A Chiapas Teaser

Just last Saturday I had a very enjoyable day in San Francisco with my friend Clayton. We bought lunch at a market and ate it in Mission Dolores Park.

Two days later I was having lunch in a café in San Cristóbal de las Casas in a slightly different atmosphere but nearly identical temperature.

Tomorrow I lead my first of four field trips for the fourth biannual meeting of the Gay Birders of North America group – an informal email list and Facebook group that has been around for a decade or more. For the past five days I’ve gone scouting with several of the other field trip leaders, and it’s been a blast. Here’s a teaser of some of the amazing stuff we’ve found, much of which I still haven’t identified.

Very cool mushrooms

Gorgeous lizards

Rose-bellied Bunting among about 236 other bird species

Melanis pixe, Red-bordered Pixie among almost hundred butterflies that we tried to identify

A bizarre plant hopper

And many, many cool plants. This is the wet season, everything is lush and green, and flowers abound. I’m pretty sure this milkweed vine is a Gonolobus species.

Hopefully I find the time and energy in the next days to share more of what we’ve found while scouting as well as some highlights from the field trips.