Post on 19-Sep-2018
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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