San Blas, Mexico - Revisited

This article was originally published in Bird Watcher's Digest, Nov/Dec, 2000

The horizon was just turning a deep lapis blue as a young woman greeted us with a smile at the restaurant door.  With a nod and a soft buenos dias she led us to our chairs, bearing a steaming pot of fresh, strong Mexican coffee.  Another day of birding Mexico had begun.  Although it was not yet 6:00 a.m., the comfortable El Delfin Restaurant, tucked into La Garza Canela Hotel,  was bright with warm light and talk of the day's coming adventures.  This particular day, two commercial birding tours and a few other small groups of people were making plans for a day of birding the wonderful areas around the town of San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico.

San Blas is a longtime favorite spot for birders.  Over the past 15 years it has become better known and more accessible, due in part to excellent group tours to the area and a few comprehensive birding guides.  San Blas is located approximately 80 miles north of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Ocean.  The town is surrounded by mangrove swamps, shrimp ponds and lagoons. The Rio San Cristobal and its meandering tributaries flow through the outskirts.  It is here that the magnificent Sierra Madre Occidental reaches the ocean.  The climate is tropical.  Relative isolation has kept San Blas a quiet and pleasant Mexican town, pretty much free of T-shirt shops and other noisy tourist attractions.

This past January I revisited San Blas and spent a week birding the lowlands, mangrove swamps, barranca and highlands that surround the town.  Most areas are near enough to reach by early morning and bird until the heat of the day becomes intense.  We would then return to the town for lunch and siesta or a swim, and go back out to bird from three in the afternoon until dark.  Our group of eight logged 258 species last year.  I picked up 19 additional life birds on this year's trip.

One of the most productive areas is just on the outskirts of town.  Fort San Basilio is located at the top of a steep, rocky road that climbs through the dense forest surrounding town.  The Fort dates back to the Spanish Colonial period and provides a sweeping view of the town and harbor.  Now a quiet, graystone ruin, it's a perfect birding spot.  The walk to the Fort ruins begins a few hundred feet below in a deserted plant nursery.  Pink, white and magenta bougainvillea climb from tumbled pots to reach for the trees and banana plants that surround the clearing.   The morning we visited, orange-fronted parakeets flew over in small, noisy flocks, along with white-fronted parrots and Mexican (blue-rumped) parrotlets- a Mexican endemic.  Cinnamon hummingbirds buzzed in at the whistled imitation of a ferruginous pygmy-owl and black-chinned hummingbirds were easily found feeding in the bougainvillea.  A citreoline trogon, another Mexican endemic, lemon breast rich in the sun, perched high in a gumbo-limbo tree.  Deep in the shade nearby we found a russet-crowned motmot.  Golden-cheeked woodpeckers and flycatchers were abundant ( we had seen willow, white-throated, vermilion, dusky-capped, brown-crested and social flycatchers by morning's end).  A clay-colored robin (or thrush) hopped along the roadside, acting just like our less exotic American Robin.

When we reached the Fort, the town below us stretched to the sea.  Mist shrouded the beach a few miles away, but a good scope brought in blue-footed boobies on the offshore rocks.  Music and church bells drifted up to us.  One of our group spotted a crane hawk with striking red eyes and feet,  perched in the top of a palm below us.  The hawk glared upward while hungrily dismembering a frog.  We had a perfect view from above.

San Blas is surrounded by lowlands, and there are many lagoons and ponds a few minutes from town. Under the hot sun, these still, steamy ponds are rich areas for shorebirds during the winter months.  We visited a few shrimp ponds and lagoons to find green and belted kingfishers, great egret, snowy egret, little blue heron, and many more.  Common black hawk, Harris's hawk, gray hawk and short-tailed hawk soared the thermals above us.  Chittering mangrove swallows lined the powerlines and below, least grebes shared the murky water with teal, shoveler and gadwall.  Collared plovers searched the muck for shrimp.

From the ponds, it's a short drive to the ocean to cool off at Matanchen Bay, where white and brown pelicans, whimbrels and neotropical cormorants are plentiful.  Magnificent frigatebirds roost in the palms around the small harbor.  They look much less impressive folded up in a palm than soaring majestically above!  The mouth of the Rio San Cristobal is a gentle, indirect flow to the ocean.  Mangrove thickets define the river's edges.  On the tide flats near the river mouth we found gull-billed terns, laughing gulls, Caspian, royal and Forster's terns and cocoa colored Wilson's plovers.

At this point we had had enough of the intense sun coupled with humidity in the ninety percent range.  We headed back to our cool, tiled rooms for a very welcome shower and a cold beer on the stone patio.  Hummingbirds whirred around us, sampling all the blooming tropical flowers.

Stay tuned for the next day's birding adventures.