Blue-capped Hummingbird holds a very special distinction. Blue-capped Hummingbird was the very first bird that Ross learned about that is known as a “range-restricted endemic.” You may or may not know this, but Ross has been birding since he was 6 years old. He was 14 when he learned that Blue-capped Hummingbird can only be found on a single mountain in Mexico. Blue-capped Hummingbird is only found on Sierra Madre del Sur in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. One mountain. That’s it. Nowhere else in the world. Surely by now you know that not all birds are common and widespread, some are rare and very localized. We’ve been targeting the latter, range-restricted endemics, for years. And we were finally about to go search for the very first range-restricted endemic that Ross ever learned about. Perhaps the one bird that founded this obsession to see them all. Blue-capped Hummingbird.
We picked up Jason Horn and Matt Sabantine from the airport, two friends/birders who were joining us for the next two weeks to bird Southern Mexico and split costs. On our first morning together we had a special target to find, and it wasn’t even the hummingbird! It was the very localized and beautifully patterned, White-throated Jay. This bird is unlike many other types of jays which travel in loud noisy flocks, and instead is encountered singly or in pairs, roaming secretively through the forest.
We managed to get lucky and hear the call notes of a single White-throated Jay which we then tracked down for great views, perched photos, and top-notch recordings. (I say “lucky” but skill was definitely involved as we had been searching for hours and it took a fine ear to pick out the soft call notes!) Our morning birding was spectacular and we had great views of so many amazing species.
Here’s a fun little story. Ross and I spent hours upon hours trolling for Long-tailed Wood-partridge when we first arrived in Mexico and didn’t even hear a single peep at our prior locations. We were planning on putting in major effort for this ground-dwelling, skulky species, as it can be easy to hear but extremely difficult to see. The only problem was, we didn’t even hear one to put in any special kind of effort to track it down! But as Ross and I were going to grab the car, he saw an interesting shadow fly through a small opening in the trees. He could have passed it off as just a shadow, but it peaked his interest so he scanned through the foliage only to find it was Long-tailed Wood-partridge! Seriously, we thought we had dipped this one. Ross ran back to grab the others and the four of us were able to enjoy this skulky bird who didn’t seem to care at all when we played its call to it. Time of year perhaps?
And then it was off to the site for the Blue-capped Hummingbird! I don’t think we had parked the car for more than 5 minutes before Jason found a male perched in the shady confines of a nearby tree. It was an easy tick and a very happy occasion, especially for Ross, made happier by the Happy Wren that sang its happy tune to celebrate.
Long-tailed Woodpartridge 
Blue-capped Hummingbird
We spent the rest of the evening walking a small track outside of Pluma Hidalgo, a small town in south Oaxaca. Our afternoon walking the road was very enjoyable and then when dusk approached we simply waited for the sun to set completely. We had to stay past dark, despite all being very hungry, because we had a very special nightjar to find, Eared Poorwill. This particular nightjar is extremely difficult to see and is heard far more often than seen. But then Ross played tape and Eared Poorwill responded! Eared Poorwill is arboreal and often calls and hunts from concealed perches in trees, making them very difficult to see. It all happened so fast. Ross had to remind me that if it weren’t for Hervé and Noelle Jacob, other independent birders willing to share their information with the world, we wouldn’t have known that this location would be so good and wouldn’t have had the bird so easily. The takeaway here is this, just because you get a bird easily, doesn’t mean it’s an easy bird.
The next morning we had two hummingbird targets in mind, Cinnamon-sided Hummingbird and Mexican Hermit. Yay. If you’ve been following along, you might know that we have notoriously bad luck when it comes to hummingbirds, and seem to dip them a lot or at least have to work really hard to find them. Despite Ross finding a Cinnamon-sided Hummingbird shortly after dawn, the rest of the group missed it and it took two more hours until everyone was able to get nice views. From there we checked a few spots for the hermit, but came up empty. We were running out of time and needed to head to the coast to stay on schedule, but Ross had found one more location to check on ebird that was a bit out of the way but had a recent sighting. As we drove to the point, something seemed off. We were heading through dry forest. Hermits love to drink from flowering heliconia, but heliconia is a tropical plant and the habitat we were driving through was far from tropical. Jason joked that the only way we were going to find the bird at this point is if we ended up at a Heliconia farm. Out of nowhere, as we arrived at the GPS point Ross had found, it was an…. heliconia farm?!?!?!?! Well not quite, it was actually an abandoned (?) botanical garden that was chalk full of dozens of varieties of heliconias! Seriously one of the craziest random birding spots we’ve ever showed up to. It only took a few minutes to track down a Mexican Hermit and then it was off to the coast and to bed because we had a really interesting event next on our agenda. Stay tuned!
Mexican Hermit 
Cinnamon-sided Hummingbird