10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

I truly do hope I am not tiring 10,000 Birds’ readers too much with my obsession with Michoacán’s ongoing drought, the disappearance of Lake Cuitzeo (Mexico’s 2nd largest lake, in normal years), and our own micro-endemic Black-polled Yellowthroat. But obsessed I am. And it brought friends.

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Mexico Investigation Science Experience 213

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

This poorly documented swallow is a breeding endemic to these high mountains. Mexico is great for those who love biogeography! These striking and inquisitive jays were perhaps the bird of the trip for me, and we took our time to soak in the experience of encountering these wonderful birds. Photo by Andrew Spencer.

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Mexico Costa Rica Arizona Birds 190

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2022

So yes, this appears to be a breeding population.]. And since I don’t go to the lake very often in late spring, I rarely get to see these Avocets in their breeding plumage. Most Marbled Godwits breed in inland North America, and winter along the tropical coasts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

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Mexico 2018 Ducks Breeding 216

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

But it is the height of migratory season here in central Mexico, and that made me also spend some time thinking about this issue of connectivity, and the artificial separations we humans attempt to create. I am so recently arrived that I still have my Canadian (breeding) plumage. No identity politics here. I’m Black. west coast.

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United States North America America Mexico 237

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 19, 2022

Here in central Mexico, the winter season always seems to begin with the arrival of various members of the sandpiper family. I assume this is because so many of them breed in the Arctic and tundra regions, so their summer is much briefer than that of other birds. Let that be a lesson, to me. And when stilts party, they really party.

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Mexico Breeding Groups California 176

10,000 Birds

MAY 24, 2020

Breeding only above treeline on windswept and desolate rock faces (or equally austere habitats on the Aleutians), the three American rosy-finches (Gray-crowned, Black, and Brown-capped) are extreme environment specialists that are endemic to North America. In the summer, they are the highest altitude breeding songbird in North America.

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America Arizona North America Texas 262

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 30, 2017

It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that I was writing about the Surfbirds, and the long trip to their Alaska breeding grounds. With their spotted breasts, and still retaining some of the gold iridescence from their breeding plumage, it wont be long before they are off, on their way farther south. Well, they are back.

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Alaska Mexico Breeding Birds 101

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 1, 2015

In fact, they are central to many Mexican and Native American spiritual beliefs, and have been named the state bird of New Mexico. million breeding birds, Greater Roadrunners have a stable population (according to Partners in Flight). However, in real life Greater Roadrunners are quite different.

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New Mexico Mexico Coyotes Rattlesnake 101

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

The Colima Warbler has a distinction shared with no other species in the world: It is fully migratory, but both its summer reproductive range and its winter range are almost entirely within Mexico. (A A few breed in Texas’ Big Bend area.) All of our other migratory species either breed mostly in the U.S. So, lucky me!

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Mexico Birds South America Turkey 156

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 4, 2021

Those infinitely patient saints who read all my ramblings know that over the past year I have been obsessed with the gradual disappearance of Mexico’s second-largest lake, Lake Cuitzeo, just north of my home city of Morelia. The good news is that this summer central Mexico is experiencing its best rains since 2018.

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San Francisco 2018 Mexico Ducks 264

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 19, 2020

Northern Mockingbirds aren’t all that common in central Mexico, and for some reason, I rarely hear them sing here. Blue-black Grassquits are tiny birds, only four inches long, that are very common in subtropical savannah habitats from Mexico to Argentina. This male shows its full breeding color. Photo from Paso Ancho).

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Argentina Mexico California Breeding 203

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2022

American White Pelicans spend their winter months along the Gulf states, California, parts of Arizona, and Mexico down into Central America. They migrate north through the Western United States, breeding in pockets all the way up through Canada.

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Pelicans United States Canada Arizona 225

10,000 Birds

JULY 20, 2022

Alberto Lobato, an ornithologist from the eastern side of Mexico, would be in Morelia, and could we go birding? ” (Actually, Chivizcoyo is a common name for Mexico’s legendary Bearded Wood-Partridge.) Mexico boasts ten Swift species.) Quite a few of them are biologists. Now, Alberto is something of a celebrity.

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Mexico United States Breeding Penguins 147

10,000 Birds

JULY 8, 2020

One of the ways I could describe the unique mix of birds I can see here in southwestern Mexico, would be to divide our species into five categories. We also have many species that we share with the rest of Mexico, Central America, and/or the southwest of the United States. You have to know where to look for them.

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Mexico Birds Honduras United States 190

10,000 Birds

MARCH 5, 2024

These lands support countless birds, either year-round, as migratory stopovers, or as breeding grounds. In fact, the overwhelming majority of federal land is in just 11 western states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming). But what else should birders know?

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Virgin Islands Alaska United States Endangered Species 206

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 5, 2022

Cedar Waxwing: For most birders in Mexico, 2021 will be remembered as the year of the Waxwings. This is the only migratory warbler to live entirely within Mexico, breeding in the northeast and wintering in the southwest. White Ibises belong down on the coast of Mexico, which requires a 4-5 hour drive that I rarely make.

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Mexico Birds Virginia Barn Owls 216

10,000 Birds

APRIL 2, 2013

A breeding bird atlas is a special kind of book. For the nature lovers and birders who participate in breeding bird surveys, the atlas represents hours, often hundreds of hours, of volunteer time spent within a community of citizen scientists doing what they love, observing birds. So, what exactly does a breeding bird atlas contain?

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Pennsylvania Breeding Birds Sparrows 225

10,000 Birds

JUNE 24, 2020

The Yellow-green Vireo is another of those rare birds that winter in South America but only travels north as far as Mexico to breed. Three years ago, when I had the privilege of showing one of my favorite sites to Mexico’s top birder couple, they noticed a Yellow-green Vireo in the brush and pointed it out to me.

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Mexico Lamb Nicaragua Sparrows 239

10,000 Birds

JULY 21, 2021

The first words describing this species in Wikipedia are “poorly-documented” Before 2015, when I first saw it in Paso Ancho, it had only been reported twice on eBird outside of its Sierra Madre Occidental breeding range: once from Taxco, Mexico, and another report from Nicaragua. This is the Cacique. And this is its nest.

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2016 2015 Nicaragua Mexico 261

10,000 Birds

MAY 12, 2022

Jonathan is originally from San Blas on Mexico’s west coast, a birder’s paradise I have yet to visit. Snowy Plovers also breed half an hour north of my home, so we have those in common. With so few birding “boots on the ground”, many of Mexico’s best spots are yet to be discovered.

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San Diego Turtles Mexico Sparrows 247

10,000 Birds

APRIL 29, 2020

Both are beginning to show their reproductive plumage, which is a rare sight here in Mexico. But it was the Long-billed Dowitchers who were really rocking their breeding plumage. How on earth do they breed so quickly up north?) I leave you with a few of these images: This White-faced Ibis is also rocking its breeding plumage.

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Mexico Breeding Ducks North America 163

10,000 Birds

JULY 7, 2021

and Canada and winter in northeastern Mexico, while the sedentary wrens of central Mexico, Central America, and South America are now to be identified as Grass Wrens. But its two mixed-breed children would make an 80’s British soccer club proud, with their punk hairstyles. It is quite old, and quite, well, hairless.

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Barn Owls Owls Mexico Leopards 256

10,000 Birds

APRIL 13, 2022

The only one that occurs in western Mexico, where I live, is the Gray-breasted Wood-Wren. Central Mexico has a resident high-altitude population of these tiny birds, a full 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of their nearest breeding relatives in the U.S. Still, its song is memorable when heard.

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Mexico South America Species America 188

10,000 Birds

MAY 4, 2022

A pair of male Western Tanagers , colored up for courtship when it arrives up north … Unfortunately for me, they only get this colorful when they are about to leave central Mexico. This species, however, sticks around to breed. A female Hepatic Tanager. And a male Hepatic Tanager , also in his prenuptial finery.

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Humane Wildlife Mexico Breeding 198

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 16, 2020

It was the month of March, 2017, when I went to Lake Cuitzeo to check up on our migratory waterfowl and shorebirds one last time before they travelled north to breed. Lake Cuitzeo is Mexico’s second largest lake, and its uniformly shallow waters make it a powerful magnet for dabbling ducks and shorebirds. Which is a good thing.

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Rights 2020 2017 Blackbirds 262

10,000 Birds

MARCH 17, 2021

The most common one, Manila tamarind, is wildly inaccurate, since the tree is native to southwestern Mexico, not Manila, and its only connection to tamarind trees is that both are in different subfamilies of the huge legume family. I go there every year around this time, because in 2016 I saw Sinaloa Martins migrating north to breed.

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2016 2020 Mexico California 273

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Pallas’s Gull also breeds at Qinghai Lake, though the numbers are sadly much reduced: “The numbers breeding at L Qinghai, China, has apparently fallen from > 87,000 in 1970s to c. The Tibetan plateau also has a crane species breeding here, the Black-necked Crane. 15,000 in 2006” (HBW). of time loafing, 17.5%

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China Birds 2006 Fish 215

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 23, 2022

Most of our readers are not likely to be able to ID this bird, because it only occurs in Mexico and Guatemala. The Olive-sided Flycatcher breeds in Canada and the western United States, and winters mostly in northern South America. Fortunately, I had managed a collection of very bad photos before the bird flew off.

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Mexico Guatemala South America United States 179

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

It’s not clear how many of the plates have been touched up, redrawn or are new, and I hope we’ll learn more about the process, perhaps when the third book in the series by Howell and Dyer, a new guide to the birds of Mexico, is published.* Why are these issues? I love the writing here. Author Steve N. © 2023 by Steve N.

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Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 210

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

For us, it’s all about birds moving north during the warm season to breed, and south to escape the winter cold. Those that move south to Mexico in the fall come as much for the abundance of winter food sources, as for winter warmth. I suspect that for hummingbirds, temperature is not the only factor.

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Mexico Alaska Falcons Raised 177

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2014

There are two Painted Bunting populations, one that breeds along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Florida and one that breeds in the interior United States and northern Mexico from southeastern New Mexico to western Mississippi. The Atlantic Coast population lingers on the breeding grounds after nesting to molt.

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Mississippi Mexico Alabama North Carolina 268

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 28, 2019

One of the ironies of birding in North America is that the easiest way to see many species that breed on the shores of the Arctic Ocean is to go to tropical coastlands. Whimbrels, Sanderlings, and Semipalmated Plovers are all species that breed in the extreme north, but there they were in the suffocating heat of Lázaro Cárdenas.

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North America Mexico Breeding America 121

10,000 Birds

JUNE 3, 2020

Especially when I compare it with the other cowbird present in central Mexico, the Brown-headed Cowbird. Its historical year-round range stretches from extreme northwestern Colombia to northern Mexico, with migration into the southwestern United States in the summer. A rare photo (for me) of a glossy male and its more drab partner.

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Birds Blackbirds Mexico Cattle 154

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 9, 2020

Splits were once a much more subjective determination, based on differences in appearance, vocalizations, habits, and breeding preferences. But you pretty much must come to Mexico to see the Mexican Duck , which I see every time I go to our nearest lake. Western Mexico’s Cinnamon-rumped Seedeater , split since 2018.

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San Diego San Francisco Mexico Baltimore 174

10,000 Birds

MAY 3, 2022

It stops those thousands of migrating birds flying across the Gulf of Mexico and directs them right onto the trees, fields, sanctuaries, beaches along the Bolivar Peninsula, where they hopefully find food and fresh water. High Island in April requires Weather, so I was told. Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Clapper Rail. Back to the Flats.

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Houston Texas Sanctuary Sparrows 207

10,000 Birds

MAY 23, 2020

Yes, the birding is truly exciting but we just don’t have the annual parade of breeding plumaged, singing warblers, grosbeaks, and orioles. Yes, another bird looked for by North American birders in places just north of Mexico. Watch for this one in the undergrowth of middle elevation cloud forest. Golden-crowned Warbler.

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Costa Rica Panama Nashville North America 264

10,000 Birds

MAY 20, 2023

The Kirtland’s Warbler is an endangered bird species that breeds primarily in the jack pine forests of northern Michigan. Specifically, the warbler’s primary breeding range is concentrated in a few counties in the northern Lower Peninsula and the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

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United States Michigan Texas Virginia 162