Oaxaca and Western Chiapas WINGS Tour: Day 8, Cerro San Felipe

March 19, 2010
This was our full day on the road up to Cerro San Felipe, just north of Oaxaca. It was a beautiful day full of great birds.

We started on the lower slopes along the main highway.

Here we saw Dwarf and Slaty Vireos, White-throated Towhee (our first of many), Red-headed Tanager (a new Oaxaca bird for me, this being my 10th trip to the area). I was the only one to glimpse an otherwise uncooperative Oaxaca Sparrow.

This Vermilion Flycatcher sat up close.

This male Elegant Euphonia fed in the nearby mistletoe with its mate.

We then worked our way up to 9700 feet where we met with our main target, Dwarf Jay. They were very elusive for a while, but since one participant didn't see it, we continued searching and were rewarded with great views of this bird, as well as Steller's Jay and Gray-barred Wren.

We had a late lunch at Carmen's Cafeteria Restaurant Colibri (but the hummingbird feeders were no longer up). Here is Carmen, a really sweet person.

We did some birding while lunch was being made and had Russet Nightingale-Thrush and Brown-throated Wren.

Lunch was really good, and Carmen makes the best chiles rellenos.

A little bit of birding down another road in the late afternoon was not bad – Collared Towhee and Rufous-capped Brush-Finch were some of the highlights. I stopped to digiscope this pink-flowered stonecrop growing epiphytically with a peperomia on an oak trunk.