000811 Visit since

I have never seen as many birds as I have this year. I was fortunate to take a job in a neighborhood south of town, where some patches of jungle can still be found on undeveloped lots. In the mornings, I was amazed how many different birdsong I could hear, coming from the nearby trees. So I came to the (further) realization that I live in a rich place, abundant with wildlife.

I have known Gerry for twelve years, since the times when I started working in the tourism industry, and we have been good friends ever since. He has been a tour guide for ten years. Last year we were at the same certificate course on History and Geography of Jalisco, and at a coffee break, he told me that he was doing a bird watching tour, and he told me about the many varieties of birds that can be found in the Puerto Vallarta region, and invited me to join him for a tour anytime. The time came this week, when with an invigorated interest in the local fauna, and particularly birds, I made an appointment with him to go bird watching.

Gerry is very professional, I have to hand in to him. He made a point of filling me in with the proper background information, which I really appreciated.

The whole country of Mexico is a biodiversity rich place. It shelters about 10% of the living species of the world. We live in a region of the low forest, where the vegetation does not grow higher than 20 meters. This forest covers most of the Mexican Pacific Slope, from the south of Sonora to the north of Chiapas. This is very rich region, where 37% of all the Mexican vertebrates live. In Mexico there are 1,034 known species of birds, and about 200 of them live here. Many of these are indigenous of this region, while others, like some jay species, share their habitat here, and cannot be found together in other places.

Well, pretty soon I found out that to be a birdwatcher, you have to meet several requirements: one must be swift with the binoculars, because birds are not very patient with watchers. They mind their own business, which most of the times means looking for insects or little berries. So they are continually on the move. By the time I adjusted the binoculars, I had already messed a couple of interesting specimens. One needs to take bug repellent. It is not so much the bites, but the itch. And when it comes to taking pictures, well, thank goodness for Gerry and his wife Guadalupe, Otherwise it would have been really difficult to identify a bird in my pictures.

We drove to the south of town, early in the morning, well before sunrise. My son Johann joined us for the excursion. He is a boy scout and is working on a report on local species. We left the car there by the restaurants and started walking down the road. The air was immediately filled with a lot more different songs of birds than I had heard before. I began asking: What is that singing? Gerry started citing all the species of birds, we would soon be able to see them all.

And indeed we were. Gerry located the birds and pointed them to us. What a sight to behold! They displayed a beautiful array of colors, from bright yellow to deep purple, from deep blue to shocking green. We spotted several species of woodpeckers, a beautiful male with a red head and white stripes along his back, a female with a black spot on the back of her head, golden-checked woodpeckers, flycatchers, tree-climbers, jays …I spotted a green jay, the only one which is not blue. We saw many parakeets, parrots, masked tityras, cowbirds, doves, mac warbles, elegant trogons, some humming birds, San Blas jays, a very active happy wren, purplish-backed jays, and flying up over the treetops, a couple of grey hawks. We heard the song of a little owl, but we not able to spot it. We heard a couple of chachalacas, and saw one of them flying form one tree to another, but Johann was the only one who glimpsed one of them perched on a tree.

I did not feel the time pass. Pretty soon (it seemed) the excursion ended. Birds take a break after 11:00 am, so the best time for bird watching was over.

Gerry guides bird watching tours jointly with Manuel Lomeli, an internationally-Known ornithologist who grew up in the jungle and has over 30 years' experience, one of the only three Mexican birdwatchers recommended by the Audubon societies.

For additional information please contact Gerry Hernandez. Phone: (3) 222-6686
Or e-mail us at: birdwatching@go2vallarta.com