A tourist in Mexico City

Jeanne and I took a short mini-vacation and flew to Mexico City. The main reason was our very good friend Jason called and invited us over. He wanted to know if we could come visit while he was there in town. You see Jason is in the music business, and just happened to have 4 AWESOME tickets to see the Rolling Stones in concert there in Mexico City. When I say awesome, I mean in the very front row!!! Jason is a band manager/production manager, and one of his bands features Carl Denson. Carl just happens to be a Sax player for none other than the Rolling Stones.  We flew over on Friday morning, had dinner and drinks (a lot of drinks) with Jason, his girlfriend Sabrina and Carl on Saturday night, partied and toured the city Sunday, went to the concert on Monday night    ( It was truly a once in a lifetime event) and flew home Tuesday morning.

And...despite the incredible lack of sleep. I did manage to photograph and add to my life list 9 new birds!! The list below is the new birds, as well as three birds that I could not identify:

Great-tailed Grackle

Black-eared Bushtit

Nashville Warbler

Baltimore Oriole

Painted Redstart

Curved-bill Thrasher

Rufus Backed Robin

Bronzed Cowbird

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Here are a few of the pictures I was able to get, while being a metropolitan birder!! This is certainly not my usual style, but Jeanne has been incredible in allowing me to take all the time I do during our road trips, and vacations. I promised her that this trip was all about her getting all the time she needed to get the architectural photos of this amazing city. The birds I got were all in my little bits of time here and there while she was in a pre 1800 church, or a town square full of amazing statues.

Some day I will get back over to the main land of Mexico but for the little time I had I am very excited!


Here is the Rufus-backed Robin

This is the Black-eared Bushtit

The Baltimore Oriole...yes this is a real bird, not just a baseball team.

The Bronzed Cowbirds were doing their very cool mating displays....cupping the wings and raising the hackles around the head!

Here is a back side view..

Here he is in a little bit more relaxed pose

The other birds that were doing some awesome displays where the Great-tailed Grackles. Lots of calling, shaking the wings, puffing up to look big.....all the usual stuff!

This female was looking like she was building a nest. Many of the nests I observed were made of string, plastic, and one even had bits of a kite that was stuck in the tree.

This little guy is a Nashville Warbler

We have a lot of Ground Doves on the Baja, but over here all the smaller doves were Inca Doves.

This is the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker...yes, it really is!!

The Ruby-crowned Kinglet

And hiding in a bed of Lavender is a House Finch