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On your first trip to Puerto Penasco you might think that there would be very few species of birds found here due to the limited habitat. It has mostly sand and rock with sparse creosote desert for miles around. There are very few trees or even bushes other than in town and there are rarely any ponds of "fresh" water to be found. There are good sandy beaches and some rocky shoreline habitat, so gulls, terns and shorebirds can be found in good numbers. The fact is, just about any time of year you can find 100 species in the area over a weekend. On the 2000 Christmas Bird Count we found over 140 species in a single day. The cumulative checklist for the Puerto Penasco area is now over 325 species and we seem to find one or two new species every year.
There are several good reasons to bird at Puerto Penasco. One reason is that it is readily accessible from Arizona on a good paved road. It is roughly 4 hours from either Phoenix or Tucson and at the current time, you do not need any type of permit or visa. Just pick up some Mexican Auto insurance near the border. [Your U.S. insurance is not valid]. Those of us living inland tend to get a little rusty on our immature gull identification as well as some of the shorebirds. Puerto Penasco is an excellent place to study gulls, especially in winter. [November- March] With a little searching you can usually find a few of the more uncommon species such as Thayer's, Glaucous-winged, Western and Laughing Gulls. Some years there have been more rare species such as a Glaucous, Franklin's, Lesser Black-backed, Black-legged Kittiwake and Sabine's Gulls.
For those of you working on a Mexican list, Puerto Penasco has turned up a few species that can be hard to find anywhere in Mexico. Species such as Harlequin Duck, Rusty Blackbird, Red-necked Grebe, Long-tailed Duck and Ross' Goose have all be found here in the past. In good seed crop years there might be an unusual sparrows found like Golden-crowned Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, Lawrence's Goldfinch, Cassin's Finch or even a Purple Finch.
Another good reason to bird here is the fairly easy access to pelagic birding. From shore you can often find two species of Boobies, Frigatebirds and at times both Black and Least Storm-Petrels and Black-vented Shearwater. You can take a boat trip out to what the fishermen call "Bird Island" and see more pelagic species including nesting Brandt's Cormorants, Brown Booby and Red-billed Tropicbirds and there is always a chance for Craveri's Murrelet, Jaegers or something out of range.
Besides the birding, the weathers is good and so is the food. Well worth the short drive to Puerto Penasco.
Please send any trip reports, updates or bird sightings to sganley@cox.net
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