher, and Pale-billed Woodpecker.

All these birds make Alamos richly freaking awesome.  And of course I enjoyed species in numbers I don't see much of in Arizona like Berylline Hummingbird, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Rose-throated Becard, Thick-billed Kingbird, Yellow-green Vireo, Sinaloa Wren, Rufous-backed Robin, Tropical Parula, Fan-tailed Warbler, and Rufous-capped Warbler.

Concluding, birding outside of the United States for the first time has made me hungry for more.  I hope to go to a Central American or South American country soon.  Aside from birds, going to Alamos also opened my eyes to how thankful I am to live in the U.S.  There's a lot of poverty in Mexico, and it makes me realize that I have a lot.  Back to birding, I'd live to visit Alamos again.  Caleb has mentioned going in the winter months, when there are a lot more species present as species come lower in elevation.  Who knows where I'll end up next on a future trip outside the U.S., but one thing is for certain and that is that Alamos was the perfect place to get this started.

Later El Pedregal