Well, it looks like a little coordination is in the works for this holiday birding season! The three compilers for the southern Sonora Christmas counts have gotten together with plenty of time to spare and have scheduled the three counts so that interested parties could actually come down and do all of the counts with time to relax in between! It promises to be a lot of fun. Alamos is a great place to be for the holidays and the CBC's just promise to make it even more fun!
The three count circles couldn't be more different.
The Navopatia count circle is centered about an hour and a half south of Alamos and is surrounded by beautiful Organ Pipe cactus forest with mangroves on one side, and by the sea of Cortez on the other! The Alamos count includes the Sierra de Alamos, the 5400 foot most southern "Island in the Sky" holds a number of high elevation Mexican endemic birds. The lower slopes and its canyons are covered in nice tropical deciduous forest habitat and lower still are the Cypress lined banks of the Cuchujaqui river. Our new count is the Santa Barbara count. Santa Barbara is a small ranch community east of Alamos in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, about three hours, and is surrounded by interesting pine oak woodland and deep canyons filled with cypress and fig trees. We are predicting that between the three counts we may find close to 300 species of birds!
