Chihuahua Trip Report - the following is a summary of our 2005 - 2008 trips.

Spring and summer are wonderful times to visit the northern Sierra Madre.  Bird activity is excellent, various plants are in bloom, and reptiles are out and about.  After traveling through the warm grasslands and desert scrub of the Chihuahuan Desert, the cooler pine and mixed conifer forests around the town of Madera are a refreshing change.  Madera, established in the early 1900s as a logging town, continues to be a center for selective logging in the vast pine forests of the area.  The difference between the selective logging I've seen in Mexico's Sierra Madre and the not so selective practices of some areas in the U.S., particularly the Pacific Northwest, is striking.  Though small logging trucks and lumber mills are seen in Mexico, I've yet to encounter anything resembling a clear cut.  The views from every ridge and peak have always been the same - unbroken forest as far as one can see in all directions.  It's not that the Mexican forests are pristine.  One can readily see old large tree stumps and a general lack of large old-growth trees, and cattle are almost ubiquitous, but overall the Madrean forests I've visited have good species and age-class diversity among the plants and great wildlife.  Generally the wildlife experience is reminiscent of that found in the rich sky islands of southeast Arizona (which are noteworthy today for the absence of logging and mining activity though fire suppression is a problem).  

Climbing up and out of the agricultural valleys around Nuevo Casas Grandes and Buenaventura, one enters a rolling landscape of succulents (yucca, cacti, agave, and sotol) and then oak woodland (mostly Mexican blue oak) before reaching the junipers and pines which seem to go on forever.  In a tradition that dates back thousands of years, high valleys are planted with large fields of dry-farmed corn in the summer.  History also lives on in hundreds of ancient "cliff dwellings" dating back about 1000 years.  The most accessible are Cueva Grande, an isolated ruin near the Rio Sirupa where blue-throated hummingbirds and Phylostomatid bats make their home, and Las Cuarenta Casas, located in a beautiful steep canyon where red-faced warblers and good butterflies can be found.

Madera, with a good hotel and good restaurants, makes for an excellent home base from which to explore the area.  As we approach the town, passing through scattered pines and agricultural fields, blue grosbeaks, loggerhead shrikes, Cassin's kingbirds, American kestrel, Swainson's hawk, and lark sparrows dot the fenceposts and wires. 

North of Madera is a very special location where, at 9000 ft., the forest is unlike anything seen down below.  White fir, Douglas fir, white pine, violets, bracken fir, Rocky Mountain maple, Gambel oak, and quaking aspen create a gorgeous background for the amazing sights and sounds of the area's avian stars, thick-billed parrots.  A Mexican endemic and nomadic resident of the northern Sierra Madre Occidental, thick-billed parrots are stunning birds that at first seem out of place feeding on pine nuts and acorns in the high forests.  Their breeding range overlaps interestingly with that of two other large cavity nesters, the eared quetzal and the extinct imperial woodpecker.  The potential relationship between large, old-growth conifers (many of which have been logged), the cavity excavating activities of what was the largest woodpecker in the world, and the status of the quetzals and parrots makes for interesting speculation.  Late May is the pre-egg-laying period for the parrots.  Noisy and conspicuous pairs are allopreening and investigating and remodeling cavities......and all the while wonderfully tolerant of voyeuristic birders.  Later in August and September, the birds are equally noisy and conspicuous as the nestlings prepare to fledge.  Other birds we've seen in the high-altitude area where the parrots reside include mountain pygmy owl, white-eared and broad-tailed hummingbirds, mountain trogon, russet nightingale-thrush, crescent-chested warbler, slate-throated redstart, Townsend's warbler, and band-tailed pigeon.

West of Madera is a fine riparian area with lush meadows and a stream with native fish (speckled dace) and frogs (Rana sp.), various damsel and dragonflies, and a large species of water umbel (Lilaeopsis sp.).  The meadow wildflowers are world class in the late summer and are attractive to striking butterflies like Nokomis fritillaries.  We've had some wonderful birds in the area, including two western Sierra Madre endemics that we have yet to miss here - striped sparrows, which are nesting in May, and eared quetzals, which nest in August.  A thicket of willlows is frequented by common yellowthroat, yellow-eyed junco, and, in late summer, willow flycatcher, while the surrounding forest can have nesting common black and zone-tailed hawks.  

Heading towards the Rio Sirupa, one may encounter mixed species flocks which include Mexican chickadee (once nesting in a cavity one inch off the ground in an old tree stump), many buff-breasted flycatchers and chipping sparrows, western bluebird, Grace's and olive warblers, pygmy and white-breasted nuthatches, greater pewee, canyon towhee and curve-billed thrasher.  Seeing canyon towhees and curve-billed thrashers singing from the pines at 7000 feet alongside greater pewees and pygmy nuthatches is one of those incongruous images that just doesn't make sense compared to our experience in southeast AZ where these species almost never overlap.

Further into the forest we find painted redstart, yellow-eyed junco, and Townsend's solitaire (a resident breeder in the northern Sierra Madre) as well as four species of squirrel - cliff chipmunk, rock squirrel, and the striking Abert's and Apache fox squirrels.  Other non-avian wildlife we've found includes striped plateau, Yarrow's spiny, and Mexican short-horned lizards, black-necked garter snake, antelope jack rabbit, and many butterfly species, including the pine satyr which barely reaches the U.S. in  southeast AZ. 

Dropping down towards the scenic canyon of the Rio Sirupa, the plant community changes with the lower elevation.  In between the scattered oaks are yuccas, agaves, sotol, and bunchgrasses (in areas that aren't too heavily grazed) and birds like Mexican jay, rufous-crowned sparrow, and Scott's oriole can be found.  A few spring-fed, narrow, moist canyons with Arizona sycamores are particularly attractive to birds.  At our favorite spot, we've seen elegant trogon, Arizona woodpecker, brown-backed solitaire, white-striped woodcreeper, sulphur-bellied flycatcher, blue-throated hummingbird, and rufous-capped warbler.

On our return to Arizona, we stop in Casas Grandes where we spend the final night at Las Guacamayas, a memorable B&B run by Mayte Lujan, a remarkable woman who has a superb gallery of some of the finest Mata Ortiz pottery to be found.  From Las Guacamayas, we visit the town of Mata Ortiz and the Paquime ruins in Casas Grandes.  Mata Ortiz was made famous by local artist Juan Quezada who, inspired by the pottery of the people who inhabited Paquime about one thousand years ago, resurrected the art which has flourished in his home town and is now known and collected around the world.  A world class museum is associated with the Paquime ruins which are the remnants of an important urban complex and trading site linking Mesoamerican cultures from the south with Southwestern cultures from the north.  

I'm looking forward to returning to the richness of the Madera area in the spring of 2011.

Last updated: October 19, 2010.