Bird Watchers' Paradise

Recently I had a chance to travel with a local group to Mexico. I decided to stay two extra days to visit the Ria Celestun Biosphere Reserve.

It's located on the Gulf of Mexico on the northwest coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. It is centered on the productive Celestun estuary, an incredible waterfowl sanctuary. The main attraction is its American flamingo population. Celestun is also home to many other bird species, including North American birds that seasonally inhabit the reserve during our wintertime.

Celestun is surrounded by mangrove forests, one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Mangroves grow in standing water and form tangles of alien looking masses of roots and tree trunks. They have large root buttresses that arch up out of the water to the main tree trunk above the water.

Some species have roots that drop off of the tree branches down into the water. All of these strange root configurations help the tree cope with living in a salty low oxygen environment.

I hired one of the local guides to tour the reserve by boat. Accompanying me were two Belgians who were very knowledgeable on mangrove forest ecosystems.

The tour was incredible. We saw numerous flamingos feeding in the shallow waters. Their bright pink colors were quite a contrast against the bleak overcast day. Flamingos

are born with white plumage. However, due to a diet that includes organisms containing high amounts of the pigment carotene, the flamingo's feathers soon turn pink. This adds a whole other meaning to the saying, "you are what you eat."

Their long skinny necks were half of their overall height. It seemed physically impossible that such a neck would be able to support itself.

As they flew with their bodies stretched out, it was hard to imagine that they would not be damaged by side winds and cross currents. Flight under normal circumstances is miraculous, but to see these odd-shaped birds in flight was twice as incredible.

We also saw cormorants, snowy and cattle egrets, pelicans, ospreys, herons, storks, and numerous other bird species.

One of the Belgians was a botanist and the other had worked in mangrove reforestation in East Africa. They taught me that some species of mangroves were unique in the plant kingdom because their seeds started growing into six-inch long plants while still on the tree. These spear shaped plants then drop off the tree and float in the water right side up. When the bottom tip of the floating spear touches bottom, it roots rapidly and the plant grows quickly. This allows the mangroves to establish themselves in a standing water environment.

All of this was quite foreign to me and a far cry from the forests of northcentral Pennsylvania. It was an incredible experience.

Wild trout in our local streams are beginning to spawn. On Sunday I walked along one local wild trout stream and saw several pairs of brown trout in the shallow tail water of pools digging redds in the fine gravel.

It was an interesting and impressive sight to behold, especially considering some of these trout were well over 20 inches long!