Argentina and Chile, 16 - 25 January 2017 - … · Argentina and Chile, 16 - 25 January 2017 ... plain-mantled tit-spinetail and some California quails ... pied-billed and white-tufted

Argentina and Chile, 16 - 25 January 2017

Sarah and I spent a few days in Buenos Aires, Santiago and Easter Island on our way to New Zealand and

Australia as part of a big southern hemisphere trip. As with all our holidays, the emphasis was as much on

sightseeing and fun as on birding, but having never been to mainland South America before there was plenty of

bird excitement for me.

Monday 16 January – Buenos Aires and Costanera Sur

We arrived in the early hours of Monday morning, having flown from Heathrow with Iberia via Madrid. We

went straight to our hotel, the Hotel Madero, and set off to explore the city. The Madero is a rather

expensive hotel in the newly redeveloped Puerto Madero district; for us it was worth the extra money both

for the luxury and location – 15 minutes’ walk could take you either to the heart of downtown or into the

wonderful Costanera Sur reserve.

We started to see interesting birds straight away: eared doves, chalk-browed mockingbirds, grey-breasted

martins and monk parakeets are everywhere. In downtown, patches of green space such as the busy Plaza de

Mayo had resident rufous horneros (amazingly loud song!) and rufous-bellied thrushes. A patch of waste

ground near the hotel had double-collared seedeaters, great kiskadees, and a chimango caracara.

Rufous hornero – Argentina’s delightfully noisy national bird Chalk-browed mockingbird – common in the city

In the afternoon I headed the opposite direction from the hotel to visit the Costanera Sur. I was initially

frustrated to find that the reserve is closed on Mondays, but this turned out to be a good thing. Instead of

going in, I turned left and walked north along the Avenida Rodriguez that runs alongside the Laguna de los

Coipos, where there was a superb array of waterbirds. From the roadside walkway I notched up many

wonderful new species including rosy-billed pochards, silver, speckled and ringed teal, coscoroba swans,

great and white-tufted grebes, whistling and white-necked herons, rufescent tiger-heron, white-winged

and red-fronted coots and a southern screamer. Over the water were southern martins and blue-and-

white and white-rumped swallows. Scrabbling around the rubbish bins of the food vans that lined the avenue

were shiny and bay-winged cowbirds and guira cuckoos. There were other, more familiar birds there

including a count of at least 24 bronze-winged jacanas. All fairly mind-blowing, and on my way back to the hotel

I ran into a confiding campo (field) flicker in the Parque de las Mujeres Argentinas.

Guira cuckoos Male rosy-billed pochard

Whistling heron Campo (or field) flicker

Tuesday 17 January – Costanera Sur

In the morning Sarah and I went back to the reserve and walked along some of the tree-lined paths between

the wetlands. Actually it turned out that the only lagoon that had any quantity of water in it was the Laguna de

los Coipos, which is best viewed from outside the reserve. The other lagoons were dry, apart from some rather

distant patches in the Laguna de las Gaviotas, where there were some black-necked swans, spot-flanked

gallinules and southern lapwings. The Laguna de los Pathos (duck lagoon) was completely dry, but I did see

black-and rufous warbling-finch and golden-billed saltator in the rushes that have grown up. In the trees

and bushes along the trail were picazuro pigeons, masked gnatcatchers, streaked flycatchers, a red-eyed

vireo and a golden-breasted woodpecker. Near the visitor centre were freckle-breasted thornbirds, a

creamy-bellied thrush and a glittering-bellied emerald.

Later in the afternoon I went back to the reserve again, with the aim of getting closer to the water where I’d

seen the black-necked swans, but couldn’t find a viewpoint into the Laguna, and didn’t add anything new.

Wednesday 18 January – Costanera Sur and Palermo district

One last visit to the reserve in the morning – this time, only viewing from the avenue - revealed two limpkins on

one of the islands, not far from the reserve entrance. Afterwards we took a taxi to the Palermo district to

have a look at the various large and interesting parks. A Harris’s hawk flew over the Jardin Japones; in

addition we saw plenty of the city’s common birds: rufous horneros, rufous-bellied thrushes, great kiskadees,

shiny cowbirds, chalk-browed mockingbirds and eared doves.

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, which feels European with its wide avenues and elegant buildings. It’s a very

popular tourist destination but you can see the sights in a day or two, and go birding! I can’t think of another

city I’ve been to where there is such great birdlife in close proximity to the city centre.

In the evening we took a Latam flight to Santiago, flying into the airport over the Andes as the sun set.

Thursday 19 January – Santiago and Farellones

Our hotel in Santiago was very central, near the Museo de Bellas Artes. On an early morning walk around the

adjacent parkland I saw lots of austral thrushes and a chimango caracara; walking round the city centre we

saw a southern lapwing in front of La Moneda (the Presidential palace) and a few birds on the Cerro Santa

Lucia, but not much else. It’s an attractive city, and we enjoyed the more strongly Latin feel of the place, but

it’s not nearly as green as Buenos Aires, and the day we were there the air was heavy with traffic fumes.

Southern lapwing in front of La Moneda, Santiago Hillside at Yerba Loca

On the advice of the hotel, we arranged for a car and driver to take us out of the city in the afternoon. We

headed for Farellones, a ski resort in the Cordillera Central, and the driver took us to the Yerba Loca nature

reserve en route. This is a beautiful upland hillside reserve, with great-looking habitat for birds. However, it

was extremely hot when we arrived, and consequently quiet. I managed to see a white-crested elaenia, a

plain-mantled tit-spinetail and some California quails (introduced). From the car we saw a black-chested

buzzard-eagle and a couple of Chilean mockingbirds. It was cooler when we reached Farellones and from the

viewpoint above the ski slopes we could see various birds including flycatchers and finches but I could only

positively identify common diuca-finch and black-winged ground-dove.

Friday 20 January – Easter Island

It had rained when we arrived at Easter Island, giving the island a lush, tropical look – very different from the

cactus-clad slopes we’d seen around Santiago. We went to our accommodation near Hanga Roa (the main town)

and walked to the harbour, where we saw some great frigatebirds and a few sparrows and diuca-finches.

Because of the island’s remoteness the variety of birds is extremely limited, as we knew. We only saw 7

species there in total! But it’s not about the birds.

Saturday 21 January – Easter Island

Our host at Tekarera Hotel, Paul Pownell, provided our hire car, which we used to drive to Puna Pau, the site

where the red stone used for the ‘topknots’ of the statues was quarried. Here we saw a chimango caracara as

well as the now -familiar common diuca-finches.

Paul then took us on a half-day tour of the island. He is a fascinating person and an excellent guide: he

accompanied American anthropologist Dr William Mulloy on an archaeological expedition to the island in the

late 60s and fell in love with the place, helping the team to re-erect many of the moai (statues), most of which

were lying down at the time, perhaps because of tribal conflict between the various Rapa Nui inhabitants.

Later, he returned to the island and married a Rapa Nui woman, whose father owned the land where the hotel

was built.

Sunday 22 January – Easter Island

In the early morning I walked to another moai site, at Tahai, from where I saw some great frigatebirds and

masked boobies passing. Later near Ahu Tongariki we saw some Chilean tinamous and several more chimango

caracaras. The quarry site at Rano Raraku was particularly impressive. Back in Hanga Roa in the afternoon

more great frigatebirds and masked boobies passed by close inshore.

Chimango caracara, Easter Island Great frigatebird, Easter Island

It’s only a small island, but it is beautiful and the various groupings of moai are stunning and intriguing. Much

of current thinking is based on a combination of deduction, inspiration and surviving folk memory. For example,

when Dr Mulloy’s team proposed to move one a statue horizontally, the Rapa Nui people said ‘you can do that,

but our moai walked’, which suggests they were originally transported from the quarry vertically. A Rapa Nui

attendant at one site told us the statues were moved by telepathy: they are clearly still imbued with god-like

powers in many people’s minds.

Rano Raraku, Easter Island

However, from a naturalist’s point of view the island is an ecological disaster. There never were many land

birds, but there were native plants including a now-extinct endemic palm tree. Now the island is over-run by

lupins and other nasty invasive plant species, apparently with very little control over what seeds and insects

are dispersed. Maybe one day hordes of seabirds will return, as of old, but a lot needs to change before that

can happen.

Monday 23 January – Easter Island

We had planned to spend the day before our evening flight to Tahiti visiting Rano Kau, the volcanic crater at

the east of the island, from where you can overlook two small islands where breeding seabirds can be seen. But

the weather gods had other ideas. We had a phone call early in the morning from our travel company in the UK

(Travel Nation) asking if we had heard about the storm in Tahiti which had caused severe flooding and closed

the airport. Internet news pages confirmed the airport was expected to stay closed until the following day. As

there is only flight per week from Easter Island to Tahiti we had to re-route, returning to Santiago that

afternoon and flying from there to New Zealand direct. By the time we’d sorted that out there was a fierce

tropical downpour on Easter Island too, so no visit to Rano Kau, and our flight back to Chile was delayed by

four hours.

Tuesday 24 January – Santiago

We eventually arrived in Santiago in the middle of the night, too late for our onward flight to New Zealand,

and checked in to the Diego de Almagra Aeropuerto Hotel to await the next day’s flight. Morning revealed

that the hotel was in a modern industrial area, surrounded by concrete, steel and tarmac. Next to it was a

patch of waste ground, which had a few birds – austral thrushes, chimango caracaras, eared doves, southern

lapwings and white-browed blackbirds. For a bit of an escape we got a taxi to take us to the nearest patch of

water I could see on google maps: Parque Laguna Caren. The taxi dropped us at the gate, where we had to pay

an entrance fee and walked under the sweltering mid-day sun along a track to the lake.

The lake was quite good, with great, pied-billed and white-tufted grebes and some red-gartered coots, while

in the trees nearby where we sheltered from the sun there were many eared doves, rufous-collared sparrows,

white-browed blackbirds and common diuca-finches as well as some picui ground doves and austral

blackbirds. On the way back to the gate for our rendezvous with the taxi we had good views of two splendid

variable hawks.

White-browed blackbird, near Santiago airport Laguna Caren, near Santiago airport

We thoroughly enjoyed our first-time visit to mainland South America, and as tourists we found the two

capital cities visited very easy and hospitable, and with considerable bird interest. Costanera Sur is brilliant,

and will be even better when/if the lagoons return to their previous water levels. The birding is great so we’d

like to go back to Chile or Argentina (or both) some time; this visit was really an extended stopover on our way

to New Zealand and Australia. It was disappointing not to get to Tahiti but we’d only scheduled one day there

and we did get to see a little more of Chile instead, which was some compensation.

I was pleased to find 75 species, of which 51 were lifers, but was very aware that there were a lot more birds

around that a birder with more South America experience could have found. Life birds are shown in bold in the

table below. Non-native birds introduced from elsewhere are shown in italics.

Birds seen in Argentina and Chile, 16 - 25 January 2017

Species Argentina Chile

Buenos Aires city Costanera Sur,

Buenos Aires

Santiago city Yerba

Loca/Farellones

Laguna Caren Easter Island

Chilean tinamou - - - - - 2 nr Ahu Tongariki

White-tufted grebe - 4 - - 3 -

Pied-billed grebe - 2 - - 2 -

Great grebe - 6 - - 1 -

California quail - - - 4+ Yerba Loca,

family party

- -

Neotropic cormorant 3 Puerto Madero

1 Jardin Japones

20+ - - 1 -

Great frigatebird - - - - - 10+ various sites

Masked booby - - - - - 10+ Hanga Roa

White-necked (cocoi)

heron

- 2 - - - -

Rufescent tiger-heron - 2 - - - -

Species Argentina Chile

Buenos Aires city Costanera Sur,

Buenos Aires

Santiago city Yerba

Loca/Farellones

Laguna Caren Easter Island

Whistling heron - 1 - - - -

Great egret 2 Puerto Madero 3 - - 1 -

Snowy egret - 6+ - - - -

Black-crowned night-heron - 4 - - - -

American wood-stork - 1 - - - -

Southern screamer - 1 - - - -

White-faced whistling

duck

- 8+ - - - -

Coscoroba swan - 6 - - - -

Black-necked swan - 6+ - - - -

Speckled teal - c8 - - - -

Silver teal - c20 - - - -

Rosy-billed pochard - 10+, with chicks - - - -

Ringed teal - 6 - - - -

Black-chested buzzard-

eagle

- - - 1 Yerba Loca - -

Harris’s (bay-winged)

hawk

1 Puerto Madero

1 Jardin Japones

- - - - -

Variable hawk - - - - 2 -

Southern caracara - 2 - - - -

Chimango caracara 2 Puerto Madero 2 1 city centre

2 near airport

- - 20+, common and

widespread

Limpkin - 2 - - - -

Red-gartered coot - - - - 5 -

White-winged coot - 8 - - - -

Red-fronted coot - c6 - - - -

Common gallinule - C20 - - - -

Spot-flanked gallinule - 4 - - - -

Wattled jacana - 25+ - - - -

Southern lapwing 3+ between

airport and city

4 1 La Modena

2 near airport

- - -

Picazuro pigeon Sev in Palermo 6+ - - - -

Rock dove (feral pigeon) Abundant 50+ Abundant - - 8 airport

Eared dove Abundant 10+ 4+ city centre

10+ near airport

- 10+ -

Picui ground-dove - - - - 5+ -

Black-winged ground-dove - - - c10 Farellones - -

Monk parakeet Abundant 10+ - - - -

Guira cuckoo - 8 - - - -

Glittering-bellied emerald - 1 - - - -

Campo (field) flicker 1 Parque Mujeres

Argentinas

- - - - -

Golden-breasted

woodpecker

- 1 - - - -

Rufous hornero Common and

widespread

1 - - - -

Freckle-breasted

thornbird

- 3+ - - - -

Great kiskadee Abundant 10+ - - - -

Streaked flycatcher - 2 - - - -

White-crested elaenia - - - 1 Yerba Loca - -

Southern martin - 2+ - - - -

Grey-breasted martin Abundant 10+ - - -

White-rumped swallow - c6 - - - -

Blue-and-white swallow - 2 - - - -

Plain-mantled tit-

spinetail

- - - 2 Yerba Loca - -

Southern house wren

- - 1 near airport - 1 -

Species Argentina Chile

Buenos Aires city Costanera Sur,

Buenos Aires

Santiago city Yerba

Loca/Farellones

Laguna Caren Easter Island

Chalk-browed mockingbird 10+, common and

widespread

4 - - - -

Chilean mockingbird - - - 4+ Yerba Loca - -

Golden-billed saltator - 2 - - - -

Rufous-bellied thrush 10+, common and

widespread

8+ - - - -

Creamy-bellied thrush - 1 - - - -

Austral thrush - - c50 city centre

5 near airport

- 4 -

Masked gnatcatcher - 2 - - - -

Yellow-billed cardinal 4 2 - - - -

Double-collared

seedeater

2 Puerto Madero - - - - -

Rufous-collared sparrow - - 3 Cerro Sta Lucia 1 Farellones 10+ -

Black-and-rufous

warbling-finch

- 2 - - - -

Shiny cowbird 6+ 4+ c6 - - -

Bay-winged cowbird - 3 - - - -

White-browed blackbird - - 3 near airport - 2 -

Austral blackbird - - - - 2 -

Common diuca-finch - - - 1 Farellones 4+ Abundant

(introduced)

House sparrow Abundant 6 c30 6 C10 Abundant

Starling c30 Puerto

Madero

10 Palermo

- - - - -

Geoff Upton, Southern England