DAY 3 Monday

DAY 3 MONDAY

We again met for a 6:00 am breakfast buffet. The food was the same as the day before. After breakfast, we then drove to a lush canyon roughly 20 kilometers north of Barra de Navidad. The canyon’s name seems up for debate, but it was just a bit north of the village of Lázaro Cárdenas and so we called it Lázaro Cárdenas. In Howell’s A BIRD FINDING GUIDE TO MEXICO, he calls the canyon Barranca el Concho. There was running water in the bottom part of the canyon, and throughout the vegetation was dense.

It was just getting light enough to view when we started. Shortly after beginning we heard a Red-crowned Ant-Tanager. At one point I saw a thrush sized bird on a rock beside the stream that was a good candidate for a female, but never had good enough views to know what it was for certain. We heard them again a little higher up, but I was unable to see them there as well.

Similar to Playa de Oro, the canyon wasn’t always dripping with birds. But again, the guides were able to tease out several difficult birds for the group, including Fan-tailed Warbler and Flammulated Flycatcher. At the top of the canyon, we got good views of Golden-crowned Emeralds with their stunning tails. When we got back down to the vans, a very cooperative Ivory-billed Woodcreeper was on a tree by the stream, giving great views to everyone.

We headed back to Barra de Navidad at about 1:00 pm, and ate lunch at a restaurant on the beach called Mar y Tierra. The setting was gorgeous, facing a beautiful beach and large bay. We headed back to the hotel for a break, and I used the time to photograph the Broad-billed Hummingbird on her nest that someone had spotted the day before at the entrance to the hotel. Several in the group had spotted an Iguana sunning on a palm frond, and I took a couple of pictures of that as well.

We met up again at 4:00 pm and drove south to the road that leads to Isla de Navidad. As the road turned off of the Highway, we had good views of the huge banana and coconut groves below.

We walked and birded the road as it runs through the mangroves. The best birds were a group of Mexican Parrotlets, right before heading back to dinner. On the way back to the hotel, I snapped a picture of the coconut palms stretching to the horizon.

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