Urban Birding in Mexico City
Join Chris on an urban birding adventure in Mexico City’s sprawling Bosque de Chapultepec Park.
During a filming trip to Mexico for WhereNext, I had a free afternoon in Mexico City with The Birders Show videographer Julian, so we headed to Bosque de Chapultepec Park. We had a dinner scheduled with a colleague nearby in the trendy La Condesa neighborhood, so this sprawling city park - one of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere - seemed as good a place as any to try our hand at some urban birding in Mexico City.
We arrived at the park at about 3 pm (Mexico City traffic!) and explored the eastern area, known as the “Primera Sección” on eBird. This is the oldest and most-visited section of the park, containing attractions like the Zoo and the Museum of Anthropology. It’s a vast green space, with many areas ranging from bustling promenades to peaceful trails along wooded hillsides. It’s also home to the geological formation that gives the park its name, Chapultepec Hill, a volcanic rock hill with paths winding around its lower slopes.
Enjoying some excellent urban birding in Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City
This section of Chapultepec has an impressive eBird hotspot list of 173 species. Like many city parks in the tropical Americas, that list is boosted by migratory species for about half the year. Unfortunately, our mid-May birding day was outside the peak migration period, and most migratory birds would already have set off on their arduous journey back north.
But no matter: it was my first time birding in Mexico City, and even the common resident birds were likely to be lifers. That’s the beauty of birding in a new place: birds that might seem routine to local birders become magical new sightings for first-timers. And urban birding heightens that magic and sense of discovery: what a wonderful experience it is spotting lifers surrounded by the chaos of one of the world’s biggest cities. That’s what I love about urban birding: although I consider myself primarily a rural birder, urban birding has the rare quality of making each sighting feel special. Spotting a nice bird in a “traditional” habitat or birding hotspot is great, but seeing one surrounded by concrete, traffic, and millions of people makes you feel like a magician.
Julian and I wandered around Chapultepec for a few hours. We’d just come from an intense five-day shoot in the jungles of Calakmul in the south of Mexico near the Guatemala border. Suffice it to say, we were pretty exhausted and were in no hurry to rush around Chapultepec. Thankfully, urban park birds are often far more relaxed around people; they have to be, right!? So we didn’t have to work too hard for some good birds.
I racked up around a dozen lifers during our visit; about 50% of the 24 birds we observed were new for me. I don’t think I’ve had such a good “lifers to species observed” ratio in quite a few years! The star birds were Canyon Towhee, Bushtit, Cordilleran Flycatcher, Black-headed Grosbeak, Rufous-backed Robin, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Inca Dove, and Mexican Duck. Berylline and Broad-billed Hummingbirds were common, and Bewick’s Wrens sang from every patch of scrub. I hadn’t arrived with any “targets,” so to speak, but a couple of species I had quietly hoped to see didn’t show, namely Cinnamon-bellied Flowerpiercer and Gray Silky-Flycatcher (love that family!). You can’t have it all!
Black-headed Grosbeak was one of the star birds of our Mexico City urban birding afternoon
As we were about to leave the park, Julian spotted the best bird of the day: a large group of Cedar Waxwings feasting on berries near the main gate. Mid-May is about the latest time you’re likely to see this migratory species in Chapultepec as they fatten up and prepare to fly north, so this was a delightful surprise. Waxwings are such handsome and unique birds, and we enjoyed watching them for at least fifteen minutes before a park official harried us out before the gate closed.
Mexico City has some excellent birding hotspots to explore in and outside the urban limits. We may have only had a few hours to explore, but urban birding in Bosque de Chapultepec was a rewarding and enjoyable way to spend a few hours in the Mexican capital and spot some beautiful birds at the same time. And, when you’re done, there are some excellent bars in La Condesa to explore and toast all those lifers.
Find out more about the magic of urban birding in our interview with David Lindo, The Urban Birder, on The Birders Show:
