Tidings from Oaxaca at Christmastime
Amazing food, festive holiday decorations, mind-boggling radish carvings, fascinating ruins, busy artisan markets, perfect weather, and superb companions were the highlights from this year's Oaxaca at Christmastime tour. We also saw some pretty awesome birds, nicely mixed with a good variety of other critters and botany during our eight days in the field. Topping the list of favorite birds were two owls: A Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl that at first sounded like a distant echo in a desert canyon materialized over our heads with an entourage of mobbing hummingbirds, warblers, and gnatcatchers. After our picnic breakfast in the dark fog of tall pine-oak forest the phantasm of a Fulvous Owl gave a few tantalizing songs before appearing in flight over the road and landing several times for fabulous views, a vision that will last a lifetime. We birded the dry interior valleys on several days, where a pair of the shockingly colorful Bridled Sparrow sat up on a cactus, fulfilling a long-awaited sighting. In the cool, humid pine-oak forests above town we couldn't get enough of the brilliant Red Warblers, and an improbably ornate Chestnut-sided Shrike-Vireo left a lasting memory.
There were some outstanding finds on our two-night side trip to the cloud forest and tropical lowlands of northern Oaxaca state, including a single, furtive Tody Motmot that required an intense amount of patience and teamwork for everyone to see well, and the surprising appearance of a rare Sungrebe that took its time paddling across the Valle Nacional River, allowing for extended scope views. Joining us on nearly every day of the tour, but still top favorites, were cheerful and trusty Rufous-capped Warblers chipping and singing from close range, and the highly underrated Turkey Vultures, missed up north during our colder winters and valued for their environmental services.
Other sightings that left a lasting impression from the highlands included flocks of Gray Silky-flycatchers as we waited in line for the Night of the Radishes, a flock of Dwarf Jays that showed well, a small covey of Long-tailed Wood-Partridges at a new stakeout, two perfectly posed White-throated Magpie-Jays, colorful Slate-throated Redstarts with tails all a-spread, and a confiding pair of Oaxaca Sparrows on the last day. From the Tuxtepec side trip, a stoic Green Heron perched below the bridge we were standing on, an Aplomado Falcon hunted around a burning sugar cane field, candy corn-billed Montezuma Oropendolas uttered their incredible display songs, an Ochre-bellied Flycatcher filled in an old, gaping hole in a checklist, an intensely red White-winged Tanager appeared out of nowhere, and a lovely Broad-winged Hawk, perched at eye-level, caused us to stop and discover one of the birdiest mornings of the tour.
