Sunrise Rosita

We've all been there.  You see a gorgeous sunrise and try to take a pic ... and you just can't do it justice.  It's super hard for camera sensors to deal with rich cold and rich warm colors at the same time.

Rosita's Bunting is the same way.  It was one of the more striking birds I've ever seen in my life.  There aren't many birds that blend a rich blue somewhere between indigo and sky blue into magenta.  It was easy to see why they're cage bird targets and one of the birds that eBird won't give specific location data for.

The female was maybe not quite as showy as the male...

 

an Oasis

 Day 4 in Mexico found us on the border of the desert state of Oaxaca and the more riparian (and tropical) state of Chiapas.  A small mountain-like escarpment shielded a waterfall from much of the sun.  A bottlebrush tree was in bloom and it attracted my eyes too quickly to remember to take a scenery shot.

Just about the first bird I saw was a Rosita's (Rose-bellied) Bunting.

We'd see some in brighter light later in the morning, but we were happy to see this one.  There were a few hummers, including Canivet's Emerald and Green-fronted Hummingbird, but it was too dark to get pics worth posting.

Streak-backed Orioles were working the bottlebrush as well.

They weren't all brilliantly colored.  One was a bird I was looking forward to, Nutting's Flycatcher.  It's one of the myarchids that all look pretty similar, but the inverse Western Kingbird tail pattern separates it from Ash-throated.

Ok back to colorful ones.  It's been a few years since I've seen White-throated Magpie-Jay.

Finally a view of a female White-lored Gnatcatcher; the gray desert gnatcatchers always surprise me after being so used to Blue-Gray.