Dec 18 2008
Northeast Mexico Endemics II: Altamira Yellowthroat
I’ve got a thing for yellowthroats. I always thought they were cute and had lots of personality–everyone thinks that. Otherwise, they weren’t especially on my radar. But traveling into Mexico at the dawn of the 1990′s really turned my head around. Of course, there was the opportunity to see Gray-crowned Yellowthroat (click that link for a nice photo by Jeff Bouton), a creature that I had heard a fair amount about, given its habit of turning up in South Texas from time to time. It even bred there, if you go back a hundred years or so.
But the bird that really blew me away was the Altamira Yellowthroat Geothlypis flavovelata. I don’t know exactly when I first heard of the species, but it wasn’t very long before I saw it. So it was a surprise. Looking at the female below, you might wonder what impressed me so. Looks pretty much like a female Common Yellowthroat, perhaps with a longer bill and more yellow tones in the face, but pretty similar. Well, yeah, but scroll down for a look at a male.
Above, la embra; below, el macho.
Sometimes it’s seeing the utterly bizarre and unique (mot-mots, trogons, toucans) that fuels much of the excitement in birding. But sometimes, it’s an amazing riff on a familiar theme that really makes your heart swell and your breath catch. And there was something about that yellow-crowned yellowthroat–its former name, by the way–that just pierced me. I realize that this is not the best photo, but maybe you can catch a whiff of what gets me about this bird. Here’s a less obstructed view of a male, taken by Lee Zieger.
I admit, this may be something of an acquired taste. To see an Altamira Yellowthroat, you head out of the nice shady forests and scour the cattails in roadside ditches. I’m sure the species likes more aesthetically pleasing wetlands, too, but this it mostly what’s on offer.
A bit of pishing or squeaking, and you’ll probably come up with one of these little gems. But only in a tiny region of Northeast Mexico. Nowhere else.
