The sunset from our rental house in Chacala, Mexico on the first night of our visit.

Laura and Joann looking at Blue Footed Boobies and Brown Pelicans. This is just offshore from San Blas, near Piedras de la Virgen (Rock of the virgin). Senor Morales, or boat captain is at the back.

Laura and Joann looking at Blue Footed Boobies and Brown Pelicans. This is just offshore from San Blas, near Piedras de la Virgen (Rock of the virgin). Senor Morales, or boat captain is at the back.

Holly and Mary - just offshore from San Blas, near Piedras de la Virgen (Rock of the virgin).

Blue Footed Boobies! Yes, their feet are really blue. The ones without blue feet are generally juveniles or just not in breeding plumage.

Magnificent Frigate Bird. This bird has a wingspan of about 6 feet. Holly and I call them Magnificent Friggin Birds. They're everywhere along the coast here.

Pair of juvenile Brown Pelicans

Blue Footed Booby

Piedras de la Virgen - Statue of the Virgin Mary with a Magnificent Frigate Bird crown.

The view as the boat heads back into San Blas.

Boats along the channel in San Blas

Laura, Joann and Holly

Boats along the channel in San Blas

Pelicanos on a partially sunken ship

Gorgeous adult Brown Pelicans

Joann taking pictures of the beautiful sunset we had. In the water in front of her is a flock of Wood Storks, Great Egrets, and somewhere - a Roseate Spoonbill. You can't see it in the photos but the trees on the islands in the pond were thousands and thousands of Great Tailed Grackles roosting for the night. It was pretty loud!

Wood Storks

Sunset over the Wood Stork pond

Sunset in Aticama. We drove up the road from the ponds and stopped in this little beachside village to have dinner. Turned out to be the best meal we had all week!

Joann and Laura

Mary and Holly

Magnificent Frigate Birds

Carla and Mary eating on the beach in La Penita de Jaltemba. They have a nice open marketplace in this town every Thursday. Lots of regional crafts and food.

Magnificent Frigate Birds over our heads at the beach restaurant.

Ok this river trip in the next bunch of photos was the highlight of our trip I think. The man in the photo is Chencho, our birding guide. He was amazing. He found pretty much every single bird that we hoped to see on this river: Northern Potoos, Bare Throated Tiger Heron, Mangrove Swallows, Mangrove Warblers, Little Blue Herons, Green Herons, Tricolored Herons, Boat-billed Herons - I can't even remember a fraction of the birds we saw. It was fantastic.

Osprey with a freshly caught fish in his talons.

Osprey with a freshly caught fish in his talons. This is the "zoomed in" version.

Tons of Orioles. Here we have some Streaked-back Orioles and maybe one other species.

Closer photo of the Orioles

Beautiful Higuera Trees

Mangroves. This was a Mangrove swamp we were puttering through.

Green Heron

Snail Kite! Check out that enormous bill (this is a juvenile). He uses the point of his bill to reach deep into the snail shell and pull out the snail.

Snail Kite again. He's looking down into the water, locating the next little morsel for his meal...

Anhinga

Anhinga. Chencho got us incredibly close views of many of these birds.

White Ibis (I think these used to be called Red-faced Ibis)

The view in the river as the sun starts to set.

Bare-throated Tiger Heron. This guy wouldn't stick his neck out for me but you can see the bare yellow skin on his throat. If he stuck his neck out you would be able to see the "tiger" striping on his neck as well.

This was a movie set from something filmed here a few years ago (didn't get the name of the movie)

Another Snail Kite. This was the first time I had seen these and I loved it.

Snail Kite

Sunset as we zipped along the river.

Northern Potoo. (pronounced po (long O) - two). Lifer. Check out that globe of an eye! This is a nocturnal bird so her sees well in the dark. Chencho had a huge dinner-plate sized flashlight that he used to point out the birds to us after dark.

Northern Potoo again. He camouflages himself by perching at the end of a stick or stump then lifting his chin so he blends with the stump. With that coloring we never spotted him until Chencho pointed them out after dark.