Day 2 of the trip was always going to be a trip to the above Botanical garden at Puerto Morelos.
Amongst other things the garden has one of the last stretches of conserved forest in the area.
The garden opens at 8.00 but we arrived about 8.30 due to the hotel restaurant not opening until 8.00.
Anyway we got there and on parking saw (obscured) several of the gardens spider monkeys.
We the first there and on entering the gardens we immediately started seeing birds - most shuffling around on the ground - but it was clear that getting any pictures would be a severe challenge it was so dark (most of the shots shown were shot at ISO 2500-4000). This was a bit of a problem because I need the photographs to be sure of what I was seeing. Over the next 15 minutes we saw ovenbird, Northern waterthrush (which I thought it was a Louisiana waterthrush at the time due to it's black and white colour), wood thrush and what I'm pretty sure is a Swainson's thrush (all new to me). The pictures are poor quality but if you think I've made a mistake please let me know.
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| Wood Thrush |
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| Ovebn bird |
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| Northen Waterthrush |
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| Swainson's Thrush |
We had a look at the reconstructed mayan house where we found a white-eyed virio and had a look at the gardens small set of Mayan ruins ("The Alter") where we found a grey catbird and saw (but failed to photograph) a group of green jays.
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| White-eyed virio |
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| Grey catbird |
Continuing round the gardens we picked up a Yucatan virio and in the tree tops a northern parula (lots of rubbish pictures that allowed the id but are not worth reproducing).
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| Yucatan virio |
We then took the jungle trail but it was so narrow and enclosed we didn't really see anything until we were nearly back to the gardens proper where we found a party of Yucatan Jays (but only managed record shots). In hind sight we should have stuck around the gardens themselves and not taken the jungle trail because by the time we got back quite a lot of people had arrived and birding was effectively over.
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| Yucatan Jay (juv) |
From the gardens we went into Puerto Morelos and had lunch in a beach-side cafe.
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| Puerto Morelos - Not quite Deal sea-front but pleasant enough. |
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| Puerto Morelos - after a hard mornings birding. |
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