Las Mirismas Lake

Another early morning found us back in the boats, preparing to travel the Upper Rio San Cristobal.  Our journey would take us to Las Mirismas, a huge, shallow lake favored by both black-belled and fulvous whistling-ducks.  As we started out from the dock in town, mist rose off the water and we pulled on extra sweaters.   Local men stood around, quietly eating breakfasts purchased from the food cart that appeared at the dock every very early morning.  Delicious smells of fresh tortillas and unknown spices wafted over to us.   The sky was a pure, clear pink with the promise of another hot day, but just then it was downright chilly. 

We drifted  quietly along the mangroves that form dense walls on each side of the river.  Tiny, brilliant mangrove warblers (a subspecies of yellow warbler, also seen) responded to a whistled owl call courtesy of our guide.  They  hopped animatedly in circles, bright rust heads and yellow breasts flashing in the early sun.  A mangrove cuckoo prowled and hopped up the branches; crane hawks and Harris’s hawks perched in high snags, watching for breakfast in the still water below. 

At Las Mirismas, purple gallinules stepped daintily in the muck caused by cattle grazing down the shoreline.  Rafts of both black-bellied and fulvous whistling-ducks darkened the lake’s horizon.  The black-bellied variety have charming hot pink legs and feet.  Barn swallows hunted around us, sometimes coming within inches of us in order to snag a particularly succulent bug.

By the time we left the lake it was hot, still and buggy.  Heat brings out the crocodiles and we were on the watch.  On the run back downriver, we spotted a sunning croc that was at least 12 feet long.  It showed us a very impressive row of uneven, pointed teeth as we sped by.

Again, back to shade, a shower and a cold beer on the patio to recount our morning’s adventures. 

La Noria Ranch, Nayarit

La Noria Ranch is located at the 5,000 foot level deep in the Sierra Madre range.  The road to the ranch winds through five miles of wooded high elevation parkland called Cerro San Juan. Open, rolling land falls away as the road climbs higher to the cool forest above. At our first stop, still at a low elevation, a brown-backed solitaire's pure, trilling call welcomed the pristine morning.  This is what might be called a drab bird, but once you hear his song, you will never think him ordinary.  Unearthly bell-like notes fall and rise on the cool air as his breath becomes visible in the chill dawn air.
 Tiny blue and red salvia blossoms along the roadside attract many hummingbirds.  Some of the highlights were Mexican woodnymphs and the tiny bumblebee hummingbird.  As we climbed higher, Sierra Madre pines became more abundant, and so did the woodpeckers.  We encountered acorn, ladder-backed, and a Mexican endemic, gray-crowned woodpecker.  A pair of stunning, aptly named  green jays called and swooped across a wide canyon, giving us excellent looks.

At our coffee stop, we prowled the dense forest to find an abundance of warblers: red-faced, rufous-capped, crescent-chested.  All as beautiful as their names.

A picnic lunch had been provided and we all found that for the first time, we actually needed another layer of clothing in Nayarit- it was cold in the mountains!  We perched along a fence at La Noria Ranch and enjoyed the cool air and abundant birds. 

We took a different route back to San Blas, arriving about 4:30 in the afternoon at a place called Mirador del Aquila, or View of the Eagles. In North America this would be called a scenic viewpoint.  El Mirador is a pullout at the top of a steep hill on a busy highway.  The forested hills fall away in the distance, soft blue and green in the haze, unspoiled as far as the eye can see.  An hour before dusk, miliary macaws fly into the canyon far below to roost for the night.  Seen from above, they are a gemlike turquoise-green.  They call raucously and settle, fly, then resettle in the forest below. 
Finally, when the light became too poor to pick up the lovely green macaws, we turned the van once again toward the welcoming lights of San Blas.