One of the easiest hummingbirds to see on our birding tour in Veracruz, Mexico were our own ruby-throats. Right now they are still moving south but in only five months they’ll be on their way north again. Most of them are in the Mexican highlands right now but there’s a hotspot in the lowlands at the coast where we saw many. (Blue arrow on this eBird occurrence map for week of 4 Oct.)
Over the winter most of them stay in Mexico while others continue as far south as Costa Rica. By early February they are all restless. Some of them mass at the Yucatan coast to take the shortest route north over open water across the Gulf. Soon they are on their way, flying non-stop across the Gulf for 18 to 24 hours.
As hummingbirds approach the U.S. coast they encounter many oil and gas rigs — green dots on this map by NOAA NCEI.
Sometimes they are attracted to red colors on the rigs, as seen in the video below:
On 21 February 2018, Chuck, working on a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, noticed humming birds hitting him on his red bandana and red coveralls. He saw another group hitting a fire extinguisher. He decided to get a cup of sugar water and watch what happened next.
*p.s. Here’s eBird’s ruby-throated hummingbird abundance map for the week of 1 February. Note the group in the Yucatan about to fly north over the Gulf.
“Sky island” in Puebla as seen from Veracruz, probably Volcán La Malinche, 4 October 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
8 October 2026
The mountains in Veracruz are very beautiful. On the morning of 4 October, fog shrouded the valley so that Volcán la Malinche(*) was literally a sky island. (*I am not sure of the name of this peak.)
Also from our elevated vantage point, we saw snow-covered Pico de Orizaba above the crest of the intervening hill. Click here for a marked-up photo showing where to look.
Snow on Pico de Orizaba as seen at the crest of the near hill, 4 October 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
On sunny days, the air heated quickly, rose from the valleys, and flowed over the mountains to generate afternoon thunderstorms on the eastward side. Even if it didn’t rain in Xalapa loads of water came barrelling down the steep watersheds and flooded roads in and near Xalapa.
No one waited for the floods to end. They drove right through it.
Flash flood on 2 October, Xalapa, Ver, MX (photo by Kate St. John)
Notice the substantial rocks being carried by this flood across the Puebla-Xalapa Road on 4 October.
Flash flood on 4 October on the Puebla-Xalapa Road, Ver, MX (photo by Kate St. John)
On 6 October, our last full day on tour, we spent 2 hours at the Cardel Hawk Watch on the Hotel Bienvenido roof. Between noon and 2:00pm53,715 broad-winged hawks kettled up and streamed out in a River of Raptors! What a thrill!
Watching the River of raptors at Cardel Hawk Watch at Hotel Bienvenido, 6 Oct 2026 (photo by Kate St. John)
On 1 October Moe Bell took a video of this kettle when the birds were closer.
Hawks — mostly broad-wings — kettling up at River of Raptors, Hotel Bienvenido, Cardel, 1 Oct 2026 (video by Moe Bell)
Today I leave Veracruz and Mexico to fly home to Pittsburgh.
I first became hooked on the River of Raptors when I saw this video (below) in 2013 but I did not act on it until this year. 100,000 raptors(!), tropical birds, and so much more!
Did I see what this video promised? I’m glad I came.
Birds in order of appearance in the video, include 4 occurrences of broad-winged hawks.
Broad-winged hawk
Common squirrel cuckoo
(not a bird. a tabby cat)
Blue-gray tanager
Boat-billed flycatcher
Osprey
Broad-winged hawk
Black vulture
Broad-winged hawk
Broad-winged hawk
Ferruginous pygmy-owl
Fork-tailed flycatcher
Crested caracara
Gray hawk
Great kiskadee
Hook-billed kite
Laughing falcon
Masked tityra
Lucifer hummingbird
Northern harrier
Peregrine falcon
Red-legged honeycreeper
Roadside hawk
Rose-throated becard
Ruby-throated hummingbird
Veracruz wren (split from rufous-naped wren in 2009)
Yellow-throated euphonia
Short-tailed hawk (white belly & throat with brown nape and head)
Swainson’s hawk
MYSTERY BIRD! Looks like a Common buzzard to me (Eurasia+Africa). It might be a very pale red-tailed hawk … but it has no patagial stripes.
Tropical/Couch’s kingbird
Turkey vulture
Wood stork
Zone-tailed hawk
Background music on the video is a 1992 song by Maná called Vivir Sin Aire (Living Without Air), a song about love lost with an apt line: Cómo pudiera un ave volar sin alas = How could a bird fly without wings?
Today we travel from the highlands at Xalapa to sea level at Veracruz. We’ll make birding stops along the way and look in at the hawk watches to see who’s flying by.
Versatile about elevation
The birds we saw above 4,000 feet generally do not come down to the foothills but there are a couple of versatile species that we may see up top and possibly encounter at sea level.
The rufous-capped warbler (Basileuterus rufifrons), pictured at top, is flexible about elevation but picky about moisture and thickets. He inhabits dry scrub and semi-open habitats from sea level to 9,800 feet.
The brown-backed solitaire (Myadestes occidentalis) is closely related to Townsend’s solitaire, a western mountain bird that occasionally visits Pennsylvania. Brown-backed solitaires inhabit semi-arid or pine-oak forests from 2,000 to 11,500 feet in Mexico and Central America. They like to sing year-round from a hidden perch so chances are good that we will hear one but not see it.
The white-winged tanager (Piranga leucoptera) looks like scarlet tanager though slightly smaller with a black face and white wing bars. He likes pine-oak forests and shady coffee plantations in the mountains and foothills.
The fan-tailed warbler (Euthlypis lachrymosa) of Mexico and Central America is the only species in his genus. He shares his common name with the “fan-tailed warbler” of Eurasia and Africa whose alternative common name is preferable and unforgettable: the zitting cisticola(*) (Cisticola juncidis).
The fan-tailed warbler in Mexico lives in foothills and montane forests with undisturbed understory. He follows army ants, not to eat them but to catch the insects the army scares ahead of them. When upset, he fans his tail. Here he’s yelling at a ferruginous pygmy-owl at Xilitla,Mexico. Look at that tail!
The Mexican sheartail (Doricha eliza) hummingbird is endemic to the Yucatan’s north shore and has a small population near Xalapa and Veracruz. He’s not very picky about elevation as long as there’s thorn scrub available. If we haven’t seen him yet, he’s pretty reliable at Laguna Miradores at 2,800 feet.
We were in the highlands for only five days (4 nights) so I expected the the big push of broad-wings to have passed — but not yet. Meanwhile turkey vulture numbers are increasing and soon Swainson’s hawk (Buteo swainsoni) numbers will build.
The Swainson’s hawk is almost never seen near Pittsburgh so its light and dark color morphs may be a challenge for me to pick out in the sky. However, their big difference is size (larger) a shape (wings are longer) compared to broad-wings.
Swainson’s hawk color morphs as seen in flight: light, intermediate, dark (photos from Wikimedia)
Though Swainson’s hawks eat rodents during the breeding season in North America they spend the winter at the pampas (grasslands) of Argentina where they eat almost exclusively insects, especially grasshoppers.
In the 1990s pest control of grasshoppers in South America caused mass die-offs of Swainson’s hawks.
Acute toxicity from poisoning by organophosphate insecticides monocrotophos and dimethoate, used to control grasshopper outbreaks in alfalfa and sunflower fields, caused the death of nearly 6,000 Swainson’s Hawks in Argentina in 1995 and 1996. Overall, an estimated 20,000 were killed in Argentina by pesticide applications. Deaths resulted immediately after hawks were sprayed directly by pesticide applicators while they foraged in fields or within several days after they ate poisoned grasshoppers. Many hawks died within minutes of being sprayed, and their carcasses were found in adjacent fields (Woodbridge et al. 1995a, Goldstein et al. 1996 MJB).
After this incident, these pesticides were banned and an educational campaign began to bring awareness to the problem. These programs seem to have been successful.
After the hawk watch we’ll be back at our seaside hotel in Boca del Rio where we might see a yellow-winged tanager (Thraupis abbas) in the garden. This bird is so versatile about elevation that we saw him in the highlands at parks, gardens and forest edges.
Yellow-winged tanager (from Wikimedia)
Tonight we have our last dinner together. We leave for home tomorrow.
p.s. (*) The zitting cisticola (Cisticola juncidis) is drab looking but has a distinctive song –> zit-zit-zit-zit. I’ve seen and heard him in Africa and Spain. Click the link to see him.
In the lowlands we saw many familiar northern-breeding birds within the migration corridor, but now we’re in montane pine-oak and fir forests at 4,000 to 11,500 feet (1200m to 3500m), both pictured below.
At this altitude many of the birds are new to me including the red warbler (Cardellina rubra) at top. Birds of the World describes him:
A standout in an already distinctive family, Red Warbler is easily identified by its strikingly red plumage and silver or dark gray auricular patch. Endemic to three disjunct mountain ranges in Mexico, this montane specialist inhabits the edges of pine-oak forests from 2900-3500 m (9,500-11,500 ft) during the breeding season, which stretches from February to August; however, it descends mountain slopes in the winter to around 1800 m (6,000 ft), where it often associates with mixed species flocks.
The red warbler probably descends the mountains at this time of year because it feeds on insects, including Neuroptera, which may not be as abundant in the mountains in winter. This Neuroptera, for example, occurs in Veracruz, Mexico: a green lacewing. The bird is beautiful and so is its food.
Birds in order of appearance with paraphrased information from Birds of the World:
Bearded wood partridge (Dendrortyx barbatus): Listed as Vulnerable, this elusive bird forages in pairs or small groups and flies at the slightest sign of alarm. (How will our tour sneak up on it?)
Strickland’s woodpecker (Leuconotopicus stricklandi): Strickland’s is brown and white instead of familiar black and white of the woodpeckers back home.
Gray-barred wren (Campylorhynchus megalopterus): usually encountered in small bands of up to a dozen individuals which move through upper levels of vegetation.
Ocellated thrasher (Toxostoma ocellatum): although it forages mainly on the ground, it is most usually found singing from an exposed perch. Very difficult to approach closely.
Russet Nightingale-thrush (Catharus occidentalis): This species is not as difficult to observe as some Catharus thrushes. It forages on the ground and sometimes visits open areas, especially at dusk and dawn.
Striped sparrow (Oriturus superciliosus): Forages in small groups, often with one or more individuals perched atop a small tree or bush acting as a sentinel while the rest of the flock forages among bunchgrasses. [I think it looks like a heavy-bodied chipping sparrow that has a black eye.]
Collared towhee (Pipilo ocai): Amazingly there is not much information on this bird.
Rufous-capped brushfinch (Atlapetes pileatus): Favors dense brushy areas and is often rather skulking, but also curious. Investigates scolding groups of other birds. Usually in pairs, sometimes in small groups, foraging in weedy vegetation. (This explains why photos are hard to find and very poor light.)
Hooded yellowthroat (Geothlypis nelsoni): It resembles and behaves like a common yellowthroat except “unlike most yellowthroats, not found in marshes.” Can be difficult to distinguish from common yellowthroat. Uh oh.
I’m hoping to see the beautiful golden-browed warbler as well. It is nearly endemic.
The very attractively plumaged golden-browed warbler (Basileuterus belli) is almost endemic to western and southern Mexico, although its range reaches as far south as Honduras and El Salvador.
20 hummingbirds on the WINGS Veracruz checklist, displayed in taxonomic order. All photos from Wikimedia Commons
4 October 2026, WINGS at Veracruz: Day 6, in the highlands near Xalapa
Our checklist for this trip includes 20 species of hummingbirds, 11 of which will be Life Birds if I see them.
Enjoy their beauty in the slideshow above.
Fun Fact about the wedge-tailed sabrewing. 15th in the slideshow and pictured below.
Wedge-tailed sabrewing (photo from Wikimedia)
The Wedge-tailed Sabrewing is a hummingbird that not only hums, it sings. And sings. And sings even more. Its song is so complex as to make one wonder about the appellation “songbird” being limited to oscine passerines. … This prodigious serenading emanates from clusters of males known as leks, which form to attract females more effectively.
“88” is not the count of butterflies we’ve seen on our birding tour. It’s the common name of Diaethria sp. butterflies whose wings have an “88” or “89” pattern on them.
There are 12 species of Diaetheria butterflies, some of which are found in Veracruz including the Anna’s Eight-Eight (Diaethria anna). The adults feed on rotting fruit, tree sap, and dung, so don’t look for them at flowers.
Diaethria butterflies have completely different colors and patterns on their dorsal and ventral sides — so different that they don’t look like the same butterfly.
The ventral side (wings held closed) has a white background with black lines that almost make concentric circles surrounding the numerals 88 or 89 in the center. The upper wing is red but mostly hidden by the other wing. This side of the butterfly is always black, white and red.
The “88”s on these butterflies develop in the same way that stripes and spots develop on zebras, tigers, leopards and giant pufferfish. They are called Turing patterns.
Turing patterns on zebra, tiger, leopard, pufferfish (composite from Wikimedia photos)
The numerical patterns visible on the wings of the “88 butterfly” [Diaethria sp.including] (Diaethria clymena) originate during embryonic development from morphogenetic mechanisms described by Alan Turing in 1952—known as Turing patterns.
Cofre de Perote is a shield volcano with a volcanic outcropping — a coffer — that is the highest point on the mountain. In this photo it’s possible to see that the coffer is formed by columns of volcanic rock, similar to the Devils Tower in Wyoming. It must be flat up there; the coffer is dotted with communication towers.
Soon we will travel to Cascada de Texolo waterfalls area, located between the towns of Xico and Teocelo, where the Rio Matlacóbatl meets Rio Texolo. Both rivers originate on the slopes of Cofre de Perote.
The main waterfall is at the end of the Rio Matlacobatl where it joins Rio Texolo. Visible from the main overlook, it drops 60-80 feet after passing through the Matlacobatl Ravine’s sheer rock walls up to 650 feet high.
In this video you can see birds in the airspace above the main waterfall. I imagine they are catching flying insects.
These waterfalls are shaped by volcanic activity. The riverbeds and tops of the cliffs are hard volcanic rock that is very resistant to erosion but the layers underneath are made of sediments and less consolidated pyroclastic materials that are easy to erode.
Besides the waterfalls’ natural beauty, moisture in the valley promotes a lot of plant and animal life including birds. Tomorrow I’ll write about a surprising insect we’ll be looking for at the falls.
1 October 2026, WINGS at Veracruz: Day 3, quiet beach roads, lowland areas, and savannah hotspots
Today and tomorrow morning we’re visiting hotspots in the lowlands near metro Veracruz. As you can see in this eBird screenshot the best lowland hotspots are near the coast and include beaches, marshes and migratory flyways.
In our travels we’re expecting to find three kinds of birds:
Migrating birds from North America,
Resident birds who don’t migrate though they have either Caribbean or Central and South American ranges, and
at least two endemics
The Endemics
The Veracruz wren used to be lumped with the Russet-naped Wren (Campylorhynchus humilis) which is grouped with the larger Rufous-backed Wren (Campylorhynchus capistratus). However, DNA tests indicate these three are separate species.
The wren got its name, Veracruz, because its tiny range is confined to central Veracruz state from sea level to 300m (984 ft). It spans only about 80-90 miles north-to-south. Click here for the wren’s eBird occurrence map.
In 1945 the blue-capped motmot (Momotus coeruliceps) was lumped with other species and called the “blue-crowned motmot.” Then in 2009 he and his fellow motmots were split into 5 species based on a thorough study conducted by Stiles. The split made the newly dubbed blue-capped motmot instantly endemic to Mexico. He inhabits lowland forests, shady second growth and gardens. He was the only one in the group with a Blue Clown.
As I mentioned yesterday we are past the peak of Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis) migration but I have never seen an adult of this species. Note the red eyes! I’d be thrilled to see one perched above me, pausing on its way to the Pantanal.
Last year this same tour saw flocks of dickcissels (Spiza americana) migrating south across the lowlands. Some dickcissels spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, others migrate to northern South America. Since the most dickcissels I’ve ever seen at the same time is 2, a flock would be fantastic!
Dickcissel singing in western PA, 10 June 2017 (photo by Anthony Bruno)
Scissor-tailed flycatchers (Tyrannus forficatus) migrate to Central America for the winter after breeding in the southern Great Plains and adjoining states. A few of them wander so I’ve seen one as far east as Ocean City, Maryland. But I’ve never seen more than one at a time. Last year this tour saw flocks of them in migration. Fingers crossed.
A lot of birds live year round in Mexico because the food supply — especially that of insects, reptiles and amphibians — does not drop for the winter. For most of the residents in this slideshow, Mexico is the northern edge of their range, South America is the southern edge. Three are Caribbean: limpkin, double-striped thick-knee and northern jacana.
Plain-breasted ground dove
Ruddy ground dove
Limpkin
Double-striped thick-knee
Collared plover
Northern jacana
Bare-throated tiger-heron
Lesser yellow-headed vulture
Ferruginous pygmy-owl
Ringed Kingfisher
Barred Antshrike
Boat-billed flycatcher
Social Flycatcher
I hope to see all 18 birds pictured in this article but it will take some luck. Fingers crossed!
30 September 2026, WINGS at Veracruz: Day 2, Veracruz River of Raptors hawk watch plus shore and marsh hotspots
On migration from North to South America raptors choose routes that require the least exertion. Avoiding open water they use thermals and tail winds for lift and push as they follow the edges of mountain ranges and coastlines. Inevitably there are geographic pinch points where they’re funneled into a narrow corridor. That’s where the best fall hawk watches are.
Southbound raptors leaving Texas for eastern Mexico fly over a wide coastal plain that increasingly narrows to a bottleneck between the mountains and the sea north of Heroica Veracruz. To their west is a wall of mountains where Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental meets the Central Volcanic Belt. To their east is the Gulf of Mexico. They stream through the gap by forming a river of raptors.
This migratory phenomenon was well known and potentially endangered when ProNatura Veracruz, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, and HawkWatch International launched the Veracruz River of Raptors Project in 1991. In fall 1992 they established two permanent hawk watch sites just south of the pinch point. Cardel is 7 km (4.34 mi) from the coast on the roof of Hotel Bienvenidos in downtown Cardel. Chichicaxtle is 17-18km (10-11 mi) inland on a tower by the town’s soccer field.
In 2024 Jess Cosentino made four videos for weeks 1 through 4 of fall migration at Veracruz River of Raptors. This video is Weeks 3 and 4 at the peak of Mississippi Kite migration.
We will miss the kites’ peak since we are here for Week 7 and part of 8. But we will see the broad-winged hawks’ peak, weather permitting.
Broad-wings peak at Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania for a 2-week period in mid-September. From there it takes them 12-20 days to get to Veracruz. It’s likely that some of those who flew past Hawk Mountain will fly by while we’re watching the Veracruz River of Raptors. “Migration is a Moving Experience.”
