Where the road ends

     On a recent gray, gloomy afternoon, I took the beach road until it ended. 

Not the actual end of the road, but definitely the feeling one gets

     

     This is one of my favorite Progreso walks, as this end of the beach is often nearly deserted, seeming populated mostly by small boats awaiting their next outing.

 

Though on this windy afternoon, kite surfing was popular.

     While it is listed on Google Maps as the Calle Playa, past a certain point, the road becomes too narrow for most motor vehicles, and somewhere around Calle 140, closes to vehicular traffic altogether to protect the sea turtle nesting zone. 

I have never been lucky enough to witness turtle season, but a very dead fish in a probably dead shrub indicated how high the tides can get here (and how wild the winds). This unfortunate creature was about four feet up in a bush a good hundred feet from where the Gulf was on this afternoon.

     The road actually ends here, at a tidal flat near the Yucalpeten marina, a spot that was hosting a flock of probably fifty tiny shorebirds on this particular afternoon.

Some larger birds, like this handsome sandpiper, allowed themselves to be photographed.

     But the real reason for walking to the road's end is this: to sit on a rock with no humans in sight, watch the waves crash, smell the sea, and occasionally get splashed.

Such a spot feels, literally, elemental, allowing the human visitor to be in contact with wild air, ocean, and ancient stone.  

            And this wild place, with its feeling of meditative isolation, is only a forty-minute stroll from a favorite restaurant with fresh seafood and cold beer. How perfect can life get?

Not the wildlife we expected

     This morning a group of us took to the old basura road just outside Progreso. According to eBird, this no-longer-much-traveled road to the old city dump is the birding hotspot of the entire state of Yucatan, with 259 species recorded to date. It was still too dark to see any birds clearly when we arrived, but having to wait for sunrise is never a problem.

     Soon, however, we had enough light to see, and the birds made themselves known. Egrets great and snowy, multiple species of herons, stilts, teals, flotillas of white pelicans, flamboyances of flamingos, and at least one mangrove warbler kept us well-entertained.

     Around 7:00 AM, as we were exploring the salt flats, I was startled by some living thing grabbing my trouser leg. (This area is home to a small crocodile population, so one never knows. . . .) The beast in question turned out to be a puppy, seemingly healthy, basically pest-free, obviously used to humans, and equally obviously distressed about something.     

  

Seeing no cars, cycles, or human bodies anywhere nearby and there being no place to hide any of these things on this narrow stretch of road and no homes visible in any direction, we concluded that the little guy had been abandoned. We also wondered if siblings or mom had been taken by predators, leading to the emotional distress. The thought of this little creature forming part of a large reptile's food web led to some distress for us (even though crocodiles have to eat, too).

     Fortunately, this part of Yucatan is home to a lot of concerned people, and one of our number is acquainted with Tracy Ginger of Ginger's Jungle Rescue, which partners with the city and local volunteers to rescue, sterilize, vaccinate, and rehome street dogs. To the rescue we went, and back to the kennels went the puppy. A puppy this young and this friendly will not, I suspect, have any difficulty finding a home.

     So, we did not get the species count we anticipated this morning, but at least we did get to rescue an endangered creature.

In our own back yard

      Yesterday, two birder friends and I explored an area I had not known was there, a tidal flat returning to mangroves. Obviously, we knew the land existed, as the Merida-to-Progreso highway runs right alongside it, but the idea that this nondescript space a few hundred feet from a big-box store was a biodiversity hotspot had not occurred to us.

     Home to a restaurant (highly recommended but unfortunately not open yesterday morning), Progreso's Longboat and Canoe Track (fenced off and blocking our way to what looked like a mirador), and a lot of mangroves and mud, the area was one where our taxi driver was reluctant to leave two sixty-something women. We of course assured him that all was well, and he left us his cell phone number just in case we felt stranded. He need not have worried; the friend who joined us by bicycle had discovered that the path behind the restaurant led directly to downtown.

     And all was more than well. The parking lot mangroves hosted migrating warblers, and a semi-hidden trail led to this hidden paradise.

     Most of the wading and shore birds were beyond my camera's range, but the day's species list was cause for delight: besides the usual gulls, terns, and cormorants, the ria was hosting white pelicans, great and reddish egrets, tricolor and great blue herons, and even a wood stork. Roseate spoonbills and a dozen flamingos chose the morning to fly overhead, the flamingos' raucous noises so out of character with their graceful appearance in flight. A prehistoric-sounding racket and a burst of flight revealed at least one yellow-crowned night heron, the behavior of which led to speculation that there may be heron nests in the mangroves. We can hope.

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

     The presence of so many birds of course indicates the presence of insects and other creatures that serve as bird food. We were unplagued by mosquitoes, due in part to a healthy dragonfly population.

Photograph courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

     Besides the mangroves colonizing the flats (cue celebratory noises), this little plant was spreading enthusiastically.

A photograph sent to some plant experts revealed it as a Salicornia species, a genus of plants sometimes called pickleweeds or saltworts. Most are edible, and some have traditionally been applied externally as painkillers for arthritis. Perhaps next time we will sample some.

     And there will definitely be a next time. This much biodiversity within walking distance of downtown Progreso is a treasure to be appreciated--repeatedly.

Quite the discovery

     As much as I have come to love this part of Yucatan, the blindingly white pavement, near-constant presence of humans, and (to my Ohio eyes) undersized trees, tend to leave me hankering for serious green after a few weeks. Fortunately, natural areas are never very far away in this peninsula, and recently, tireless birder (and professional-quality photographer) friend Kate discovered a list of wildlife hotspots inside Merida itself. It should surprise no one that exploration of these urban oases is now on our calendars.

     Yesterday, we visited Parque Ecológico del Poniente with a friend who has lived in Yucatan for more than four decades but had not known of the park's existence. Tucked into a busy neighborhood near Merida's psychiatric hospital, this relatively small site kept us busy for hours with birding,

Photo courtesy of Laurie Frey-Baquedano

botanizing,

 

Ludwigia octovalvis growing near the park's large pond

and sometimes just relaxing.

Created from a former rock quarry, the park is home to massive-for-Yucatan trees colonizing the bare rock left by long-ago bulldozers.

Over the years, the scars in the rock have become home to what looks like maidenhair fern 

as well as some quite impressive iguanas.

The focus of the day was intended to be birding, and Poniente did not disappoint. A heavily-traveled jogging path brought sightings of orioles, warblers, gnatcatchers, and--perhaps the sighting of the day--a pair of red-lored parrots checking out a tree cavity.

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

The lower portion of the old quarry is flooded, and this human-created wetland hosts more water birds than I expected to see in a city of nearly a million people. Besides the dozens of ducks that have moved in (and taken up fishing, one particularly enterprising fowl beating a small fish to death and eating it while we watched), the pond yesterday featured anhingas,

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

the usual herons, egrets,

and a number of small wading birds. A totally unexpected sighting was a wood stork, at first taken for an ibis but unmistakable when it took to the water and began its open-mouthed hunting of small creatures. For sheer entertainment value, however, nothing surpassed the northern jacana, sometimes called the "Jesus bird" because of the way its large feet allow it to walk on water, or at least on floating vegetation.

Photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

Before leaving Merida, we decided to check out a nearby park, the confusingly-named Parque Arqueo-ecológico del Poniente. This much-larger park features several kilometers of narrow, winding trails and another flooded quarry. Being ready for lunch, we did not stay long, but we will definitely go back.

Rio Lagartos that isn't

     Friends and I recently visited Rio Lagartos, the name of both a town and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in eastern Yucatan. The Spanish name means "Alligator River," but as Ismael Navarro, owner of Yucatan Ecotours, told us, there is no river and there are no alligators here. The body of water along which this little town sits is an estuary of the Gulf of Mexico, with relatively little fresh water,

and its large carnivorous reptiles are actually New World crocodiles.

(If I had been a sixteenth-century explorer, I would not have wanted to get close enough to tell the difference, either. These creatures have serious teeth.)

    To norteamericanos, the reserve is perhaps best known as a nesting site for flamingos, but the area has been inhabited by humans for a long time. Ismael and his son Angel, who was our guide for a fabulous boat tour through a variety of ecosystems, gave a bit of the human history along with outdoor education. The Maya named what is now Rio Lagartos hol k’óoben-"entry to the kitchen"--or literally the three stones marking the boundaries of a cooking fire. The nearby salt lagoons supplied much of this part of the peninsula, and the Gulf and the estuary teem with fish and other marine life even today. Isla Cerritos, now a nesting area for birds, was the fortified site from which the Maya of  Chichén Itzá controlled the trade routes for salt and other valuable substances. This sleepy little town was an important place.

    And it still is. Besides flamingos and crocodiles, the biosphere reserve is home to dozens of species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and nearly 400 species of birds. (No one seems to have counted the insect species, but there are lots of them.) Endangered loggerhead sea turtles nest here, as do magnificent frigatebirds and wood storks, which in my Florida girlhood were nearly extinct. 

Wood stork photo courtesy of Kate Fitzgerald

And while we did not get to the nesting colonies, we did see a couple of quite handsome flamingos.

    A particular delight for our little group is the fact that so many people in the village have embraced ecotourism. Nature guiding seems to be a growth industry here, with local young people learning the rich natural and cultural heritage of their region--and graciously sharing it with those of us lucky enough to visit.