Mesa El Campañero, The Barranca, La Palmita, Santa Ana, Rio Morro

Yes, we piled a lot of birding into our first full day in Yecora! Our first stop, just a couple of miles east of town, was an unplanned one, a squeal of brakes and a hasty (but skillful) turn off the road when on rolling the windows down we found ourselves surrounded by the tinkling-glass voices of Brown-backed Solitaires. This is an important species in the culture of Mexican birding–Sutton’s First Impressions begins with an unexpected and mystifying encounter with the bird–and to hear that song, like tiny windchimes dragged across a washboard, always quickens the heart and warms the blood and makes you know you’re in Mexico. Mary spotted the first one, perched on a snag down canyon from the road, and we eventually had breathtaking scope views of singing birds at close range, sometimes two or three individuals at a time in a single tree.

That would have been enough to make the day perfect, but we drove a few more miles and began the ascent of the Mesa El Campañero (Russell and Monson call this Mesa El Enmedio). Most microwave tower roads–the salvation of high-elevation birding in west Mexico–are pretty straightforward: you go up, you go down. But this one was complexly branched, and we never did reach the towers. No loss. We ended up, after taking evasive action a couple of times when lumber trucks came down the road at us (on a Sunday morning!), on top of the mesa in a wonderfully cool, bright oak-pine forest, flat as, well, a tabletop, and crisscrossed by wide, well-maintained paths for birders’ feet.

On the way up we stopped a few times for Gray-headed Juncos (and one apparent Gray-headed x Pink-sided introgressant) on the roadside; by the time we were on the mesa proper, all the juncos were Yellow-eyed Juncos, shuffling along in the grass at our feet. We parked our vehicle near an unoccupied summer cabin with a scruffy yard in front of it, nearly bare with just scattered low weeds poking up; it amused us to watch the yellow-eyes, creatures of the shade after all, coming out to feed on the weed seeds by tracking the shadows of tree trunks and fenceposts.

Our short walk turned up one large flock of passerines, White-breasted Nuthatches, Brown Creepers, and Bridled Titmouses at its core; this gang included lots of other migrants and residents, though, among them Townsend’s, Hermit, and Olive Warblers. Hutton’s Vireos and Ruby-crowned Kinglets fussed and fluttered side by side, and an Arizona Woodpecker lurked around the edges. The flock was noisy, but there was no overlooking that silvery whinny: White-striped Woodcreeper! We had great views of one or two of this amazing tropical bird, even seeing the “ski tracks” of the underparts; I’d forgot how vivid the contrast is between the ruddy lower back and tail and the olive-gray of the upper back and neck, but we were reminded forcibly when the bird (or birds) flew from trunk to trunk, flashing red.

Butterflies were good, too, and in between birds we deigned to look at them every once in a while. Chiricahua Whites were especially conspicuous.

It was warm and beautiful on the mesa, and we could easily have spent all day there, but we’d seen the day before what happens when the birds seduce. So back down the mesa and on to the most famous birding locality around Yecora, “The Barranca,” specifically the rocky spring called El Aquejito. The face in the steep cliff makes the place easy to find, as do the loud chatters of the abundant White-eared Hummingbirds.

There is a good pulloff, but like so many good pulloffs in western Mexico, it’s full of the evidence of a certain absence of civic hygiene; the trail to the Aguejito was similarly sullied, alas, but we carefully picked our way up the hill the few yards we could, accompanied all the way by the good-natured churrs and creaky carols of the local Spotted Wrens.

If I had the money and the leisure to be one of those wacky listers, I think a worthy goal would be to see all of the Campylorhynchus wrens; these Spotted Wrens are really beautiful, the photo notwithstanding, much more subtle in voice and in plumage than the Cactus Wrens that sing to me over breakfast here in Tucson.

The spring proper is very dramatic, but we were puzzled to find no way to proceed beyond it; the rock “dam” effectively prevents access to the upper canyon to those of us without powers of levitation.

As we stood and pondered, a flock flew in around us: the usual Bridled Titmouses, House Wrens, Ruby-crowned Kinglets–but joined this time by a real dazzler, a loudly singing and calling Slate-throated Redstart. We saw Painted Redstarts commonly wherever we were in sight of oaks, but this was the only individual of the more tropical species we encountered during the entire trip. I’ve now seen as many Slate-throateds in Sonora as in Arizona!

Just a couple of kilometers down the road (”up” and “down” the road mean just that as MX 16 snakes through the Sierra) was a small restaurant and hotel called La Palmita; it had been recommended to us, so we stopped and made reservations for the next night and wandered around in the open oaks across the road. It was here that we saw the only snake of the trip, a large coachwhippy creature that startled me almost as much as the dozen Montezuma Quail that flushed out of the grass as we were turning back.

Actually we’d been expecting the species, or at least hoping for it, as the habitat was every Montezuma Quail’s dream; but to have them explode out of the grass at close range is always a heart-stopper all the same.

As I go back through my notes, it’s no shock after all that the day was coming to a close, but caught up in mediis rebus we were surprised to see the afternoon advancing, and hastened to take in a final stop or two. We drove the Santa Ana Road from MX 16 into town, admiring the dozens of Cassin’s Kingbirds, with a single, much less expected Western Kingbird, taking their afternoon meals over the farm fields.

Cassin’s Kingbird, the tail fresh.

We had plenty of opportunity to admire Cassin’s Kingbirds from all angles, including this rather impolite one; it’s always instructive to look closely at the patterns of the fresh tails, which combine, in a muted sort of way, the pale tips of Eastern with the pale edges of Western.

A pair of Black-capped Gnatcatchers was buzzing through the trees, and eventually came in to give us nice close looks and a chance to assess their tail structure. A male Varied Bunting was a quick glimpse in town while a kind Santa Anan and his granddaughter helped us regain our bearings. It turned out that we could continue on the road through and past town for another 20 miles or so and regain MX 16, or we could turn around and go out the way we’d come in, in which case we’d find the Santa Rosa Road just a few yards back up the highway. We opted for the latter, and drove out the four or five miles towards San Nicolas and Santa Rosa in the last bright light of afternoon.

The Rio Morro turned out to be a classically beautiful little river running through classically beautiful tropical deciduous forest. We scrambled down the crumbling bank at the bridge, enjoying a bright Violet-crowned Hummingbird on the way, and walked a little ways upstream in the waning sunlight. Birds were few–the usual Black Phoebes, plus a bumper crop of Canyon Wrens and a nice Rock Wren on the riverbed rocks–but this is definitely a place to repay an early summer visit. We saw several nests of Streak-backed Oriole and one of Rose-throated Becard, and I’m sure that an early morning in June would be alive with birds.

As we drove back out after our quick walk, Mary found something huddled low in the roadside vegetation. It took me forever to get a good angle on it, but this is what she’d discovered:

I’d already blahhed on at great length about how we couldn’t really hope to see Rufous-bellied Chachalaca, and here was one perched fifteen feet away from the car at eye level! The bird was remarkably tolerant of its observers, the only sign of nervousness a slow turning on its perch to give us perfect views of every character, from the funny frontal crest and bright orbital ring to the deep red belly and golden tail tips. I’m still amazed!