It's amazing - how many bird species there are south of the US.

The new bird book I got on the left and my trusty one I use locally.

We are going on a cruise in a couple of weeks, down the West Coast to the Panama Canal and up to Fort Lauderdale.  There, we disembark and fly home.  The three week trip includes stops in Mexico and Central America.  And so I thought I would bring along a bird book covering the area.  I was surprised by what I got.

The first thing I noticed was the size of the book, about three times the weight of my field guide.  I can't call the new one a field guide unless I happened to have a sherpa with me, as it's not what I would call a convenient pocket size.  When I opened it up, I got another surprise.  There are a lot of bird species south of the US.  Many more than we have here in Canada.

Looking at the hummingbirds alone, I found that all of North America (not including Mexico) has about 14 species.  Mexico and Central America have closer to 60 species.  To give you an idea of what that looks like, I am including comparitive photos of what is in the books.   You can see the images below.

Mexico and CA page on hummers (left) and Western NA (right).


Two additional pages on hummers in the Mexico and CA bird book.

Well, I have to admit to feeling somewhat overwhelmed.  If you compare the total number of species between the two areas, the values don't seem so different.  Canada and the US have about 1000 species of birds, less if you divide the continent into east and west.  Mexico also has about 1000 species, and if you include Central America, that number jumps to 1500 or so.  

It gets even more amazing when you consider that Canada and the US have about 9 million square km of landmass while Mexico and Central America have less than 2.5 million square km.  If you look at the number of bird species per 10,000 square km, you come up with 1 species per 10,000 square km for Canada and the US versus 6.3 species per 10,000 square km for Mexico and Central America.  (10,000 square km is an area measuring 100 km by 100 km - about the size of Haida Gwaii, or what used to be called Queen Charlotte Island).

Any way you slice it, I expect to see a lot of new species of birds.  I also picked up a new reptile and amphibian book - that is even more impressive, but I won't get into the details.  Such diversity!

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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