On December 23, about 50 people turned out for the opening of the redesigned Tala Museum.

A small town located 30 kilometers due west of Guadalajara, Tala is best known for its large sugar refinery, noted for being the major polluter of Lake La Vega. Two thousand years ago, however, Tala was the residential district of a large metropolis with a population of some 60,000 people.

“In the days of the Teuchitlán civilization, the great majority of its people lived in and around what is now called Tala, which was rich in woods, water and obsidian deposits, while the nearby Guachimontones were reserved for official business and ceremonies,” says archeologist Rodrigo Esparza, who played a major role in the museum’s renovation.

Perhaps it was the recent discovery of a crocodile in the forest that inspired Karina Aguilar, Bosque de la Primavera’s director of fauna, to take seriously the rumors that in these woods so close to Mexico’s second-most-populous city, lurks one of the most elusive felines in the Americas: Puma concolor, the puma or cougar, also known as the mountain lion.

By now even the casual visitor to Guadalajara has figured out that Tequila is not the birthplace of tequila. After all, where does the Tequila Express take all those tourists? Not to Tequila, but to Amatitán, thirteen kilometers closer. Now Amatitán is the home of Herradura distillery which is old alright, but does not lay claim to being the oldest. Where then should we look for the cradle that gave birth to west Mexico’s world-famous inebriant?

Experienced birders and untrained volunteers converged on El Bosque de la Primavera for the first Christmas Bird Census taken in this large forest on the western outskirts of Guadalajara.