Kumliens Gull

After dom's fantastic gull session at rainham's stone barges, i was eager for an early start to try and connect with some white-winger action! and wasn't long before the 2w Kumlien's Gull showed well to a group of us eager beaver's.

On the deck you could see the dark centred primaries and on preening revealing the dark upper tail band, before a grey heron spooked all the gull's thus providing us with a great fly bye.

Also seen was a first winter Iceland Gull on the river and a Frigate past ( unfortunately this was a boat species ) and also surprised to find two Ruff roosting on the barges with several redshank.

Heron's

One of the new species added on this trip was Bare-throated tiger heron which were nesting on the hotel grounds, also numerous were both Snowy egret and Green heron being seen daily.

Bare-throated tiger heron

Green heron

Snowy egret

Other's seen were White Ibis, Tricoloured heron, Cattle egret and a single Great blue heron was found along the beach.

Great blue heron

Cozumel

Visited the island of Cozumel during my Holiday which is a fifty minute ferry crossing from Player-del Carmen and cost about 300 peso's (about £15 return), having only half a day and Cozumel being a fairly big island i decided to take a taxi to the nearest Golf course which was about 6km away or 10 dollars!

Cozumel ferry

my gatecrashed venue

These seemed a good idea as along the entrance track alone picked up all the commoner wintering warblers plus the endemic Golden (yellow) Warbler along with blue-grey Gnatcatcher and the awesome Bananaquit, overhead Barn, Tree, Cliff and Northen rough-winged Swallows all fed, and came across no fewer than half a dozen Cozumel Emerald a single Green-Breasted Mango and a single Canivet's Emerald.

Golden (yellow) Warbler

Cozumel Emerald

Canivet's Emerald

Bananaquit

Further along a stunning male Stripe-headed Tanager along with several Cozumel Vireo's, Black Catbird, Yucatan Woodpecker, Northen Waterthrush, Ovenbird and small parties of Yellow-faced grassquit.

Yucatan Woodpecker

yellow-faced grassquit

The Golf course ponds held Northen Jacana, American Coot, Spotted Sandpiper, Common Snipe and lots of Black-Necked Stilts.

Black-necked stilts

Most people didn't mind me walking around, and ground staff are quite polite if you wave and say hello (or Ola!) and the golfer's likewise.

Pishing....

Many of Mexico's and North American passerine species can be lured out with some persuasive pishing which works very well with sometimes upto ten species in a single bush, and also impersonating a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl also worked wonders!

Spot-breasted wren

Common Tody-flycatcher

Grey Catbird

Summer Tanager

First year male

Common Birds (of cancun!)

The following birds are all the commonist species seen in and around the hotel gardens or from the balcony and are impossible to miss.

Tropical Kingbird

Hooded Oriole

Social Flycatcher

Tropical Mockingbird

Great Kiskadee

Hummer's

Saw five species of Hummingbird this year which was the most ive ever seen in three trips and they included the Cinnamon, Buff-bellied, Canviet's Emerald, Green-breasted mango and the endemic Cozumel Emerald.

By far the commonist was the Ciannamon which was seen every day.

Cinnamon

Canivet's emerald

Green-breasted mango

Cozumel Emerald

Ola!

I'm Back, Yippee, back home, back to reality, back to work and all that rubbish that goes along with it.....so here is my first installment from my Mexico pics, thought i would start with Yankee Warblers where the Cancun Peninsular is a favourite wintering ground and good number's can be seen around the hotel gardens and surrounding jungle.

Parula

American Redstart

yellow-throated

black-throated green

Palm

yellow

hooded

black+white