Holiday to the Yucatan, Mexico - Part 1

Our family holiday to the Yucatan and a great success!

Our holiday was split into three bits.

The first was a mass market all inclusive in Cancun for 4 nights.

The second was to Hacienda Chichen near the adjacent to the fable ruins of Chichen Itza and situated amongst low level rainforest.

Our final week was at Mayakoba back on the coast.

As I took so many photos and saw so many birds, I have divided this into three posts.

After a long flight we arrived at the Royal in Cancun. This was not my ideal hotel but we had to get somewhere for 4 nights and it was only 15 minutes from the airport.

Cancun is great for nightlife but the hotels are all in a strip with virtually nothing other than beach on one side and a brackish lagoon behind. Subsequently, this was not birding heaven and I saw very little compared to the other two locations.

It seemed every square foot of land was covered by hotels and greenery at a premium.

There were a Magnificent Frigate Birds, Royal Terns, Little Terns (seemingly a rarity here), Brown Pelicans, Laughing Gulls and Herring Gulls flying about off the beach and the odd Double Crested Cormorant on the lagoon. Otherwise, it was the odd tree or bush here and there that gave me the birds.

A small jetty had a handful of Ruddy Turnstone and Semipalmated Plovers abounded.

The only other birds around the lagoon were a very confiding Green Heron and native Muscovy Ducks.

The most common birds seen in all three locations were Great Tailed Grackles, Tropical Mocking Birds and Great Kiskadee (a heavy weight flycatcher)

The only two other birds of note were Palm Warbler (also seen at Mayakoba), Bananaquit and Gray Flycatcher.

We did get a small crocodile and which was happy to pose too!

I was not particularly surprised at the lack of birds as although the weather was great and the sea warm, I could not wait to move to more interesting areas and suspect the birds did the same!

Part 2 is better!!!