I lately acquired a form letter from a ten,000 Birds good friend, who was apprehensive that my current irregularity in contributing to this web site may point out that one thing was flawed. I assured him then, and guarantee you now, that I’m fantastic. However my spouse’s and my lives have been fairly chaotic of late. First, we had our five-week journey to Spain, Turkey and Jordan in September and October. Then we threw collectively a semi-planned family-related journey to the States in early December. Then we went again, on totally unplanned journeys in January. (My spouse stayed there 4 extra weeks than I might, so I additionally ended up holding down the fort alone right here throughout these weeks.)
For essentially the most half, I used to be nonetheless in a position to get my birding in throughout these current months. What I typically didn’t handle was to course of my pictures, connect them to my eBird experiences, after which write about them right here. Which additionally made my 10,000 Birds contributions a lot much less chronological than common, in addition to a lot much less constant. Sorry.
The third of those journeys began with me driving 3+ hours west to the Guadalajara airport,so my spouse and grown daughter might fly north from there. (Our daughter flew again days later, and I caught up with my spouse two weeks later in Ohio.) Now, if I’m to drive seven hours in a single day, I’ll actually attempt to get a little bit of birding in for good measure. On this case, that concerned taking a brief detour to the shore of the state of Jalisco’s Lake Chapala.
I typically write about Lake Cuitzeo, which is close to Morelia, and is Mexico’s second-largest lake. Lake Chapala is close to Guadalajara, and is Mexico’s largest lake. Additionally it is a lot deeper than the always-shallow Lake Cuitzeo, which offers some very completely different habitat.
It wasn’t a really lengthy keep, and the spot I had chosen, the lakeside city of Jamay, turned out to be fairly domesticated. This meant I noticed some really domesticated species there, like these Graylag and African (domesticated Swan) Geese:
Thankfully, all the opposite birds I noticed there have been really wild. There have been Yellow Warblers, a species I at all times appear to see amongst willows in lakeside parks.
Some floating weeds offered a pleasant platform for a Least Sandpiper to helpfully present me its diagnostic yellow legs.
It was additionally the place a Inexperienced Heron confirmed me the benefit of getting an superior versatile throat. I’ve bought to get me a type of.
The Audubon web page lately included an article concerning the many alternative eye colours of birds. I actually bought an eyeful of those colours whereas at Jamay. Feminine Nice-tailed Grackles have yellow eyes.
Cinnamon teals have purple eyes.
So do Black-crowned Evening-Herons. You’ll be able to’t actually admire that truth on this photograph. However the Evening-Heron does seem like a dashing captain of its vessel.
To say that Neotropical Cormorants have blue eyes looks like a little bit of an understatement.
I can’t resolve if this feminine Northern Shoveler’s eyes are yellow or orange. Amber, maybe?
This Northern Pintail undoubtedly went for a fundamental brown eye shade. The Blue-winged Teal? Appears to be like a bit extra purple to me.
And who cares what the attention shade of a Nice Blue Heron may be, when it’s displaying off such a singular chest decoration?
To summarize, I managed to see 42 species with a fast two-hour go to. (The go to would have been even faster, had I not ended up speaking at size with one other photographer there). Jamay would undoubtedly be a worthwhile cease for guests to Guadalajara, and particularly to a number of the many Individuals and Canadians that stay alongside Lake Chapala’s north shore.