We made it back to Mexico City today and returned the rental car with no new scratches, dents, or tickets. Woo Hoo! I even have a few pictures to show you, and please allow me to present them in chronological order.
First, here’s one more picture from our amazing outing on the Laguna de Manialtepec. There were plenty of vultures soaring overhead and perched in the trees around the lagoon, and they were mostly all either turkey vultures or black vultures, of which we’ve seen plenty, but one was not like the others.
As it soared over, we could see that it had a yellow head, which made our guides very excited, but I was a little surprised when they actually turned the boat around for a better look. Well, if I thought that was surprising, you can imagine my shock when we soon found the bird standing right on the riverbank feasting on some big fish lying there. With an eye-level look like that, we couldn’t help but positively identify it as a lesser yellow-headed vulture (Cathartes burrovianus).
Then, yesterday morning before we left Puerto Escondido, we hiked down the street to a breakfast place, and on the way, look Mike helped me find in the trees across the street: our very first scrub euphonia (Euphonia affinis).
The fun didn’t stop when we sat down to eat, either. The open-air restaurant looked out over a field with some trees, and look who Donna spotted lurking in one of those trees: our very first and very shy russet-naped wren (Campylorhynchus humilis).
Then it was time to get on the road, and when we arrived in Tehuacán, yesterday afternoon, we drove up to the nearby archeological site. There, amongst the carefully excavated and partially restored ruins, we found our first gray-breasted woodpecker (Melanerpes hypopolius).
Finally, before we got back on the road this morning, we paid a visit to the fabulous Helia Bravo Hollis Botanical Garden in the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve. There, we saw thousands of cacti, from tiny to giant, a few, shy birds, and this tiny butterfly, a creamy stripe-streak (Arawacus jada).
Now it’s time for me to get some sleep so I can get up early to catch our flight back to Wisconsin.
