Home : Travel Hot Spots : Bird Watcher's Digest: Travel: Mexico

San Blas, Mexico

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 días 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 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 10 years it has become better known and more accessible, due in part to excellent group tours to the area and a few fairly recent comprehensive bird 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, lagoons, and the Río San Cristóbal and its meandering tributaries. 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, 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. We could 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 logged 258 species. Although I had spent a week in San Blas the year before, 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, gray stone 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 climbs 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). Also seen were greenish elaenia, thick-billed kingbird, rose-throated becard, Bell’s vireo, blue-gray gnatcatcher, great kiskadee, groove-billed ani, and northern mockingbird. Gray-chested martins jockeyed for resting space on the radio tower above. A rufous-backed robin hopped ahead of us on the trail, acting just like an American robin back home. When we reached the fort, we saw the town below us stretching 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, crouched in the top of a palm below. The hawk glared upward while 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 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, tricolored heron, reddish egret, cattle egret, yellow-crowned night-heron, white ibis, white-faced ibis, roseate spoonbill, wood stork, sora, collared plover, semipalmated plover, black-necked stilt, northern jaçana, greater yellowlegs, willet, and least sandpiper. Common black hawk, Harris’s hawk, gray hawk, and short-tailed hawk soared above us. Mangrove swallows lined up on the powerlines, and, below, least grebes shared the murky water with cinnamon teal, blue-winged teal, northern 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 were plentiful. Magnificent frigatebirds roost in the palms near the harbor. We had excellent looks at females and immatures as well as adult males. The mouth of the Río San Cristóbal is a gentle, indirect flow to the ocean. Mangrove thickets define the river’s edges. On the tide flats near the river’s mouth we found gull-billed terns; laughing gulls; Caspian, royal, and Forster’s terns; and cocoa-colored Wilson’s plovers.