Morelia is a metropolis surrounded on three sides by pine/oak forest. Go a little bit farther and you can even discover completely different sorts of thorn forests, thorn-oak transitional forest, cloud forest, and excessive altitude coniferous (fir/pine) forest. However there may be one form of forest that may solely be discovered at a really particular web site, proper within the coronary heart of town of Morelia. That is the forested swamp on the walled property of the Universidad Latina de América (UNLA). Right here, Montezuma Bald Cypresses and another timber develop out of and round a everlasting shallow lake.
I’ve solely written as soon as about this uncommon habitat, as a result of it isn’t all that straightforward to get permission to fowl this privately-owned property. However I knew, from better-connected birders and my very own restricted expertise there, that this forest attracts some species that can not be seen anyplace else in our space. So when two members of our little birding gang — together with a botany professor from one other college whose faculty ID appararently has magical powers — urged they might get us in, I used to be solely too completely satisfied to go alongside.
The forest/swamp’s most locally-famous feathered guests in recent times have been a pair of migratory Wooden Geese, which had been seen often for some 9 months annually by these favored few with quick access to the UNLA campus. Nonetheless, I didn’t see them in my first two visits. And now they haven’t been seen since March of final 12 months, a niche that our go to final week did nothing to alter.
The UNLA forest swamp can also be the one place in Morelia the place I’ve seen a Purple-shouldered Hawk. However this fowl has additionally been lacking in motion for the previous 12 months. It was, nonetheless, attention-grabbing to spend the morning repeatedly seeing an Osprey hanging out right here in a forest. It didn’t appear to us to be prime Osprey habitat, however the Osprey clearly didn’t agree.
American Redstarts are straightforward to see alongside each Mexican coasts in the course of the winter. However right here within the highlands of Michoacán, they will solely be seen reliably inf one place. Would you wish to guess which one? We loved encountering each a male and a feminine, though their love for the darkest corners of the forest made images troublesome.
The waters beneath the woods are filled with a shocking variety of geese. This time there have been many, many Mexican Geese (which all appear to be feminine Mallards), a good variety of Blue-winged Teals (seen on the high of this submit), and some Inexperienced-winged Teals. However the nonetheless rarer Cinnamon Teals received the wonder contest.
Mexican Duck and Inexperienced Heron
Extra Mexican Geese
Cinnamon Teals
The campus can also be house to some free-ranging home geese and hybridized Muscovy Geese. The Muscovy Geese clearly really feel at house, as they nest within the timber right here, identical to their wild kin do alongside the Mexican coast.
Nice Kiskadees are frequent Tyrant Flycatchers in Mexico, particularly close to water. One can not often see the yellow patch on their crown. And one virtually by no means sees the type of show they gave today.
The UNLA campus habitat is so uncommon that two groups of biology college students had been banding birds there on the Saturday of our go to. I sit up for a day once I, too, could make a extra systematic examine of the birds on this fascinating forested wetland.