85,000 birds in the sky — the River of Raptors

Or, more specif­i­cally, 85,591 including:

33,376 Turkey vultures

7 Swallow-tailed kites

1 Mis­sis­sippi Kite

8 Norther Harriers

29 Sharp-shinned hawks

39 Cooper’s hawks

2 Gray hawks

5109 Broad-winged hawks

41,864 Swainson’s hawks

16 Amer­i­can kestrels

5 Pere­grine falcons

5135 Unknown raptors

Details here.

See:

All of this was in just one day observ­ing the Río de Rapaces, or River of Rap­tors, in Cardel and Chichi­cax­tle, Ver­acruz, Mex­ico. This area of Ver­acruz is under the great­est migra­tion path of rap­tors in the world. Through Sep­tem­ber, Octo­ber, and Novem­ber of every year, mil­lions of birds fly through this area. I’m not going to para­phrase all the won­der­ful arti­cles writ­ten about this, but instead pro­vide some links to more knowl­edge­able sources. The Pronatura and other orga­ni­za­tions doing the count­ing and con­ser­va­tion projects down there are doing won­der­ful work.

http://www.pronatura.org.mx/

http://www.pronaturaveracruz.org/programa_rio_rapaces.php

http://clubdeobservadoresdeavesdepuebla.blogspot.mx/2012/10/rio-de-rapaces-veracruz-13-de-octubre.html

http://mag.audubon.org/articles/birds/river-raptors

http://www.bioweb.uncc.edu/bierregaard/raptor_river.htm

I tagged along with the Puebla bird­watch­ing club and a cou­ple of other vol­un­teers — the same ones that orga­nized the amaz­ing trip to the Cañón del Sabino to see the mil­i­tary macaws, and the day trip around Mal­inche. So I always know that I am in for a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence, and I learn a lot about birds and bird­watch­ing every time. Also, it always worth the bus time, which was not insignif­i­cant this time. The state of Ver­acruz is sur­pris­ingly dif­fi­cult to get to from where I live.

The coun­ters do an impres­sive job with their click­ers. Appar­ently they are trained with com­puter sim­u­la­tions and tested before becom­ing offi­cial coun­ters. Some­times they have 2 click­ers in each hand to keep inde­pen­dent counts of 4 dif­fer­ent species at the same time. We got to relax and just enjoy the view with cam­eras, binoc­u­lars, and spot­ting scopes.

The birds use ther­mals the gain alti­tude and form a ket­tle of rap­tors, or a vor­tex in Span­ish. I like the word vor­tex to describe the ris­ing, loose tornado-like fun­nel of rap­tors. Then indi­vid­u­als will shoot off in the direc­tion of the next ther­mal. So, the vor­texes rise for thou­sands of feet and are con­nected by a lit­eral river of rap­tors. This is up there with the mon­archs in terms of the mag­nif­i­cence of the nat­ural world. I’m not going to try to rank these Mex­ico expe­ri­ences, but so far the top things, in no par­tic­u­lar order are: Mon­archs near Valle de Bravo, Mil­i­tary Macaws in Cañón del Sabino, flamin­gos and other birds in Rio Lagar­tos, Isla Isabel, and now the Ver­acruz River of Raptors.

The day did not start well for bird-watching, but the fore­cast held true and things cleared up around noon. Only a short while after we switched to the more inland observ­ing site at Chichi­cax­tle did vor­texes of birds and the river of rap­tors appear, and it was worth the wait. Mag­nif­i­cent. The pic­tures really don’t do it jus­tice because of the dis­tance, but hope­fully a few will give you an idea. The birds were rather far, so even at full zoom with the tele lens, the pics of the masses of birds tend to look like nearby swarms of insects. I had to try though. The spot­ting scope focused on a vor­tex made the ket­tle of rap­tors look like a tilt-shift snow globe of birds swirling and glid­ing upwards, and only with that amount of mag­ni­fi­ca­tion would I have any hope of even begin­ning to guess at the species. The vul­tures are dis­tin­guish­able from the hawks by size, shape, and flight style, but I still don’t com­pletely get how they can do the count­ing. Lots and lots of practice.

I ended up with a lot of what I’ve taken to call­ing “desk­top pics” because they are largely empty space with just a few birds, and there­fore per­fect for the desk­top back­ground image. How­ever, there was a great hum­ming­bird at the end the day, for which the experts are deter­min­ing the species and I will add it to the image cap­tion when known.

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Unhappy bird­ers wait­ing for the rain to pass.

Not a good view of Cardel, Veracruz.

The improv­ing view as the weather cleared.

Our morn­ing companions.

In the morn­ing we saw a lot of black vul­tures, like these may be, which unfor­tu­nately aren’t a part of the migration.

The first vor­texes of the day.

Even more!

Even more, with close-up.

The counts from the pre­vi­ous day were mock­ing us in the morn­ing, but we ended up with great counts.

In the morn­ing, there were a few birds hang­ing out.

The guy in the hat wins the gear con­test. That is a 500x tele lens.

A counter at work.

How many dif­fer­ent species can you see?

Towards the end of the day with fewer birds.

Couch’s king­bird

Mex­i­can Sheartail hummingbird

Mex­i­can Sheartail hummingbird

Mex­i­can Sheartail hummingbird

Mex­i­can Sheartail hummingbird

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