Forty-thousand Flamingos

Künzelsau Ria Lagartos/Rio Lagartos

You don’t pass through the little fishing village of Rio Lagartos, Alligator River, going anywhere. Unless you intend it as a destination, you will never come upon it. The village is remote—at the end of a road in the middle of the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. However, it is a place rich in wildlife and natural beauty, the home of Mexico’s Reserva de la Biospera Ria Lagartos.

Alice and I drove from Merida to Rio Lagartos. Once there, we hired a guide to take us on a birding adventure. We wanted to see some of the hundreds of species of birds living in or migrating through this reserve. We understood very large numbers of Flamingos were the main attraction, and we were not disappointed.

Our guide, Roman Fernandez, was a gifted naturalist well versed in the life histories and habits of the creatures we saw—birds and others. He told us Flamingos weigh 2.5 kilos for females, 5.5 kilos for males. They may live for 20 years, have few if any predators, lay and incubate one white or green egg per year and mate for life.

With Roman, we stood on the dikes of a huge salt works bordering the reserve and looked into the very salty water. It was pink-colored from thousands of tiny brine shrimp and other small carotene-loaded organisms. Roman, scooped a handful to show us the pink-orange squiggles thrashing about in the water.

“This,” he said, “is what makes the Flamingos pink!”

When you see the huge population of wild Flamingos there, sometimes as many as 40,000 in the reserve, they appear little changed from their earliest appearance on this earth. Gawky looking with their upside-down bill, yet graceful, they glide across the vast flats.

Roman also told us, 56 to 34 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch, the dawn of mammals, Flamingos were wading about here. They are gregarious birds in the genus Phoenicopterus and family Phoenicopteridae. Worldwide there are six different species. One of these, the American Flamingo, lives in the Caribbean Islands, Caribbean Mexico, Belize and the Galapagos Islands, with the greatest numbers in Mexico frequenting the Ria Lagartos area.

Although we had traveled to Rio Lagartos to see the Flamingos, they were just a part of the great show we experienced. Among the birds we saw were:

American Flamingo / Flamenco Comun
Great Blue Heron / La Gran Garza de Azule o Garzon Cenizo
Great Egret / Garzon Blanco
Boat-billed Heron / Garza Cucharon

http://preferredmode.com/tag/adidas/ Boat-billed Heron

Snowy Egret / Garzita Nivea
Great Black-hawk / Aguililla Negra
Osprey / Gavilan Pescador
Wood Stork / Ciguena
Roseate Spoonbill /Espatula
White Ibis / Ibis Blanco
Magnificent Frigate Bird / Fragata
Brown Pelican / Alcatraz Pardo
White Pelican / Alcatraz Blanco
Neotropical Cormorant / Corvejon
Anhinga / Huizote
Ruddy Ground Dove / Tortilita Rojiza
Scaled Pigeon / Paloma Escamosa
Yucatan Parrot / Loro Yucateco

And many, many other birds.
We also saw:
Crocodiles / Cocodrilos

BIG Croc hiding in mangroves

We saw several. One was huge, and we saw it up close!! Roman said it was nesting. I later read nesting crocodiles are the most dangerous!

The once-numerous crocodiles gave the town its name as the Spanish mistook them for alligators, el lagartos—the big lizards.

It is interesting to note the name of the village is Rio Lagartos while the reserve is Ria Lagartos. Roman explained that Ria is used to describe an estuary where salt and freshwater meet and mix. Spanish explorers mistook the narrowing of the estuary, ria, for a river, rio, and the crocodiles for alligators.

The Maya knew the place as Holkobén and used it as a rest stop on their way to Las Coloradas, a part of the vast estuary stretching east almost to the border of Quintana Roo. There they extracted precious salt from the waters, a process that continues on a large scale today.

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Less than 1km east of town, on the edge of the estuary, is a beautiful natural freshwater spring, ojo de agua dulce. The locals called it a cenote, although it didn’t look at all like the cenotes we saw farther inland. There was no cave or lake, instead, the spring bubbled water up to sea level where it mixed with the salty water of the estuary. It is the town swimming hole.