Home at Last

Lucky to miss the really eventful weather, I got home one day after all the excitement.  Oaxaca, this time of year, is the place to be for calm, sunny, mid-80's weather.  I'm ready for a little weather excitement now that I'm tucked in to my sweet home.
We spent another week with our bird guide, Roque, who, as promised, took us to some beautiful places.  The Sierra Madre mountains in southern Oaxaca state are called Sierra de Sud (south) and that's where we started.  We drove west and south the first day, out of the Oaxaca valleys, climbing to 9000 feet.  We stopped in a cafe where Dramamine was prominently displayed for sale.  I completely understood, as the road we traveled was the  curviest I've ever been on.  Those poor people in the huge tourist buses....
But it's so beautiful.  Eight foot tall tree ferns grow under pines.  Flowers bloomed everywhere, hanging from vines in heavy pink clusters, sweeping down hillsides in blue and yellow washes. The fresh smell of the pine and burning wood from heating fires was sweet.
Our first night was spent at 9000 feet in a cozy cabin where a log fire was lit for us as we ate our dinner in the main hall.  We tucked under thick soft blankets and fell asleep to the soft crackle of the fire.  Next morning I was awakened by a harsh, screechy series of calls just outside.  Stellar's jay, looking just like ours, but with wonderful big clown-like white dots over the eyes, hopped and called in the pines.
After breakfast we headed farther west, birding along the way, moving lower in elevation.
On the third day we reached the lowlands close to the Pacific Ocean.  In the northwest where I live, getting close to the ocean means cooler and breezy.   In southern Mexico, it means hotter and damper.  Wow.  Birding those scrubby lowlands with long sleeves and long pants was an experience. There are lots of the Mexican version of no-see-ums, and they love to bite fingers, where I try to go easy on the bug repellant, so as to not mess up my binocs.  Forget it.  Slathered it on.  But the birds!
Noisy, raucous, like a troop of schoolboys, the white-throated magpie-jays come through the trees.  They are communal, so there are usually at least 3 in a group.  So beautiful, and they know it, as they preen and talk among themselves.
This scrub country is good for buntings, and we saw two heartbreakers: the orange-breasted bunting and the blue bunting.  We saw so many that they became ordinary, and that's saying something. It got so that we'd say 'oh, another blue bunting...'.   How lucky we were to see it just once.
More later on the beach itself and the birds and people that live there.  It's quite a special place.