We leave for Arizona tomorrow so I wanted to wrap up our time here.  The weather got somewhat warmer and definitely sunnier but not what you’d call hot until 2 days ago.  It’s still cool in the mornings and evenings but during the day we get to 70.  The unfortunate thing about the weather is that we never did get to go on the boat to Bird Island.  We did a lot of other things and when it wasn’t so great out I got to paint.  I started a series of warblers (along with one Kestrel).

American Kestrel, Cerulean Warbler, Yellow Warblers

Black throated Gray Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler

While looking through the options for birding hot spots we found a water treatment plant here that we took a taxi to see.  Raul, our rental owner, called it the “stinky place” which it only partly was but there were lots of birds there.

Loggerhead Shrike, Snowy and Cattle Egrets, Bonaparte’s Gull

The citizens of Rocky Point don’t seem to care much about litter and many tend to just dump their trash wherever they are.  The water treatment was no exception.

The next day Raul and his wife Erica asked us to join them for a ride around the area that we hadn’t seen yet.  We drove to Hermosa Beach

and up above the Malecon past some of the more posh resorts and then out to Cholla Bay which is way out on the end of a peninsula.

Cholla Bay doesn’t have much more than a few restaurants and a bar and since it is far from town and basic shopping it has a limited population.  There are some really beautiful homes and quite a few not too great but is really a beautiful spot.

One of the things we went by on our travels was the golf course which we noticed had a few ponds with birds on them so the next day we got on our bikes and rode over there.  As we walked through the desert next to the golf course we spotted a Coyote.  There were a few birds there and on the pond which were new for the trip– Orange-crowned Warbler, Savannah Sparrow, and Bufflehead.

The next day we went on the Estuary trip with CEDO. It was chilly and windy so we weren’t able to get in the water and do the tide pools but it was an interesting place with an Oyster farm run by women.

There were some nice birds there including Curve-billed Curlew, Marbled Godwit, American Oystercatcher, another Bufflehead and a Red-breasted Merganser.

Alejandra, our guide, said she was once again going the next afternoon to the tidal pools and we were welcome to join her.  So after taking a long walk over to Rodeo Drive where all the artisan shops are we went back down to the tidal pools.  The people who said they were coming didn’t show but there was a couple there who were writing an article about CEDO for the Mexican version of Lonely Planet who did come.  This time we got pictures of some of the more interesting things there:

We have gotten into taking very long walks to different parts of Puerto Penasco and 2 days ago we decided to walk to one of the beaches that we had stopped at with Raul.  We ended up walking about 9 kilometers stopping a few times for a cold drink.  The following are pictures we took along the way.

As we approached our casita we could see smoke from a huge fire in the distance.  We never found out what that was.

This is our neighborhood, a combination of very nice houses and a lot of empty lots and half-finished or half-destroyed houses and lots of very noisy dogs.

Yesterday we took our last trip to the Malecon walking most of the way.  We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant on the sea wall.

 

view from the restaurant

Heerman’s Gull, Red-breasted Merganser

At 4:00 the parade was supposed to start downtown for Carnaval so we decided to go watch it.  We got to a place on the street by a park where people were lined up to see the parade at about 4:30 but the parade was very slow in coming and it was at least 5:30 before they got to us.  Each group had to stop and perform a number at every corner.  Anyway, when it did come it was fun to watch.

It has been fun here but would have been better if we had a car.  We are not in a neighborhood that has lent to meeting our neighbors so it’s somewhat lonesome but tomorrow we go to Nogales and will have dinner with friends from Green Valley.  On Tuesday we will bird with our old bird group from Tubac and see lots of folks we know again.  Then we go to Tucson until the 14th.  The weather is getting a lot warmer which is very nice.  Hope that trend continues when we go home.