Mexico: Baja California’s Cape Region

The Cape Region of southern Baja California is in some ways a familiar place. Many of the area’s plants and animals are also found in California or the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and west Mexico, but there are obvious differences, and those differences have attracted natural historians for decades. There are many endemic plants and animals, among them four currently recognized bird species and a number of distinctive subspecies, some likely to be split in the future. The tropical habitats of the southern peninsula are also a major wintering area for birds from western North America, and the nearshore waters are rich and diverse. In our quest for the Cape Region’s specialties, we’ll be entertained by the spectacles of mixed flocks of wintering passerines, multitudes of shorebirds, and even some seabird watching, but the tour highlight for some will be the side trip to commune with the Gray Whales of Magdalena Bay.

This is a complete natural history tour, with a focus on the birds but with attention paid to the plants, reptiles, mammals, and insects of the Cape Region.