It may sound awful, but sewage ponds are a good place to look for birds. And that is exactly where we went on our first morning outing in San Blas.
If I can trust my camera roll, the first birds we saw were an assortment of seedeaters and kingbirds, but I have given first position to this very attractive Groove-Billed Ani, because I never noticed the unique woven-looking pattern of the nape feathers before.
And now, the Seedeaters…
Cinnamon-rumped Seedeaters 
Blue-black Grassquit 
Ruddy-breasted Seedeater 
Tropical Kingbirds can be good subjects. Below this one is a Thick-billed Kingbird for comparison, but the name doesn’t seem all that descriptive to me.
Tropical Kingbird 
Those of you who know me know I adore Crows, so I was thrilled to observe a new species doing Crow Stuff.
Sinaloa Crow
I don’t think a day went by without a Zone-tailed Hawk, either…
Zone-tailed Hawk
I was impressed with the graceful flight of a Wood Stork.
Wood Stork
This falcon could have been laughing at me for as long as I waited for him to turn his head for a profile shot.
Unlike my last Texas trip, I don’t recall hearing the incessant chatter of a Bell’s Vireo, but at least we saw this one.
Great Kiskadees were ever-present but nearly impossible to photograph. I wonder why I bothered with this one.
Not sure I have any better images coming of Roseate Spoonbills, but here’s one flying.
Roseate Spoonbill 
All these species would have been way too many for me to get my head around without taking pictures. A new woodpecker!
Golden-cheeked Woodpecker 
Below, what an endearing little flycatcher for such a long name. I confess I don’t know what makes it “beardless.”
Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet
Not a day went by without a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher distraction. Some days were Blue-grey though.
I think we had a record number of pygmy owls on this trip.
The remaining images are…more birds seen.
This Yellow-Winged Cacique was having a bad hair day. Lovely flower though.
Yellow-winged Cacique 
I didn’t manage to photograph many butterflies with a 100-400mm lens, but these are a few that we saw. I’ve put the Vermilion Flycatcher with them because unlike previous trips, I never got close enough to one to do it justice. I will try to identify the rest of the butterflies when my new butterfly book arrives…
Zebra Heliconia Butterfly 
Vermilion Flycatcher
Raptors aplenty – Short-Tailed Hawk is new for me.
Short-tailed Hawk 
Black-necked Stilt 
I was going to include the afternoon river excursion photos, but I think they deserve their own space. So my chronicle of this day in San Blas will continue soon.
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Let me be the first to congratulate you. Gorgeous photos with interesting and lovely models, that is, birds.
Gee thanks, Linda! They do behave like models, don’t they? I think they know how beautiful they are. 🙂
That was quite enough for one post! What a lot you saw and what a lot of good pictures you took.
It’s been rewarding to go through them because during the trip I kept feeling like maybe I wasn’t getting a lot of photographs. Which maybe gives you an idea of how many more birds we saw…
Wow, awesome captures and variety for just a half day, Lisa. Congrats on the new lifers!
I still haven’t gotten around to adding the new birds to my “list” but I think I did a loose count at the end of the trip and there were more than 20 new species!
Omgosh, awesome Lisa, big happy dances!
Wow, what a marvelous assortment of birds – and butterflies. I think I love the names as much as the birds themselves. Beardless Tyrannulet! Laughing Falcon! Golden-Cheeked Woodpecker! And the Groove-billed Ani, which has a definitely saurian look to him.
Thanks for getting me to look up saurian. Yeah, from scales to feathers, I guess it wasn’t that far a leap. I was surprised to see the feather pattern on a bird that, well, had always looked black, right, and I was focused on the “groove” bill because the other Ani species is called Smooth-billed… What’s even more delightful is when you realize you are memorizing these crazy names.