Birding Chiapas – Birds of passage

Return to the Lacantún

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10 –17 December 2013 We could not resist another trip down to the Chiapas lowlands before we headed on towards the Yucatan. We also needed to get new tourist visas and a new vehicle import permit since we have already been in Mexico for nearly 180 days (the length of a [...]

Volcán Tacaná

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7-8 December 2013 After birding around the Pacific slope of Chiapas we headed up to the highlands to try our luck with a few more cloud forest birds at Volcán Tacaná. As we headed toward Tapachula we were met many times by men who ran out to stop us on the highway while quickly pulling out their “immigration” badge asking to see our papers [...]

The Pacific slope of El Triunfo – Tres de Mayo, Paval, and Limonar

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3-5 Dec 2013 Having spent an amazing week in the higher areas of El Triunfo, we were also keen to visit some of the lower areas on the Pacific slope. Fortunately, this is readily done from the town of Mapastepec, giving easy access to tropical deciduous forest where great birds such as Tody Motmot, Long-tailed Manakin, White-eared Ground-Sparrow, [...]

San Cristóbal de las Casas and surrounding areas

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Oct & Nov 2013 We started our trip with barely passable Spanish, learned over years traveling in Latin countries, studying in the car and trying to pick up bits and pieces where we could. Never having formally studied Spanish, my Spanish was a mess, and while Kathi had studied a little bit, it was long ago and years of French confused things [...]

El Triunfo

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Nov 11 – Nov 18 Kathi and I had the terrific fortune to visit El Triunfo for a week in November as volunteers for a Horned Guan, Highland Guan and Resplendent Quetzal monitoring project conducted by INECOL (Instituto de Ecología) and ECOSUR (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur). Researchers at INECOL and ECOSUR have been monitoring these species [...]