Early this week, I took a birding information and his spouse from Cancún to my favourite website for Michoacán’s Sizzling Nation endemics. However the enjoyable started earlier than we ever acquired right down to the 1,000 m elevation of this website. As we drove by means of the municipal seat of Tzitzio, at round 1,500 m, my visitors shouted “Parrots!”. I shortly pulled over, and proper there in the midst of the city, we spent some ten minutes watching a bunch of not less than 4 stunning Lilac-crowned Amazons work their method over a local Silk Floss Tree. Many photographs had been taken, and pleasure was skilled.
It wasn’t till I began doing a little bit of analysis for this publish that I skilled, as we are saying in Mexico, sentimientos encontrados — contradictory emotions, combining pleasure and sorrow. Wikipedia advised me that half of all of the parrots on this planet reside in cages. Now that’s a miserable reality. I additionally found that precisely half of Mexico’s 22 parrot species are in peril of extinction inside a number of years. The Lilac-crowned Amazons we noticed are thought of endangered, though not but critically endangered.
The explanations for the decline in Mexico’s parrot inhabitants have advanced through the years. Within the 60s, 70s and 80s, huge numbers of Mexican parrots had been poached and smuggled into the USA. As soon as this commerce was suppressed, poaching continued to feed a rising market inside Mexico itself. This commerce has additionally now been principally suppressed through publicity campaigns. However habitat destruction continues to hazard the nation’s remaining parrot inhabitants.
(On a private be aware, these information assist clarify why, in my years of birding in Mexico, I’ve solely seen 7 of the nation’s 22 species.)
Since photographs don’t present sufficient context to evaluate dimension, I’ll point out that Lilac-crowned Amazons are over a foot lengthy (33 cm).
And but, there’s a curious facet impact to this historical past. In the course of the 70s and 80s, launched Mexican (and South American) parrots started to ascertain self-sustaining populations in cities of California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Essentially the most extraordinary instance of this entails an in depth relative of the Lilac-crowned Amazons we noticed on Monday. Northeastern Mexico’s Purple-crowned Amazons might now solely quantity round 1,000 birds of their native vary. And but, estimates of the inhabitants of Purple-crowned Amazons in southern California go as excessive as 5,000 people. One other wholesome inhabitants can now be present in southern Texas. It has usually been noticed that the survival of untamed parrot populations might sometime depend upon the reintroduction of those city birds.
I ought to point out right here that final 12 months a number of of my birding buddies and I noticed one other endangered parrot, the Yellow-headed Amazon, in our goal city of Paso Ancho. Each of those Amazons embrace coastal Michoacán of their vary.
Simply sufficient photograph to substantiate the ID of this Yellow-headed Amazon. These parrots are a bit bigger, 37 cm.
So had been these Amazons escaped or launched pets, or did they happen naturally in Tzitzio and Paso Ancho?
Paso Ancho is 1000 m (3,300 ft.) excessive, and 400 km (250 miles) from the ocean. However the Río Balsas basin, on whose edge the city may be discovered, is an odd habitat. For a number of species, it’s the solely basin the place their vary extends far inland. I’ve repeatedly seen Mangrove Cuckoos there, in addition to one sighting of a Black-bellied Whistling Duck; in concept, each species ought to be restricted to the coast in western Mexico. So we couldn’t rule out our lone Yellow-headed Amazon having made its method there naturally. In japanese Mexico, this species can happen far inland, and at a substantial elevation.
The case of our Lilac-crowned Amazons was much more intriguing. This parrot’s vary has at all times been restricted to Mexico’s Pacific coast. Nonetheless, it has been seen from sea stage to 2,000 m (6,600 ft) close to that coast, so Tzitzio’s 1,500 m elevation will not be a dealbreaker. Extra importantly, we noticed 4 parrots all transferring as a bunch. It appears unlikely that these would all be escaped cage birds, particularly in a city with lower than 10,000 inhabitants. (Nonetheless, I’d not rule out their being the offspring of a pair of escapees.) On the very least, they appeared to signify a small naturalized or native inhabitants, in a habitat just like, and fairly near, their official vary. That reality offers me a little bit of hope for the way forward for these beautiful birds.
One factor that struck us was that these birds had been transferring by means of the very heart of the city, with numerous automobiles and other people transferring close to the tree on which they perched, very calmly. Might that point out that they had been as soon as pets? I want there have been a approach to know.
As common, I’ll throw in a number of photographs of different beautiful birds that we noticed that day:
My visitors had been excited to see our native Russet-crowned Motmots, that are completely different from the Motmots they take pleasure in on the Yucatán peninsula.
We acquired a pleasant view of their specialised tail feathers.
The sunshine was nice for a shot of this Streak-backed Oriole.
It wouldn’t be a visit to Paso Ancho with out an encounter with a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl.
Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are exceedingly widespread winter birds. However you’ll be able to’t at all times see them feeding on… what’s that, precisely?
It’s at all times shocking to search out orchids blooming wild within the semidesert thorn forest.