>At the risk of being flamed (again), this time for a long discourse on
>something irrelevant to the Pacific Northwest, but with several postitive
>responses to my accidental posting yesterday on Panama, I thought I'd share
>this with you. Just skip it or file for future reference as you wish. I've
>never been to San Blas, Steve.

Huh? I've thought we've always welcomed input on birding advice, experiences
elsewhere.

I certainly do!

>Tufted jays can be pretty easy along rt. 40 toward Durango, east of Mazatlan.
>I found them in three places on this recent trip in early October, and have
>seen them on every visit up there without trying very hard.

If you can find a scrub jay on Oak Island (Sauvie Island), you can
find Tufted Jay along this road, if you go hike into a couple of the
usual barrancas. I forget exactly which one we hiked into (but could
probably find out) but I do remember that there's a restuarant
specializing in machaca (dried beef) at the place. Park there and
they'll watch your car. The place is easy to recognize 'cause of the
strips of beef being jerked outside in the sun.

Amazing birds,
conspicuous, noisy, and always in flocks of 10-30. I suppose among the ABA
birders and tour groups, sites are published and relatively common knowledge.
I'm not into any of that, and just went there blind and found them on my
own. Tufted jays are roamers, often quickly filtering through the forest.
They can be there one minute and gone the next.

>There is a great place to stay ~35 km west of that site, back toward
>Mazatlan. It is called Hotel Villa Blanca (kp233). It is inexpensive ($N80)
>and the proprietors are used to birders, speak English, and serve up
>Mexican/German food.

This is the usual place to stay. It's fine. They have a guest list.
I saw a lot of names I recognized in it - PNW birders.

>I've heard horror stories of birders, and in fact whole birding tours being
>victims of robbery, some even murdered, in these wild highland areas of
>Durango.

I've heard it is cyclical. I've heard of an incident of the Federales
barring access to Oregon birders during a particularly bad time. We
had no problems, though two restuarant owners wanted to buy my
companion's big old british 10x50 porro-prism bins! They were
totally uninterested in my Zeiss 10x40s. My companion wouldn't
sell, and ironically dropped them on concrete at the airport on
the way back, breaking both front elements and bashing in the
chassis! Totalled...

We also had a rancher come up to us as we were hiking up a dry streambed.
He was on horseback, right out of Panco Villa but with a smaller hat.
Being about a mile from the road, we were a bit curious as to what
would happen as he was somewhat confrontational (we probably had
stumbled onto his land) and we didn't speak much Spanish, and he
no English at all. But we managed to talk about "parajos" (spelling?)
which he pronounced "paros" (and "agua" is "awa", the seem to drop
consonants in these parts much like the french) and he grinned and
laughed and talked about how beautiful the birds are.

>Oh yeh, and on the way up from Mazatlan, watch for military macaws in the
>deciduous wooded foothills NE of Concordia. Early morning is a good time to
>see them flying around as is true with all parrots. I'm still looking for
>thick-billed parrot and eared trogon. Maybe someone can suggest other areas
>in the Barrancas or elsewhere.

When we were there, it rained constantly and out of character for the
time of year, so we also went slightly north of Mazatlan and into
farm country to the east at the next road that runs at all in that
direction (no other, of course, transverses the mountain range).

We had linneated woodpecker up there, just off the road. Also, on
our last day, we had one of those classic experiences. Previously,
we'd been to texas on a birding trip and refused to put an effort
into red-billed pigeon, seeing as they're ... well .. pigeons. Took
a nap sleeping on the hood of the rental car when we were supposed to
be looking for them, split afterwards in relief, almost. We're hard-core
listers, you can tell. So, after miserable rain for most of our
Mexican trip in which we dipped on about 1/2 of our target species (but
still had a great time with what we did see), the evening before our
early AM flight out saw us birding up this agricultural valley at
sunset. The sun had finally come out, but we were staying in Mazatlan
so we could make the airport. We were joking "wouldn't it be
ironic and typical if our last life bird of the trip was a RED-BILLED
PIGEON!". As we were looking, I turned and said "my gawd, look at
those pigeons flying up the valley, they couldn't be, NO, they couldn't
me, DAMN! they are ... RED-BILLED PIGEONS!".

I couldn't believe it. Disgusting.

Some of you fellow raptormaniacs may be interested in the fact that
the next morning, as we drove into the airport, we noticed an adult
Swainson's hawk foraging in the grassy fields surrounding the runways
and taxiways. This was in January, yet another bird not in the Pampas
like it was supposed to be.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>