The colonial city of Alamos in northwest Mexico has plenty to offer visitors.

There's Spanish legacy and rich natural treasures.

Perhaps most interesting is the traditional knowledge from some of the area's longest residents, the Mayos.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.

And by Arizona State Parks.

music The Mayos of southern Sonora, Mexico, have lived for centuries in a land that varies from near desert along the coast of the Sea of Cortez through thorny lowland scrub and up into tropical deciduous forest.

This amazingly diverse landscape appealed not only to the Mayos but to a remarkable collection of birds as well.

And now to bird lovers.

A group of bird watchers from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum are venturing into southern Sonora to check out the huge variety of species there.

Before I meet up with the group, I want to see my old friend and guide Vicente Tajia, in the Mayo village of Teachive.

Most of these villages are located out in more or less undisturbed bush or       monte as they call it, and most of the villagers get a lot of important things in their life from that vegetation, from the plants, particularly firewood.

But they also get a lot of herbs, roots, wild fruits and still many, many are used.

That little addition that they get from this are semi-tropical vegetation here, the thorn scrub, makes all the difference in their lives and enables them to survive.

This is a native composite plant that Vicente has brought for cough and for cold.

And it's very pungent smelling stuff.

It's called cuchu pusi, which means fish eye.

This is a shrub here.

It's a tree farther up but they call this san juanico.

They call it tasiro in Mayo but some tribes, particularly the Seris, use it for adornment.

It's so sharp on the end that you can actually stick them right into your skin without too much pain.

And some people even adorn themselves in the nose with these very sharp things.

It doesn't particularly hurt.

And if you're really ugly, as some of us are, it helps make you less ugly.

They mash these little fruits and mash 'em well and then mix them in water and it makes a shampoo.

The Mayos usually render the shampoo in their outdoor kitchens where Vicente's wife, Teresa, is making us breakfast while we discuss our itinerary.

So if we're lucky, we'll go to Masiaca and find a parade celebrating the other revolution.

From there we'll go to find a Mayoan mask maker, who makes traditional masks.

Then it's on to the Pitayal, the reserves protecting the Organ Pipe Forest.

Then up to the city of Alamos and nearby to Aduana, where we will see a huge celebration honoring the most sacred plant in all of Sonora, an organ pipe cactus, and we'll see several thousand people adoring it.

Everybody loves a parade and it's no different here in Masiaca, Sonora.

It's a Mayo town but the celebration is Mexican, honoring the day of the revolution, November 20th.

It began in 1910, but it's still considered to be a contemporary thing here in Mexico.

Everybody turns out in Masiaca.

But the Mayos have their own way of celebrating it.

They are mostly Mexican but they still retain a lot of customs and if you look carefully you can see Mayo-ness everywhere.

The Mayo culture pre-dates the Spanish conquest and many of the rituals are pre-Columbian.

Their traditions and culture have survived through artists like Paco Gamez.

Paco learned when he was very young to make ceremonial masks like this one.

The design he is making, which is a mystical wolf, is more for people to use as decorations in their houses and many tourists, he has found, buy them.

He has been making his masks for twenty years or so.

His father made them before him.

The wood is known as torote prieto, it's a member of the bursera family and it has a very nice delicate odor to it.

The hair is horsehair.

If you walk around the Mayo community there are a lot of horse around with very short manes and very short tails.

The Mayo ceremony is a curious combination of pagan, pre-Columbian customs and Catholic elements.

There are actually three different kinds of festival dancers and participants.

The most sacred of the dancers is the deer dancer and they actually wear an actual deer head on top of their heads.

In the middle we have the very ancient custom, the pascola dancer who wears this kind of mask with their bells or they call them coyoles around the waist.

And then finally there is the Fariseo, or sort of the ceremonial bad guys who wear this foul, evil-looking mask made out of javalina skin.

The most important part of all of the Mayo ceremonials is the head of the deer.

The deer often symbolizes Christ.

It is worn by the deer dancer on top of the head and then gathered under the chin.

The dancer bends over and the eyes of the deer then look out at the world.

It seems to be looking for good and evil and the head moves back and forth.

Mayo culture has broad appeal to visitors including my birding friends.

Fortunately for them Paco has a supply of his artwork for sale.

There's a lot of species of moths that would do this type of cocoon, different type of shapes but overall it's the same pattern of silk cocoon.

The little stones that they put inside the cocoons are taken from anthills and the reason is the ants bring up stones that are primarily, they're very small, but they're quite round.

Then what they do, they cut the tip of the cocoon and then they fill them up with pebbles.

Not completely full, as you can see.

This is what represents the novelties here.

The sonapo is a little instrument which the Pascola shakes to a very fine rhythm and at the same time moves his legs to swish the tambourine or the coon rattle.

The combination of the two makes for a mesmerizing beat of music.

From Paco's house it's an hour's drive through Mayo lands to the coast of the Sea of Cortez.

There we'll find a cornucopia of bird species.

There's an enormous range of birds available to bird watchers that come to Sonora.

There are well over 500 species of birds found in Sonora and almost all of those birds are here at some point during the year.

Given the wide variety of habitats, from sea level to over eight thousand feet, in the state of Sonora through Sonoran Desert, Sinaloan thorn forest, Pine Oak Woodland, you would expect to have very different birds communities and all within close range of one another.

It doesn't take a long drive to leave any one habitat and access the next.

This is living proof that we are on a bridge under which flows the excretions of several thousand pigs who are pooping up a storm and it smells exactly like that.

And the birds flock here.

Yes, they do.

It strikes me that birds don't have much of a sense of smell.

With a few exceptions they do not.

The kiwis have a sense of smell, so do turkey vultures.

Of course some birds are partial to salt water.

They find their food in salt water, some in deep water.

We were looking for boobies, we were looking for loons today out in the open ocean because they dive for fish whereas the shore birds are using the extensive mud flats that occur in the big estuaries.

It is amazing how rich these estuaries are.

They're actually richer than the ones farther south as far as the aggregations of birds go.

The farther north you are the cooler the water and more oxygen that it can contain and the greater the plankton.

It'll support just this much more biomass when it comes to birds.

Birds have wings.

You're always finding the unexpected and it's something I think that hooks people and makes them into bird watchers.

And the enormous range of people join bird watching tours and natural history tours to travel outdoors and to experience the planet they inhabit first hand.

Most Mayos live not on the coast but inland and depend on the native forest for much of their livelihood.

Lately the cactus forest has come under attack from agriculture, development and near the coast, shrimp farming.

This is the Coteco Biological Reserve.

It was set up by local people in the indigenous community of Masiaca.

It's viewed as a reserve for plants that might get hammered elsewhere and it's also a nesting or growing area for deer where they can breed and grow up without any fear of being hunted.

Hunting isn't permitted in here.

In the long run, this is a way that this pitayal, this incomparable forest, nowhere like it in the world, this is how it's gonna be saved.

There are a number of plants that are very common here, especially the organ pipe cactus or pitaya.

This habitat is best characterized as thornscrub, not real tall but it's spiny and thorny and you can't walk through it without getting stuck one way or another.

But there are over five hundred species of plants within a five mile radius here, extremely rich habitat.

The ideal place for hunters and gatherers who have at least one water source to be able to come and gather things from the desert.

This is a caper called juavena and you chew it for a toothache.

It's bitter and it also tastes like water cress and it actually gives a little tingling like a little early feeling of novocaine and it literally begins to numb the tongue.

Farther inland and higher up in Mayo country is a very different habitat.

It's home to a distinct array of plants and birds.

This is tropical deciduous forest.

A majority of the trips that I run here in the Alamos area and for that matter throughout Mexico I would say the majority of people are from the southwest, Tucson/Phoenix area, but from all over the U.S.; people with a great interest in all sorts of natural history.

There he goes.

There goes the elegant trogon.

This is the bird that probably converts many people with a casual interest in natural history to bird watching.

I mean, they're such beautiful birds that people just go nuts when they find them.

Cool.

In the left side of that cypress tree about where that trogon is there's some yellow in the tree.

Yeah.

And he's back in behind there.

Arizona's sort of the tip of the iceberg for tropical dry season deciduous forest species.

We barely get a taste of them and of course it attracts twenty five thousand or more bird watchers a year to southeastern Arizona.

But here we have a reasonable expectation of finding them in riparian areas along the Río Cuchujaqui.

This little kingfisher's sitting there above the pool waiting for an opportunity to grab.

Grab breakfast.

Grab his breakfast, exactly.

It's actually sort of surprising how big of a fish they'll pick out.

What you have here in Alamos is a phenomena that doesn't occur anywhere else in the western hemisphere in that the tropical deciduous forest runs further up the west coast of Mexico than it does on the east coast of Mexico.

So you have this thin band of tropical forest going up the west side of the Sierra Madre and terminating here in the Alamos area.

That's the netting that just called right there.

There are pockets further north but here in Alamos you have convergence of the Sonoran Desert, the coastal habitats that are within thirty five miles of here and the tropical deciduous forest.

And also pine oak habitat which is very close.

Look at the rose throat on that guy.

There he goes.

He's coming over right now.

Nice bright reddish throat and beautiful feathers and turning his head around.

There goes the black hawk.

At this time of year where you've got not only the resident riparian species such as we've seen this morning, the black hawk, common black hawk and the green kingfisher, great blue herons, but you also get highland species that have been driven down from the Sierra Madre from the pine oak woodland.

Have to go quick.

He might not be there anymore.

If you look against the sun, even now, you can see all kinds of insects floating around.

It's this food that draws them south.

First time I saw the trogon.

That's made the trip for us.

Yes.

That elegant trogon was just unbelieveable.

They'll strike this pose where they'll look there very regally and then they'll sort of turn their head sideways and sort of look down at you out of one eye.

There he goes.

The bird of the day.

Much better looking than my shirt.

Most of the plants here are unfamiliar to outsiders.

Fortunately Vicente has a natural knack for describing them and their uses.

He has a kindred soul in Mexican naturalist and guide Jesus Garcia.

Bacum in Mayo.

In Spanish it's batamote and if you cut the leaves of this plant and you put it in your shoes, if you had bad odor in your feet, basically this will take care of it.

If you have dandruff, you crush the leaves of the sip willow and mix it with water and wash your hair with it and you will take care of dandruff.

If you have like a urinary tract infection, if you make a tea out of the thorns, that would be good to help you pee.

The great sabinos, or bald cypresses as we call them, ahuehuetes they call them in southern Mexico, are a bird watcher's delight.

They're tall, they're open and it's easy to see birds doing, well, what birds do.

They're now protected by the Mexican government which is a good thing.

Because not too many decades ago they formed the beams for many elegant homes in colonial Alamos.

Alamos was essentially put on the map as the next step in a northern expansion by the Spanish.

And it became a relatively important beachhead mostly due to the fact that the Yaqui Indians weren't allowing the Spanish to proceed north.

During that time a lot of the expansion was sort of piling up here in Alamos and then when eventually silver was discovered that was really when it's hay day began.

Alamos became one of the richest cities in the world.

It had its own mint.

It was the capitol of northern Mexico on two different occasions.

The architecture is a big draw to Alamos from the tourism standpoint and rightfully so.

It's one of the most beautiful cities certainly in northern Mexico.

Alamos is a fairly good size town.

Maybe six, seven thousand people.

And a lot of them depend upon the foreigners who come in and restore houses, old colonial houses.

It's quite an industry, brings a lot of money to town, and it's great in the winter months.

But in summer here it's hotter than blazes and a lot of the foreigners leave so employment tends to dip and it makes for a hardship in the very hot months.

In many of the old homes in Alamos people have moved out and when people move out, other things move in.

I've heard there are bats.

There are also bats in the abandoned silver mines of nearby Aduana.

It's pretty much a ghost town most of the year except around November 20th when thousands of pilgrims flock to the village.

So Vicente says it's a very common belief that this organ pipe cactus grew out of the side of the church right after it was built, more than three hundred years ago.

It is certainly the most revered plant in Sonora and probably in all of northwest Mexico.

And how it continues to survive growing out of sheer stone is anybody's guess but the thousands and thousands of pilgrims who come here believe it's a miracle.

Everyone here who has made the pilgrimage is fulfilling a promise to the Virgin Mary as a result of a prayer they made, a request that she has answered or will answer in the near future.

Since the Virgin Mary appeared here within this cactus, it is said that the cactus, born out of rock, is sacred in the image of the Virgin Mary.

Everyone who believes in this miracle comes here each year.

Some even come once a month.

And believers come by foot from towns as much as sixty kilometers away like Navajoa.

It takes him twelve to eighteen hours to walk here to see this sacred cactus.

They bring offerings of candles, flowers, crosses, watches, pictures and so on.

It may look as though people are just camping out here, doing nothing in particular.

But they really are the faithful.

They wait here with the hope that they, one time in their lives, will get a vision of the Blessed Virgin.

This event has been going on for hundreds of years.

We come here to ask assistance for work, food and mostly importantly for health.

In the light of day we venture into primeval Mayo forest, a place where not many Mayos have visited.

This is Vicente's first time.

Vicente, have have you ever seen a forest like this one before?

What is different here?

The trees here are so tall.

Point out some plants that you are familiar with.

This is a bursera tree called the palo mulato.

It's widely used for sores.

It doesn't smell much, has a slightly sweet smell, but you can see the red.

This bark is good for diabetes.

You brew it into a tea and drink and it helps alleviate it.

This is also, the tea from this, for cleaning out your bladder.

But it turns your urine red.

As you can tell, the reddish color does come off on things.

Where Vicente lives a tree called the joso is the tallest one.

It's over thirteen meters tall, perhaps oh, gets up to forty feet tall.

Figs here are the biggest tree in the tropical deciduous forest.

They get up to sixty to seventy feet tall.

And they don't grow in a straight up and down fashion, they wander all over the place.

They may grow in a twist.

They may grow into an almost pretzel.

But they are huge and they provide gobs of fruit and it becomes a variable ecosystem for all kinds of birds and mammals.

The land of the Mayos is hardly recognizable from the way it was, oh, four hundred years ago.

But a great deal still remains for those who value ancient knowledge and the discoveries of nature.

The Mayo lands with forests, thorn scrub and coastline, are full of natural and cultural riches.

A new source of discovery for the adventurous visitor and now a livelihood for the residents.

Next time on The Desert Speaks , Santa Rosalía is the end of the line for the ferry that leaves mainland Mexico and crosses the Gulf of California.

But it is the beginning of the adventure for exploring wild, woolly and eccentric Baja California.

The use of organ pipe is really clear here.

It's a fence that has thousands of pieces of branches that have been cut off, split and then made into a fence.

And it's, parts of it are thirty years old.

So if it doesn't rain a lot, it lasts as if it were very strong wood.

It's hard to believe that an organ pipe fence is the reality the best fence in the world where it's available.

Major funding for The Desert       Speaks was provided by The Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Desert Program Partners.