What a cool idea for a birding watching tour!  Let’s drive down into Mexico, to a beautiful little Spanish colonial town where for nearly 20 years

Rosette Spoonbill

they have been putting on a music festival with world class talent of various types, from Opera and Classical to Latin Jazz and rock.  Not to mention the art walks and craft venders and different interesting workshops taking place throughout the 10 days of the festival.    While we are there, we can use the cool mornings to explore some beautiful natural areas where you can find a large variety of tropical birds at their northern limit!  It is the recipe for a wonderful tour, and It was! Sunday, Jan. 22 – I picked everyone up in Tucson at 7am and we headed for the border right on time.  Not 10 miles from the border my longtime friend and wonderful world traveler Lois informed me that she had forgotten her passport at home in San Diego.  Her immediate reaction was to suggest that I leave her in Nogales and she would figure out a way home.  My immediate reaction was to not worry about it and just stay in the van while the rest of us were in Mexican immigration getting everyone visas, they would never know that you were there!  Of course this didn’t really addres the issue fo getting back into the US after the tour, but I had an idea that we could get her passport down to us in Alamos before the ride back north.  Sure enough my plan at immigration worked flawlessly and we were down the road to points south. It is a long haul from Tucson to Alamos this will be the last tour that I do it this way.  In the future we will spend a night in the Rio Sonora Valley to break up the drive. Our first stop was for lunch at top for lunch at Los Arbolitos in Guaymus Sonora, where we were treated to an awesome seafood fest, complete with “Callos de Acha”,  a big scallope that they serve sliced thin and raw with lime juice and Serrano chili’s, amazingly yummy! After lunch we made a stop at the Empalme causeway for a look around the fishing docks for gulls and terns and we did find a few, including Heerman’s, Yellow-footed, Ring-billed, California and Laughing Gulls.  In the Tern department we had Foresters, Gull-billed, Caspian, Royal and Elegant as well as a number of Black skimmers.  There were also hoards of the usual shore and wading birds plying the mud for goodies.  Then it was off to Alamos and our first night’s dinner at El Pedregal. Monday, Jan. 23 – I like to start the tour out in Aduana, it is a cool little Mexican town that dates back to the late 1500’s.  it was the town

Sharp-shinned Hawk

where all the silver was mined that made the residents of Alamos so very rich!  It is a good combination of history, culture and birding all 10 minutes from El Pedregal!  We got good looks at a Sharp-shinned hawk right over the road, a big flock of White-fronted parrots pssed by and there were Elegant Quail everywhere.  We had lunch and a much deserved Siesta back at El Pedregal. In the afternoon we took a relaxing trip into the plaza to see all of the art and crafts that were for sale before heading up to dinner at the “El Mirador”.  We had to rush out of dinner to make it down to the performance, and it turned out that I wish we hadn’t!  Ok, so the guy has a lot of obvious talent, but I really felt like I endured about 2 hours berating by a big boring German tenor! Not the most memorable performance I had ever seen, well at least not for good reasons! Tuesday, Jan. 24 – So this morning I enforced a slightly earlier departure as we were headed to EL Mentidero, the largest drainage off of the sierra de Alamos and an area of permanent water.  Here we had good looks at Common Black Hawk and a couple of Trogons as well as a good long walk! Lunch was once again back at El Pedregal.  Prior to lunch I was feeling pretty lousy and ended up sleeping through the entire affair.  Following lunch a few folks went down to the church for a performance by an Argentine duo that was said to be very good. In the evening, we did dinner at El Pedregal and went to the evening performance of Jamie MacDougall (tenor), Angel Padilla (harpist) and Matthew McAllister (guitarist) what a wonderful surprise it was!  A fantastic animated program!  We got great seats up in the front rows and were totally charmed by the lovely Scotsmen and their Mexican harpist. A great night to be sure, now this was more like it!  What a treat for Susan and Glyn for getting a dose of Scottish classical music here in Alamos!

Purplish-backed Jay

Wednesday, Jan. 25 – this mornings bird trip was to the not so scenic yet terribly birdy area known as “Las Cabras”, it is also known as the Alamos sewage lagoons, which is essentially what they are. Here we had wonderful views of a pair of Gray Hawks and a family of three Crane Hawks passed over and hung around for scope views!  There were Trogons, calling Motmot’s and eventually a small family of Purplish-backed Jays came in to tape.  Once again it was lunch at El Pedregal and some time at the feeders with the Orioles and the Blue Mockingbird.   Like yesterday a few folks went down for the church for the 2pm performance, and as I recall felt as though they had been trapped inside the church, I cant remember if that was a good thing or not?  Tonight’s dinner was at the wonderful restaurant “Charisma”, which even though we were the only ones in there, managed to take every possible minute to get us our food, we ended up running for the evening performance at the Palacio!  An award was given to some performer named ‘el Kennedy’…followed by the Universidad de Sonora young talent, Jael Jimenez (soprano), Diana Gonzalez (soprano) and Guillermo Lopez (tenor). They put on a very impressvie harmonic display that at times I felt moved between strange and fantasticly beautiful, a very unique performance.  We were relieved that one of the young ladies made it back and forth off the stage in her very high heels that appeared to be very hard to walk in! They started out nervous and ended very well. Thursday, Jan. 26 – Our final day of birding in the Alamos area included a river float trip on the Rio Mayo, the second largest river in Sonora and a great way to get into some areas that few foreigners get to visit!  Not to mention that the birding is fantastic while sitted in the comfortable padded benches of the inflatable rafts.  We had numerous close up looks at Black Hawks, Bare-throated Tiger Herons and numerous Green Kingfishers.  There was the great lunch set up by Armando on the banks fo the river and the wonderful trip to visit my friends In the Mayo Indian Village of Santa Barbara.  A very full and rewarding day.  We got back to town in time for some relaxing time and shower before our last dinner  at El Pedregal, followed by a great Opera Diva show at the Palacio. We were serranaded by the Flashy pianist, Angel Rodriguez accompanying  Leticia de Altamirano (soprano) and Cassandra Ziel (mezzosoprano).   In was a stunning and extremely animated performance by all for a packed house! Friday, Jan. 27 – Its always a bit difficult to leave Alamos after such a wonderful time, but off we went, for a day of birding along the coast and night in the San Carlos/Guaymas area. We did a lot of birding along the way too.  First there was a stop in Navojoa where we picked Least Grebe and some ducks.  Then birding the road along the agricultural fields got us a few raptors and sparrows. Once at the coast everyone was maybe a little bit overwhelmed by the outrageous numbers and variety of shore and water birds, but we patiently picked through them making sure that everyone got a look at everything.  We had a nice quick lunch on the causeway and enjoyed the warm weather with the nice ocean breeze.

Playa de Cortez at dawn

We spent the night at the Playa de Cortez, an older historic hotel right on the water and ate dinner at the Fiesta hotel in San Carlos. Saturday, Jan. 28 – the birding at the Estero El Soldado was good with excellent looks at Mangrove Warbler.  Then it was off to breakfast at the Fiesta and a final shopping trip to “Sagitarrio” before heading on back to the border and Tucson