TomKal foto

I always try to add the introduction text from a trip to the species of bird that is the national bird of the country in which I photographed, but not this time. First of all I did not see in Mexico the golden eagle, which is the national bird of this country. Mexico is quite a big country, more than 6 times bigger than Poland, and the population of golden eagles in Mexico is estimated to be about 600 pairs. Secondly, my photographing in Mexico was limited to the Yucatan Peninsula, with a two-day guide support and only from dawn to midday. The golden eagle is found only in the northern part of Mexico, so observing or photographing it in the Yucatan would be pure coincidence. And third, this was not a typical "birding" trip. But it is hard to imagine a stay in such an interesting place as Mexico without a camera. And it was really worth it. Of course, two mornings with a competent, kind guide was enough to double the effectiveness of my independent attempts at photography, both in terms of quantity of species and quality of pictures taken. It should also be added that without my guide's help, the work of sorting and identifying species would probably take a long time. There is no book containing the bird species occurring in Mexico. And it would be an interesting atlas of birds, the country's fauna includes 1,100 species of birds. For these reasons special thanks and greetings to Joel (810/1.100), without whom my photographic output from the trip to Mexico would be much more modest. With the birds it was different in Mexico. There are species, which were busily foraging on the public beaches despite the presence of many tourists around. There, photography was not a problem. I'm thinking of the Laughing Gull, Greet-tiled grackle, Little Blue Heron, Sanderling, Ruddy Turnstone… Brown pelicans, Ospreys and Magnificent Frigatebird were also quite common. Unfortunately, all these birds usually flew over the heads of tourists and it was difficult to take interesting shots. Taking pictures in the Mexican forest is a very difficult task. The forest and bushes are so dense that even if you could see a bird, it was always obscured by a branch, not to mention the autofocus, which was not able to cope with so many elements in the frame at different distances. Additionally, in one place (archaeological site) I was not allowed to take the tripod. It was a big surprise, because sometimes I wasn't allowed to take pictures with a telephoto lens (Jordan, Egypt), but with a tripod I never had difficulties. So the difficulty of photographing birds in a dense dark forest increased to such an extent that it made many pictures blurry. What I still don't understand to this day is that if you can have any set up for photography then why can't you put it on a tripod? As for such occasional photographing one has to admit that there is a reason to be satisfied, 32 new bird species and 44 galleries supplied with new pictures. Admittedly, I have occasionally added one photo to a gallery, but several of them have gone from the documentary category to good or very good. I did not set up a gallery with documentary content except for the hummingbird gallery. And why? - I explain it in the text by the Cinnamon Hummingbird (link) and the Canivet's Emerald. This structure of more changes in galleries than newly established ones is caused by earlier trips to Cuba, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. I have added this text to the Yucatan Jay, despite the low gallery content, because it is not so much endemic to Mexico as it is endemic to the Yucatan peninsula itself. During one short encounter I managed to capture a juvenile and an adult. The juveniles have a yellow beak and eye circumference. Older individuals have a black beak and eye periphery instead of yellow.
Below is a list of all newly created galleries and those that have been rebuilt as a result of supplying new photos taken in Mexico. The list is also a collection of links to these galleries. If there is a "T" in brackets after the name, it means there is a text with information added, if there is a "V"- a recording of a bird's voice.