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Hi folks,

I’m fresh back from Veracruz, MX for the Fourth North American Ornithological Conference. It was eight days, but I’ve got a thousand stories. Just some numbers to set the stage: This was the largest gathering ornithologists in the Western Hemisphere, ever: Two thousand of us! There were about 1600 scientific presentations. And on Thursday, there were at least 100,000 Broad-winged Hawks that flew over the official Pro Natura hawkwatch on a hotel roof in Cardel. My new lifers (birds I’ve never seen): 55 species. These easily put my life list over the coveted milestone of 500. Great fun! But I was more interested in the birds that breed in the US and Canada that I found down there, including:

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Blue-headed Vireo, White-eyed Vireo, Summer Tanager, American Redstart, Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole, Yellow Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Hermit Warbler, Townsend’s Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler, Ovenbird, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Black-billed Cuckoo, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Least Flycatcher, Great Crested Flycatcher, Barn Swallow, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, Northern Parula, Blue-winged Warbler, Yellow-throated Warbler, Black-and-White Warbler, and Yellow-breasted Chat, among others.

We found many of these birds at a mid-elevation cloud forest coffee plantation (shade-grown) near Coatapec. If you drink cofffee – and you people know who you are – buy certified shade grown! The two-tiered forest structure of mature trees forming a relatively open canopy above the ~ 2m tall coffee plants really does provide useable habitat for many migrant and resident birds. This includes birds like Cerulean Warbler that are suffering unprecedented population declines in the US and Canada. Sun grown coffee does NOT provide the same habitat benefit – buy shade grown!
~tjo