Colima

 Colima

If you want to see a Colima Warbler, head to Mexico. But if you can’t get to Mexico, go to Big Bend. This is a straightforward but difficult reality that we have faced for a few decades as North American birders. This was the year that we resolved to fix that problem.

We have wandered from coast to coast getting our fill of the warblers living on our continent. This amazing group of creatures – about 50 species, depending on the criteria -- may well be my favorite part of American avifauna. Their colors are striking – heart-stopping even. Most of them have bright and melodic songs to go with their bold stripes. Although Europe and Africa have “warblers,” the term there means something entirely different – an example of poor ornithological nomenclature that remains to be remedied, because the ones in North America are “wood warblers,” and they have color and sound unmatched on other continents.

I have managed to track down almost all of these guys, traipsing through the Rocky Mountain forests, the Appalachians, and the swamps. Last on the list (but for one) was the Colima, that beguiling creature, in the field guide next to Virginia’s Warbler, that has an unfortunate habit of refusing vagrancy. It sticks to its habitat and to its established locations, and never wanders far, as the other warblers sometimes do. It was time to make the pilgrimage to the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend and hike into its home to get a look. The added bonus is that the Chisos Mountains have some phenomenal hiking and scenery.

There is only one defect. Big Bend is in Texas. You may heard of this strange foreign land, which for centuries has attempted to be as un-American as possible. They don’t believe in health care for women down in Texas. They mete out the death penalty for jay walkers (at least if they are not white males making it big from oil wells). Men reaching the age of 23 are seemingly required by law to drive giant gas-guzzling pickups. When Abraham Lincoln used his presidential powers to finally free the slaves, Texas responded, “Uhh, no thanks, we’ll keep our slavery going just the same,” until Congress pointed out that if they wanted to be one of the states united and obedient to the (amended) Constitution, they might have to rethink things. They gave in on that score, but they have still not made the intellectual leap to recognize that there is a justice system to which the rest of us subscribe. Texas politicians despise the dark-skinned people crossing the southern border, but they employ them left and right in agricultural labor with a hearty sense of economic acumen. Way to go, Texas.

Feeling unenthusiastic about using my tourist dollar in such a backward place full of rednecks and 17^th century ideology, I held off on venturing to Texas for a long time, until I could stand it no more. I had tracked down Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo on business trips, but that wouldn’t work for Colima. It required a more dedicated expedition.

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We started in El Paso and headed south, but first made a detour for another sought-after species, Montezuma Quail. That required a left turn to the Davis Mountains. Now, here we had to hold our noses in tolerance of another set of asinine Texas attitudes. “Fort Davis,” built in the mid-1800s to house soldiers to pursue and slaughter native American tribes, was named after the then-defense secretary, Jefferson Davis. When good ol’ Jeff later had the genius idea to head up the Confederacy, his name stuck. It was after the Civil War, with Jeff holding his head in shame, that our charming Texans decided to name the local town “Fort Davis”, and the lovely juniper-studded mountains after him, too. Feeling unsatisfied with that, they etched in “Jeff Davis County” on the map. (I am indebted to the able writer Joe Holley for these historical facts.) Decades later, a ranching family wisely donated a not-quite-yet-destroyed-by-livestock valley to the state, which named it – wait for it -- “Davis Mountains State Park.” And that is where you must go today to see decent numbers of Montezuma Quail. Davis, Davis, Davis – will anyone in Texas ever wake up and smell the coffee?

D*** Mountains State Park. From the high point on Skyline Drive.

We stayed in a lovely old cottage in the Butterfield Inn in lonely Fort D*** (let’s just spare ourselves the repeated psychic injury).  We joined a bunch of other birders and eventually found a few pairs at feeding stations in the park. (It’s a cheat, but there is a drought going on, and the quail are a bit desperate, too.) The quail were nothing short of spectacular. Looking upon the males, one cannot get past that astounding head pattern. But you must move on, because the entire breast is painted with dabs of sterling white spots. And when the bird faces you, a gorgeous dark brown belly creates an impression of royal dress. The females lack the head pattern but are decorated with fine white lines on the back, highlighting a warm brown background color. A bird as stunning as any of the decorated pheasants we saw in Thailand.

Montezuma Quail. D*** Mountains State Park

The valley of D*** Mountains State Park is quiet and cool in the morning, and ringing with bird sounds. We enjoyed a flight of Yellow-rumped (“Audubon’s”) Warblers, many of them singing, that numbered conservatively 75. Acorn Woodpeckers clowned about everywhere, and Rufous-crowned Sparrows tinkled away on the dry slopes. Loud-singing Black-crested Titmouse animated the tree branches.

Acorn Woodpecker, D*** Mountains State Park. They were everywhere on this trip.

Montezuma Quail. At the Interpretive Center feeder in D*** Mountains State Park.

Walking the wash at D*** Mountains State Park. We had at least 75 Yellow-rumped Warblers for the morning -- an impressive flight.

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We then drove south from Marathon, through the arid plains, aiming the vehicle toward the mass of peaks on the horizon: the Chisos Mountains. For an hour of (fast) driving, this massive and imposing land form grows larger and larger in the windshield, until it bursts through the frame and causes one to crane the neck to see up to the jagged peaks scraping hot dry air from the blue sky.

Approaching the Chisos Mountains. From the entrance road to the basin.

The alarm went off early, and we hit the trail at 5:20 am, needing flashlights to make good progress in the dark and avoid stepping on the nocturnal snakes of the Chisos basin. The early start was the advice of other birders, and it was a good idea. Mexican Whip-poor-wills sounded off in the cool darkness. We ascended the Pinnacles Trail, and as we hit the serious switchbacks up the steep slope, the sky lightened. The horizon acquired an ochre tint behind the flat-topped peak of Casa Grande. We pressed on as birds began to sing – Spotted Towhee, Black-headed Grosbeak, Audubon’s Warbler. With the gathering light, a feeling began to take hold that we were enveloped by grandiose western desert scenery. The rim of the Chisos circled above us. The lodge we had left hours before was far below us, a few streetlights still beaming gently. The basin of the Chisos stretched out below us and tilted gently to the west, where a gash in the circle of peaks cut through to the west, seeming to empty into “the window” that opens up into the vast Chihuahuan desert miles below. We breathed deeply, but enjoyed the morning exercise on the well-tracked trail constructed expertly by Park service trail crew, with sturdy blocks of rock assembled into walls on the switchbacks, leaving the trail a gentle climb into the forested upper slopes.

Sunrise over the Chisos Basin.

The trail passed a patch of oak, fully leafed out. On the otherwise xeric slope, it was a green waterfall of vegetation stretching from the top of the high ridge, on our right, down to the middle of the steep slope to our left. It was there that I head an unfamiliar song. It was loud and insistent, but not terribly musical. I thought it resembled the song I heard in my song collections, but I had doubts. We stopped and looked off the trail into the canopy leaves, and eventually found a small drab bird with a light-colored (dark orange) undertail. It concealed itself well, and moved among the leaves like a warbler – hard to get a good look at. Finally, it emerged from the leaves and displayed a complete eye ring. I yelled out “Colima!” and we both maneuvered for really good looks. Our quest was satisfied. The song (or call, given its limited musicality) was completely unlike Virginia’s Warbler, the common species that looks most like it. It was a mechanical trill somewhat like Orange-crowned, or the second half of Nashville Warbler’s song.

Spectrogram of my recording of Colima Warbler. On the Pinnacles Trail. Listen to it here.

In all of the United States, Colima Warbler occurs only in Big Bend. In the vastness of the Big Bend desert, Colima occurs only in the Chisos Mountains. In the rugged heights of the Chisos, Colima occurs only in Boot Canyon and the adjacent oak forests, which are restricted to the top ten percent of the Chisos. Going to see a Colima is a pilgrimage, a voyage to a western hemisphere mecca. The name is derived from an indigenous language term, and is used additionally to label one of the states of Mexico, where many of the birds spend the winter. The birds mostly inhabit Boot Canyon at the top of the Chisos, but they radiate out a little bit where the oaks find wet enough soil to thrive. Our bird was just over the ridge from Boot Canyon, about a twenty minute walk from Colima central. We continued our trek into Boot Canyon proper. A recent fire has decimated the oaks in the side canyons, further reducing the bird’s habitat. We spent the morning wandering through Boot Canyon but did not find any more birds, except for a distant song in the canyon bottom below the trail.

Colima Warbler! Both photos on the Pinnacles Trail in the Chisos Mountains.

The Colima Warbler breeds in the northern Mexican mountains, largely the Sierra Madre Oriental (the “eastern mother range”). The Chisos is an isolated outpost at the northern tip of these mountains, just barely crossing the US border at the Rio Grande. The vegetation here suits the birds, with types of oak, juniper, pinyon, pine and montane grasses that occur more luxuriantly in Mexico. Making the trek up from Chisos basin causes one to understand the fragility of this rare island of suitable habitat. We venture here from thousands of miles away because this is the only American place that contains the right habitat characteristics. But for how much longer? Boot Canyon, perched seven thousand feet high in the Chisos, is a cool shaded place only about a half mile long and a quarter mile wide. If a raging fire entered this place, or if some introduced pest were to invade the leaves of the oak trees, the Colima Warbler would exist no longer in the United States. That is how delicately balanced this species is. That is a statement of how precious this place is, and how important it is for us to protect it. Thank god for the National Park Service.

Boot Canyon in the Chisos Mountains. Most of the Colima Warblers are confined to this one small canyon, the only spot in the United States.

Enjoying the view of "the boot". And listening for Colima Warbler.

That night there was much rejoicing in the Chisos Basin. After a good bottle of wine and dinner at the restaurant, we drove down to the campground where birders had reported an Elf Owl. The bird popped out of its nest hole as darkness set in. The nearby campers, mostly non-birders, were puzzled but interested in our vigil (staring for an hour at a telephone pole), and we think we converted a bunch of them into owl watchers. 

The Chisos Mountains late in the day. From the basin.

Walking around a bit after dark listening for owls, I came across a few people with flashlights. A guy, who knew these things, had a small ultraviolet light, and showed me a glowing scorpion that was beside the trail. Very cool!

Scorpion, Chisos Basin. In the glow of an ultraviolet flashlight beside the trail.

Sun setting in "The Window," Chisos Basin

The next morning brought an opportunity to see the desert portions of the park, so we spent a few morning hours at the old Sam Nail Ranch, which has a windmill, water, and pecan and cottonwood trees. Bell’s Vireos sang exuberantly, along with Cactus Wren, Brewer’s Sparrow, Pyrrhuloxia, Summer Tanagers, and Nashville, Wilson’s and Audubon’s Warblers. West Texas was in the midst of a drought, so few flowers were in bloom, making it tough to find hummingbirds.

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Fortunately, there was a fix for that gap in our trip list. Carolyn Ohl-Johnson has been operating the Christmas Mountains Oasis since the mid-1990s, an hour drive from the park. She collects rainwater and sends it to circulating fountains on her property, and waters large trees and shrubs. She runs seed feeders that attract birds from the surrounding desert. It is a fantastic place that you must visit if you are in the area. She had several hummingbird feeders filled, and we got close looks at the fabulous Lucifer Hummingbird. This was another long-sought lifebird for us. Males with projecting purplish gorgets and decurved bills were jousting with Black-chinned Hummingbirds. We stayed for hours longer, communing with her regulars like Scaled Quail, Western Kingbirds, Curve-billed Thrasher, Lesser Goldfinch, Black-throated Sparrow, Lark Bunting, Vesper Sparrow, Canyon and Green-tailed Towhees. Her access road had Phainopepla and Loggerhead Shrike.

Lucifer Hummingbird. At the feeders at the Christmas Mountains Oasis.

Pyrrhuloxia, Christmas Mountains Oasis

The next morning we wanted more Chihuahuan Desert. We drove to the Blue Creek Canyon trailhead, and spent a few hours walking up the dry wash at the base of the foothills of the Chisos. This is another site of an old livestock-raising ranch, the Homer Wilson. Many people like the quaint old ruins, but for me it signals heartbreak. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, before the park era, a few determined souls marched sheep into the Chihuahuan desert to try to make a go of it. Sam Nail and Homer Wilson defied mother nature and brought in herds that they would have moved into the Chisos Mountains for the summer. The animals stripped the land bare, desperately seeking out the few palatable pieces of vegetation among the cacti. We will probably never be able to get a handle on the amount of damage that was done to the fragile arid landscape, as the tiny layer of topsoil was excavated and washed downstream to the Rio Grande. Fortunately, the questionable finances of the operations persuaded them to leave the desert empty once again, and a handful of visionaries promoted the idea of a national park in the 1930s.

Claret cup cactus in Big Bend

Despite all that, the Blue Creek Canyon makes for a fine morning walk with views up the arid canyons toward the Chisos peaks. We enjoyed more of the desert avifauna. Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Gray Flycatcher, Gray Vireo, Verdin, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher (heard but not seen), Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Scott’s Oriole were all singing to mark their territories. The real treasure, though, was an electrifying male Varied Bunting, foraging in the slopes just above the wash. He gave us a few fleeting views, a snatch of bunting song, and then disappeared.

Greater Earless Lizard. Sam Nail Ranch, Big Bend

With that, our Big Bend adventure came to a close. We had a late breakfast at an amazingly good café in Terlingua, called Espresso y PocoMas. We headed north and made one final stop at the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center, a privately run operation north of Alpine. It was warm and breezy, so the birding was slow, but the center has a botanical garden and the most amazing cactus collection we’ve ever seen. They nurture over 200 species of cactus from every part of the Chihuahuan desert.