Urban Birder
It could easily have been the trip that never was, but David Lindo is grateful that he threw caution to the wind and headed out to bird in Mexico…
Why David Lindo is forever grateful that he headed out to Lake Coba in Mexico for some birding
This is a story of how while in the pursuit of lost love, I ended up pursuing a lost bird. Well, it wasn’t quite as poetic as that, but it was certainly an epiphanic moment that was to change the course of my life, forever!
In 2004, I met a woman and I fell for her, as she did for me. The story should have ended as a classic ‘and they lived happily ever after’ sort of tale. But it was not to be. There was a caveat. When we met, she expressly told me that in three months she was embarking on a long-planned sojourn in South America. We agreed that all bets would be off come her day of departure.
However, when that day came, both of us were bawling our eyes out: our hearts profoundly broken. We kept in touch and four months later agreed to reunite in Cancun, Mexico, in the spring of 2005, for a couple of weeks, before she moved on. But to cut yet another long story short, despite booking my flights, she didn’t believe that I was coming and had decided to travel on, anyway. I was left holding my flight tickets deciding whether or not to go.
I got on the plane. It was, at that point, the furthest I had ever travelled on my own. Excited and filled with trepidation, I landed in Cancun under the cover of darkness. I hated the college party atmosphere there, so I caught the first bus out of town. A few days later, I found myself some 80 miles south in Tulum, a famous coastal, tourist hotspot, replete with magnificent Mayan ruins.
I spent a couple of days birding in the area, as well as on the nearby Isla Cozumel, where I picked up a couple of the island’s endemics including the Cozumel Emerald, a gorgeous hummingbird. It was also there that I discovered a Turquoise-browed Motmot catching bees in a lightly forested area. It was the first time I had seen a motmot of any description, and I remember being enthralled by its colours; it looked like an overgrown bee-eater. Typically, once perched, it stood stockstill, rendering itself almost invisible even in the thinnest of cover.
I found that the birds in Mexico seemed to fall into two categories: very distinctive and unmistakable, or utterly unidentifiable.
I was on my own with a passable field guide, so it occasionally took days to work out what birds I had seen. Like the two days I spent toiling over a small ‘buzzard’ that I found one day in a roadside tree. I finally worked out that it was indeed, a Roadside Hawk. Other species had to be consigned to the ‘forget you saw it’ bin. Regardless, I was determined to have a great time in solitude, with wildlife trying to mend my broken heart.
I was running out of money towards the end of my two-week trip. So, I decided to have a last hurrah and visit Coba, an inland site of an ancient Mayan city, for some retrospective urban birding, as the original conurbation had long disappeared, centuries ago. I had also read that the lake itself was home to the locally scarce Spotted Rail. In the 1980s, this site used to be the best place to find them, certainly in Mexico, if not the whole of ‘Central’ America. Apparently, none have been seen there since!
After staying overnight in a local hotel, I arose early to walk around the lake. Such was my lack of confidence about seeing this bird, that I deliberately left my rubbish compact camera back at the hotel. Moments after arriving at the lake
I bumped into a delightful Green Kingfisher. Great Kiskadees, and the similar-looking though smaller Social Flycatchers, were prevalent and were even hanging out together. I noticed a Masked Tityra in the nearby treetops. It was an unmistakable, grey, Starling-sized bird, with a black bare-skinned mask.
In the sky Grey-breasted Martins were skimming after insects along with the more common Swallows and tiny Vaux’s Swifts. I watched weird, prehistoric-looking Brown Jays, seemingly only capable of flying from tree to tree, with their laboured flight.
Meanwhile, on the lake itself, Least and Pied-billed Grebes were fairly evident. Waiting on the low-lying exposed branches of the riparian trees were reptilian Anhingas. In flight they had a very odd shape; elongated at both ends, with a very raptor-like ‘flap flap glide’ motion.
As I sat by a reedbed to study these strange cormorants, my mind began to drift to thoughts of lost love. A Mangrove Warbler, a contested subspecies of the Yellow Warbler, suddenly refocused my attention, as it popped out and climbed a reed stem, literally feet from me. As I was admiring the warbler, I heard a rustle in the reeds at ground level. Before I could think a Spotted Rail stepped out into the limelight. It was so close to me, I could have touched it. Neither did I concern it, as it foraged for a full 15 minutes at the reedbed edge. Why didn’t I have my camera?
I left Mexico having had my first taste of world birding and thanking my ex for motivating me to travel. This trip taught me that sometimes lost causes are still worth, chasing because the outcome may not be what you expected.