November 22-December 1, 2025 with Megan Edwards Crewe & Alex Sundvall & Local Guide Alex Dzib
The Yucatán Peninsula is an incredibly unique biodiverse region of Mexico, with a large number of wonderful endemic and near endemic species. Not only are the three Mexican states of the Yucatán included on this tour, but a trip to the offshore island of Cozumel as well (itself home to a list of endemic species). Overall, we saw well over 200 species during our brief week together across this part of the world. We visited some incredible archaeological sites as well, including Chichén Itzá, one of the most famous in the world. The successes of our tour are all thanks to our local guide Alex and our local driver Papa Lolo. It is because of their local expertise and experience that the tour went off with relatively few hitches! The weather was pretty cooperative and other than a couple slow restaurants, the food was amazing! As a group, we decided that our favorite birds of the tour were Cozumel Emerald, Black Catbird, and Ruddy Crake, owing to all our success once we arrived in Cozumel!
From Megan and I and all of us at Field Guides, we would like to thank you for taking this trip through Mexico with us. Thanksgiving can be a busy time of year, and it can be challenging to be away from family. You were a lovely group that was really quite patient, especially in the face of long drives and some long restaurant wait times, some of mine and Megan’s longest in all the tours we’ve done! Thank you all again and we hope to see you somewhere along the birding trail again soon!
Here’s a day by day account of our trip together:
Day 1: Our first morning together had us driving from Mérida towards the coastal town of Celestún. We stopped briefly at an overlook just outside of town where we spotted our first American Flamingos of the day! While we were planning on seeing many more of them by boat later today, it was still nice to see a handful to rip the bandaid off. And, these birds were particularly close and in great light which made viewing even nicer. Other highlights here included our first looks at Mangrove Vireos and the newly split Mangrove Yellow Warbler, and a handful of wading birds that would stick with us the entire day, like Roseate Spoonbills, Tricolored Herons, and Reddish, Snowy, and Great Egrets. Outside our breakfast stop, we managed to track down a Cape May Warbler, a rarer overwintering warbler in this area. After breakfast, we headed back towards the Celestún River to a mangrove where we tracked down a pair of Rufous-necked Wood-Rails and a pair of Boat-billed Herons! While the Wood-Rails weren’t the most cooperative in terms of staying in the open (they rarely do) the Herons were quite lovely and everyone was able to get sublime scope views of these sleeping nocturnal herons. Other highlights around were some flyover raptors including Peregrine Falcon, Short-tailed Hawk, and our first Lesser Yellow-headed Vultures. Next, we hopped on a boat and took a tour of the river. Soon we were face to face with the hundreds of American Flamingos that winter and breed in this area. Our local guide Alex has studied these flamingos for years and is a leading global expert in flamingos, and was able to talk at length about their biology and behaviors as we were watching these giant waders forage feet away from us, unbothered by our presence. Really starting the tour with a bang as we oohed and aahed over these humungous pink birds! After gawking a little longer, we parked the boat and went down a quick side trail where we had our first looks at the impossibly tiny American Pygmy Kingfisher, watching it fish at close range among the sleeping Morelet’s Crocodiles. After a later lunch, we went to a nearby coastal savanna for our first chance at a suite of Yucatán endemics. Our first appeared just after we parked the van, as a raucous group of Yucatán Wrens romped around in the low shrubby vegetation. Campylorhynchus wrens have a reputation for having great personalities, and these were no exception! As we walked along the road, we were able to get scope views of another endemic, a female Mexican Sheartail! While the males are the real stunners with exceptionally long tails, the females are no slouch either and are lovely birds in their own right! While we were scoping the hummingbird, another endemic came by, a family group of Yucatán Gnatcatchers! These are some of the most poorly known of the endemics, as they were only recently split off from the more widespread Tropical Gnatcatcher, perhaps a sign of things to come with ever shifting Gnatcatcher taxonomy… To finish the day, we rounded a bend in the trail to border a more grassy section of the savanna hoping to spot some Black-throated Bobwhites (sometimes called Yucatán Bobwhites as they are another endemic) and while we all certainly heard a handful calling from the tall grasses, beyond a quick glimpse of a few birds flushing off the side of the road, none were seen.
Day 2: After some breakfast at the hotel, we headed back towards the coast, this time to the community of Sisal where we enjoyed another morning of coastal birding. Our morning birding spot had a few more tall trees, which was a bit better for songbirds than where we spent our time the day prior. We had a few mixed flocks of songbirds, with highlights including our first Orange Orioles, a stunning male Mangrove Yellow Warbler, Northern Parulas, Magnolia Warblers, Mangrove Vireos, Common Tody-Flycatchers, Orchard Orioles, Hooded Oriole, and our first look at the local Velasquez’s form of Golden-fronted Woodpecker (which has no gold anywhere on the front, they look very similar to our Red-bellied Woodpeckers in the states!). We also had sensational looks at a perched Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture, really getting to study the shape differences and head pattern differences between them and the fairly similar and more widespread Turkey Vultures. Farther up the road, we stopped to check the beach where we spotted Black-bellied and Wilson’s Plovers, Ruddy Turnstones, Western Willets, Common and Forster’s Terns, Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and Brown Pelicans amongst the hundreds of Laughing Gulls and Sandwich and Royal Terns. After lunch came the long drive down to our next hotel near the Mayan site of Uxmal. We pulled in just before dark with just enough time to head over to the parking lot of the site and listen for some birds in the fading light. We had just enough light to enjoy some of the local resident aerial insectivores in Ridgway’s Northern Rough-winged Swallows, Yucatán Vaux’s Swifts, and Yucatán Cave Swallows. In the distance, we heard a pair of Thicket Tinamous mournfully calling to one another and a Singing Quail and Collared Forest-Falcon announcing the arrival of night.
Day 3: We started the morning walking down a nearby trail, getting our first taste of taller Yucatán forest birding. Here we added a bunch of new birds for us, including a few big targets and Yucatán endemics, with a big group of Yucatán Jays right at the start of the trail, the local White-browed Carolina Wrens, White-bellied Wren, Golden-Olive and Lineated Woodpeckers, Rose-throated Becards (the local subspecies is incredibly rose-throated compared to some of the other populations!), Yucatán Flycatcher, the local Yucatán Buff-bellied Hummingbirds, White-fronted Amazons, both Tropical and Couch’s Kingbirds, and our first taste of Gray-throated Chats, a stunning local bunting. After a quick breakfast back at the hotel, we headed into the Uxmal Archaeological site, which is a stunningly well preserved small ancient city more off the beaten path so we basically had the place to ourselves! While we were mostly there to see the archaeological site, there were still plenty of birds around too, with White-bellied Emerald, Yellow-olive Flatbill, Masked Tityra, Boat-billed Flycatchers, Blue-gray Tanager, and both Scrub and Yellow-throated Euphonias. After lunch and a brief siesta, we spent the afternoon and early evening walking down another nearby track where we hoped for views of Bobwhites and hopefully a Lesser Roadrunner. While those birds had other ideas and weren’t around, we did see some lovely birds, including our first Turquoise-browed Motmot, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls, Spot-breasted Wrens, Olive Sparrows, Red-throated Ant-Tanagers, and Yellow-billed Caciques, as well as more Orange Orioles!
Day 4: We started the morning bright and early along another side road just south of our hotel, greeted by many of the birds we had been seeing the past couple days like Orange Orioles, Spot-breasted Wrens, Yucatán Jays, White-fronted Amazons, and Dusky-capped Flycatchers. Here however, we had our first couple Plain Chachalacas! These are one of my favorite birds; how can you not love that raucous dawn chorus (unless maybe you’re trying to sleep-in!) We also had our first Barred Antshrikes, and both Black-headed and Cinnamon-bellied Saltators. Farther down the road as it started to open up a little more, we had our first Red-billed Pigeons, Green-breasted Mango, Lesson’s Motmot, a boisterous Brown-crested Flycatcher, and a Gray-crowned Yellowthroat! We headed back to the hotel for a quick breakfast and turnaround as we had another long drive planned for the afternoon. We did make one quick stop before lunch just on the side of the road where we saw our first Yucatán Woodpeckers, and had our first real looks at Rufous-browed Peppershrikes. We arrived at our next hotel late afternoon, with just enough time to walk around the grounds before it got too dark and we needed to stop for dinner. We were rewarded with even more big forest birds, including our only Great Horned Owls for the trip, some Collared Araçaris, both Lesson’s and Turquoise-browed Motmots, Bat Falcon, Olivaceous Woodcreeper, our first Green Jays (these are the Yucatán form with bright yellow bellies and yellow eyes, a possible future split from the ones we see in Texas!) and another Collared Forest-Falcon calling just before dark.
Day 5: Another long and early day ahead of us, we started our Thanksgiving morning birding around our hotel grounds before breakfast. While our only new birds were the Yellow-throated Warblers hanging around in the palm trees, we did have great repeat looks at many of the birds we’d seen previous days like Rufous-browed Peppershrike, Yellow-olive Flatbill, Olivaceous Woodcreeper, Olive-throated Parakeet, Lesson’s and Turquoise-browed Motmots, Green Jays, and Hooded Orioles. Today was really about spending time enjoying the spectacular wonder of the modern world and world UNESCO heritage site of Chichén Itzá! The grounds of this ancient city have been restored to nearly their former glory before Spanish conquest. While it wasn't particularly birdy during the heat of the day, it was spectacular to walk around and observe, and our site guide did a great job talking about all the different structures and their meanings. After a few hours of walking around, we headed back to the vans and began our long drive eastward, stopping only for lunch and bathrooms.
Day 6: After our long drive yesterday, we were in a completely new Mexican state! Our welcome into Quintana Roo started this morning with some road birding while we waited for our morning birding stop to open. We are far enough south here where this is true deep tropical rainforest birding now and not the more stunted Yucatán forest we had been birding in previously. This was immediately noticeable with the change in the birdlife with more wide ranging Central American species present like Brown Jays, Long-billed Gnatwren, Ochre-crowned and Lesser Greenlets, Eye-ringed Flatbill, Northern Schiffornis, Wedge-tailed Sabrewings, Blue Bunting, and Pale-billed Woodpecker. We also added another Yucatán endemic to our ever growing list, fantastic looks at a female Rose-throated Tanager! The road was a great introduction to the birding here, but the main attraction of the morning was the fantastic private reserve of Siijil Noh Ha, which got us even deeper into the forest. Depending on how lucky we were, this site could add a ton of new species to the list that we were unlikely to see anywhere else. And thankfully, luck continued to be on our side. As we started walking the trail, new species were being called out left and right! Common Squirrel-Cuckoo, Black-headed Trogon, Keel-billed Toucan, Greenish Elaenia, Kentucky Warbler, Northern Bentbill, and another Gray-throated Chat were all seen along the first stretch of trail. As we got deeper into the forest, we came upon a bunch of birds all seemingly concentrated around a small area. We had found an Army antswarm! Both Red-crowned and Red-throated Ant-Tanagers were chattering around us, Stub-tailed Spadebill, Northern Bentbill, and 5 species of woodcreeper (Olivaceous, Ruddy, Tawny-winged, Ivory-billed, and Northern Barred) and even a flock of Groove-billed Anis were all working close to the ground preying upon the insects fleeing from the ant’s path. It was an incredible spectacle, and one we were really lucky to see. They are such an important part of birding in Middle and South America, and it really seems like the big ant swarms are slowly disappearing from Mexico, so we were really fortunate to find this one, and be able to see so many birds using it! After lunch and another siesta, the rest of the afternoon was spent walking around what is unfortunately going to become a new housing development. While there was no construction going on while we were there, they had already begun to clear away much of the forest along this road for houses. The plan was to spend until dusk walking around this new development seeing what new possible birds we could get in the fading light and what nocturnal birds we might have luck with after dark. Most of our daylight time was spent chasing around a Mayan Antthrush, which at times was so close to us it sounded as if it was singing beneath us, but it just never came into an area where we could see it. Twice it made new flight length records for the species flying clear over the road, so while some folks did glimpse the bird, it was a mostly heard experience. As dusk began to fall and give way to night, another Collared Forest-Falcon called in the distance and more Thicket Tinamous called just into the forest. For our troubles, a single Middle American Screech-Owl and a single Yucatán Poorwill started calling as it became too dark to see anything, and neither were particularly interested in being seen. A little ways up the road, we stopped and also heard Mottled Owl, which also didn’t want to be seen. Not the most successful night of owling, but I’ve certainly had worse!
Day 7: We knew going into this day it was going to be a long day with lots of driving and comparatively very little birding, but I don’t think any of us could imagine just how long it was going to be and how little birding we would have! We started the morning at a lovely laguna seeing a completely different suite of birds than we had the previous few days of forest birding. Here we had some spectacular looks at Limpkin, Purple Gallinule, Northern Jaçanas, Snail Kites, Least and Pied-billed Grebes, Gray Hawk, Least Bittern, and even a brief but incredible experience with a Ruddy Crake! We also had our best looks at both the migrant northern and resident Ridgway’s Northern Rough-winged Swallows and Yucatán Cave Swallows, and our first Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Our morning was so nice, we were really hoping that luck would continue, however a series of unfortunate events proceeded to unfold, one of which was a nearly 4 hour stop for breakfast causing us to lose the rest of our morning. We had to make it to the ferry terminal to make it to Cozumel in time! Thankfully with very few stops in between, we made it to the ferry terminal in Playa del Carmen, which I can only describe as extreme culture shock after spending days in the rainforest in a tiny rural town. The ferry ride was largely uneventful, with some good but overly loud musicians keeping us distracted. Once on the island we had a quick lunch, something we had been taking for granted until this morning, and after getting settled into our new hotel made our way to our late afternoon birding. Cozumel is a fascinating island with a surprisingly large list of endemic species and subspecies, and more birds that are easier here than anywhere else on the tour. It feels distinctly more Caribbean than the mainland, despite not being too far out into the ocean. This afternoon stop today was also once going to be a housing development, although this project was abandoned years ago so many of the plots remain wild while the roads were still in good condition. In the fading afternoon light, we managed quite a few new species, including Black Catbird and Caribbean Dove which are unlikely elsewhere on the tour; the local subspecies of Bananaquit and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (both possible future splits), and the endemic Cozumel Vireo, Cozumel Emerald, and Cozumel Wren. As it turned to night, Common Pauraques started calling and foraging on the roads, allowing us to actually see one of our night birds!
Day 8: Our final day of birding was devoted to getting our first, or better, views of all the endemic birds to Cozumel. This is a tall order, with many of the birds being fairly difficult. We started the morning at some roadside marshes on the north side of the island about as far out the road as you can drive. Despite the city being well developed, the rest of the island is incredibly wild still. These marshes were filled with birds, with the highlights definitely being the incredibly bold Ruddy Crakes. We saw multiples of these generally very shy and skulky birds, and heard even more. We also had better looks at a couple of the endemics and near endemics from the night before, including Black Catbird, Bananaquit, and Cozumel Wren, while adding the Cozumel form of Mangrove Yellow Warbler (formerly part of the Golden Yellow Warbler complex) to the mix, along with Yellow-faced Grassquits and Morelet’s Seedeaters. Heading back towards town, we stopped on the side of the road where we had a great look at a Mangrove Cuckoo and added both Cozumel and Yucatán Vireos and the local Chinchorro form of Caribbean Elaenia, which differs from the ones in the Lesser Antilles. We then headed toward our lunch restaurant (but didn’t stop for lunch yet!) and stopped along the entrance road which often has some good birds around. Today, we had more and better views of Cozumel and Yucatán Vireos, lots of Black Catbirds, more looks at the Cozumel Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, more Caribbean Elaenias, and a Yucatán Woodpecker. We stopped briefly at the nearby community of El Cedral where we got significantly better views of perched Cozumel Emeralds, shining in the sunlight in all their glittering glory. We also found a White-crowned Pigeon, showing how much more Caribbean we were than the mainland, and the local Cozumel form of Rufous-browed Peppershrike, which looks totally different from the mainland birds! It was finally time for our later lunch, where we had a fair few beach birds including more Wilson’s Plovers and the Caribbean form of Osprey. We spent the rest of the late afternoon and early evening birding around El Cedral hoping to squeeze out those last remaining endemics, but the Western Spindalis and Yellow-lored Amazons (the two hardest) had other ideas and decided we had seen enough today. We continued to see plenty of birds however, and added to our great views of Yucatán Vireos, Yucatán Woodpeckers, Cozumel Emeralds, White-crowned Pigeons, Bananaquits, Black Catbirds, and ended the day with a huge group of Olive-throated Parakeets, Vaux’s Swifts, and nearly 30 Rose-breasted Grosbeaks! They were literally dripping from some of the trees; it was a really neat sight! A lovely end to our trip through the Yucatán and Cozumel. We headed back to the hotel, had our final dinner and said our goodbyes before all leaving for home the next day.
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/498913
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/yuc25TRIPLIST.pdf
-- Megan and Alex