A Guide to Birding Puerto Peñasco

One of the big draws to continue heading south to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico was to continue looking for more unusual bird life. Unlike Madera Canyon, or many other popular birding spots in the US, there wasn't a lot of information out there on where to go or what to look for. I was mostly guided by eBird hot spots, but even that didn't provide information on how to access these locations, which proved to be more difficult (and in some cases requiring more of a sense of adventure) than expected. So, I decided to share in this blog post not only some of the highlights of what we saw, but to also make this a bit of a guide for anyone else looking to bird the area. Click any of the maps below to see a larger version.

eBird hot spots that I'll reference

Increasingly, in areas where there are resorts or communities of higher end homes, access requires going through a gate house. The only way to have guaranteed access to these areas is to be staying in them, though we found in many cases that simply saying we wanted to see the area/beaches/hotels/restaurants was enough to get us through. I didn't like pulling the "I'm an American" card, but that seemed to work, though I suspect this may continue to change and become more difficult unless you're staying there

Location: Puerto and Malecon

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any

Sense of adventure required: Low

Pros: Easily accessible, lots of shore and water birds

Cons: Lots of aggressive street vendors

Additional notes: The port had a lot of bird activity but was pretty industrial so it was hard to get near the water. Eating at a restaurant on the Malecon is probably one of the best bets to have an extended waterfront viewing time without being bothered by any street vendors. We also discovered another great beach that I recommended as an eBird hot spot: Mirador Beach near the bottom middle of the map. We parked near the corner of Calle Matamoros and Aven Campeche where there's an abandoned lot you can walk across to the beach which is a nice mix of sand and rocks. You can also access this beach from Playa de Oro RV Park.

Yellow-footed gull, an endemic to the Sea of Cortez and a lifer for me, near the Puerto

A brown pelican on the rocks in the Puerto

Semipalmated plover at Mirador Beach

Brown pelicans at Mirador Beach

Location: Bahia la Choya

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any
Sense of adventure required: Low

Pros: Easy to access, potentially more open and rocky shoreline birds

Cons: Limited access - we parked at the boat launch (near JJ's Cantina) which didn't seem to be a problem

Additional notes: Looked for but didn't see an access to the supposedly public Tucson Beach. Tide was high when we were there but from the boat launch moving along the shoreline required some scrambling over rocks - may be better at lower tide

A Heermann's gull on the rocks near the Punta Roca del Toro boat launch

Location: CEDO and Las Conchas

Place to stay to guarantee access: Rent a house in Las Conchas, or tell guard gate you want to visit CEDO

Sense of adventure required: Medium

Pros: Long sandy beach nearly empty of people with lots of birds

Cons: Hard to find beach access if you're not staying at a house, probably best to park near CEDO and find one of the walkways down

Additional notes: This was our favorite birding area, but probably in part because we were staying in Las Conchas so we were here the most and it was easy to get to.  CEDO is an intercultural center for research on the regional desert and ocean and has a visitor center that's worth the visit regardless, but will probably also be the easiest way for non-residents to get access to the beach.

Marbled godwit at Las Conchas

Black-bellied plover and Forster's terns at Las Conchas

Willet at Las Conchas

Fin whale skeleton at CEDO

Location: Playa Pelicano

Place to stay to guarantee access: Laguna del Mar or Laguna Shores resorts

Sense of Adventure Required: Medium

Pros: Huge sandy beach, also several man-made ponds with lots of activity, not much human activity of any type going on out there

Cons: Guard gate (we asked to go see beaches), two up and coming resorts may make this more difficult

Additional Notes: The ponds near the Laguna del Mar resort were hopping with birds - ducks, grebes, gulls, shorebirds, swallows, a great blue heron rookery, and more. The sandy beaches were pretty busy, too, with the highlight for me being the Wilson's plovers, but we just had to park in front of the private homes and walk down to the beach from there (again, no issues with doing this.) We didn't go around further to the north closer to Laguna Shores where there were roads to access even more beach, so I'm not sure what access is like here but it looks like there's a lot more to explore. There is another guard gate if you go this way. Watch the tides when you go because when they go out here, they go waaaaay out.

Wilson's plover (lifer!) at Playa Pelicano

Great blue heron on a nest near Laguna del Mar

Location: Estero de Morua

Place to stay to guarantee access: Playa Encanto

Sense of adventure required: Medium

Pros: Amazing huge estuary habitat - good for herons, boobies, shorebirds

Cons: Takes some creativity to find places to view from

Additional notes: The easiest access points are off Freemont Blvd/ City Hwy 3. One of them is marked on the map below as Camino a la Morua. If you look for either the Oyster Farm or the oyster restuarant El Barco on Google maps you will see the two roads. These are sandy roads; our VW Jetta did okay but be careful on the offshoots as there is some deeper sand and some vehicles could get stuck. There didn't seem to be any problem with walking past the oyster farm or restaurant to the beach to bird. The estuary can also be viewed from the end of the road at Las Conchas, though it looked like you would have to walk a long ways across the sand to get near the water. We found a final good viewing area from Playa Encanto near Coopertiva Punta Roja (see Google Maps). This required getting through another guard gate (we said we wanted to see the town), but then we parked near this restaurant and walked down onto the beach with no problem.

Black skimmers and gulls at Estero de Morua

American oystercatcher at Estero de Morua

Loggerhead shrike on the road to Estero de Morua

Location: Estanque de Aguas Residuales (Sewage ponds)

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any

Sense of adventure required: High

Pros: Unknown

Cons: A very poor part of town - lots of trash in the roads, looked pretty sketchy, we didn't feel comfortable getting out of the car

Additional notes: You can apparently park at the end of Sonora Blvd and walk up onto the dikes

Location: Estero de la Pinta

Place to stay to guaranttee access: Mayan Palace or Grand Mayan Resorts

Sense of adventure required: High 

Pros: Previously some impressive bird reports from here

Cons: Apparently no way to access without a pass to the resort, also a local said the birds have moved away from this estuary more due to all the construction

Additional notes: You used to be able to get past this guard gate like the others by asking to visit the restaurant or see the resort, but now it apparently requires reservations or a guest pass. Getting a guest pass means signed up for a breakfast and 1.5 hour (or longer, if what we heard is true) presentation to try and sell you a time share. This gets you a day pass to the grounds and all the facilities. If you want to do this, don't worry, the EcoFun representatives in the Malecon area will find you.

Location: Sandy Beach

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any of the Sandy Beach resorts

Sense of adventure required: Low?

Pros: Unknown

Cons: Unknown

Additional notes: We didn't see an easy way to get to this beach without going through one of the resorts, but we heard you may be able to access it via one of the RV Parks on the bottom left of the map below.

In total, we saw a respectable 60 species in the few days we were there. The "big misses" were the brown and blue-footed boobies that were no where to be found, though were some great finds including the yellow-footed gull and magnificent frigatebirds.

And I've got to finish out this post with a few non-bird related photos from our time in Mexico....

Bottlenose dolphins off Las Conchas

 There was amazing street art everywhere:

And every sunset was pretty amazing, too:

Week One Rolls On

I've been out birding for at least a couple hours every day so far in 2014, and as a result the year list has progressed slowly but steadily. January 2nd it rained all day, which made for very few birds during my walk at English Camp. I had more luck driving along White Point Road where I found a Cooper's hawk (62), my only year bird of the day. I did, however, also find a Eurasian form of the green-winged teal - a common teal. Not a separate species according to the ABA, but still the first time I've seen this race in the county and a cool find.

Eurasian green-winged teal with a horizontal white stripe on its back instead of a vertical white stripe at the shoulder

The weather was nicer on January 3rd, so I walked around Three Meadows Marsh and turned up a red-breasted sapsucker (63), downy woodpecker (64), brown creeper (65), a couple of Bewick's wrens (66), and a small flock of golden-crowned kinglets (67). At Jackson Beach I found one of the greater yellowlegs (68) that eluded us on New Year's Day:

I also returned to American Camp, where it was warm enough that I decided to thoroughly enjoy the first sunshine of 2014 by sitting on this hillside for a while:

On my way down to the water, a trio of deer where determined to cross the path in front of me - they did so pretty close and at a run!

I also had a western meadowlark (69) fly along in front of me, and on my way back up the hill, I located the northern shrike (70) that was also a miss on the first of the year:

I also had to stop and photograph this guy in his beautiful winter coat before heading home:

Yesterday, the 4th, I picked up a short leg of our local Christmas Bird Count circle that still needed covering. In the process, I found a hermit thrush (71), a small group of bushtits (72), and a Hutton's vireo (73) in with a mixed flock of woodland species. I also found seven killdeer (74) in a field with several hundred European starlings and over 50 American robins.

Today my original hope was to go over and bird Skagit County, where a bunch of "gimmes" await. When that wasn't going to work out, I settled for a morning hike over on Orcas Island. Surprisingly, I didn't add any species on the ferry ride over or during our hike on Turtleback Mountain. There was a chilly breeze blowing and the ground was icy in places, but the scenery was sure stunning!

It was the Orcas ferry landing while waiting for the return boat that turned up the bird I was most hoping for - a Steller's jay (75). One of the few species I can get on Orcas but not San Juan Island! As an added bonus, I also found a pair of fox sparrows (76) and a ruby-crowned kinglet (77). While looking at the kinglet and associated chickadees, creepers, and nuthatches, I heard a strange call I couldn't place. The closest thing I could come to was a western tanager - I even played the call and it seemed like a match - but surely there wouldn't be one of those here now?! They did find one in Skagit county recently, but I couldn't ever get a view of the bird hidden in the canopy so there's no way I'll let myself count it. The mystery will have to remain!

There was a group of crows hanging out near the parking area, and there were a couple of crows that were different enough that I'm going to call them American crows (78). Usually the only crows we see in the county are northwestern crows. Supposedly their range doesn't overlap with American crows, but of course that's a fuzzy line, with many regional birders thinking the northwestern is just a race of the American crow. They do remain separate species for now, however, so I usually count crows on the island as northwesterns and crows seen further south as Americans. The major difference between them is size and voice, and today I had two sitting right next to each other, both calling. The voices and sizes clearly matched accordingly, so I decided to count my American crow now. I wish I had my camera on me at the time, because I would have loved to get a video clip and see what others think! But by the time I got my camera and returned, I was left with just one crow. Which kind are you?

While I saw more birds on the way over, the ferry ride back actually proved more productive for the year list turning up some Brandt's cormorants (79) and a single rhinoceros auklet (80). (For those keeping score, Dave sits at 72 and my dad at 84, but there will be a lot of moving and shaking in this early going!) The most photogenic birds, however, were the pelagic cormorants on the dock pilings at Orcas - look at those colors!

I also had to get the camera out to capture the scene looking towards Mt. Baker as we rounded Shaw Island heading for Lopez on the way home:

It's back to work tomorrow, so I'm sure the birding will slow down, but I'll still of course be looking!