We were so impressed by what we saw on Cerro del Fortín yesterday morning, that we hiked back up there before breakfast today. One treat was finding more gray silky-flycatchers, which I first excitedly showed you from the central square in Puebla on Tuesday. It turns out that they are quite social, and we counted at least a couple dozen chatting away and flitting around in the trees at the top of the hill. I don’t know if they were emboldened by their comrades or too busy interacting with them to worry about li’l ol’ us on the ground below, but they sure gave us better looks today than we’ve gotten before.
I was thrilled to find our first Mexican woodpecker when Mike spotted this male ladder-backed. Long-time readers may recall that I was first able to show you one from our visit to Big Bend National Park back in 2023, but I sure got a much better look at one today. “Thanks, Mike!”
We’ve seen plenty of eastern towhees and a few spotted towhees, but here’s our very first white-throated towhee (Melozone albicollis). It doesn’t look quite as flashy as its cousins, but at least it’s not as plane as the California towhee.
If it’s flashy new birds you’re after, you can hardly do better than this black-vented oriole (Icterus wagleri), which Mike also spotted for us. That guy was on a roll!
Finally, we took a little tour this afternoon to the Dainzú archeological site, and that’s where I found our butterfly for the day, this tiny ceraunus blue (Hemiargus ceraunus).
I see on the syllabus that we’re due to drive down to Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast tomorrow, but I hope we get one more chance to hike up Cerro del Fortín in the morning to see who we’ve missed.
