Chile Nov-Dec 2009 (1 Viewer)

Dear All,
I spent a little more than three weeks in Chile last year, and now have a report ready. It consists of two files, the description and the bird list.

I have uploaded a lot of images to the Gallery here (and a few more to come), I have plans of replying with links to some of those as we come along.

An updated version of the bird list is found in post 8 in this thread

Cheers
Niels

First set of links, in roughly chronological order:
Austral Thrush
Yellow-rumped Siskin
Plumbeous Sierra-Finch, female
Buff-winged Cinclodes
White-browed Ground-Tyrant
Dark-bellied Cinclodes
Austral Pygmy-Owl
Grey-hooded Sierra-Finch
Black-winged Ground-Dove

That should be the first two days

Niels

And an excellent read it is, too. I was in most of these places in 2007, and it was good to have the memory refreshed. I wasn't in Torres del Paine, but spent three days at Antillaca in PN Pueyehe. Other than that, you seem to have pretty well followed my footsteps. I, too , goot the Many coloured Rush Tyrant at Batuco Wetlands in Estero Lampa. On the nearby Pilcopata Road we got Warbling Doradito and Long-winged Harrier. In El Yeso the road was clear, but we didn't try for Diademed Sandpiper Plover because we'd already got it in PN Lauca. Even though it was well into the austral spring in the Tropics, the streams were frozen.

What a coup the King Penguins were. Our biggest coup of the trip was on the Porvenir - Punta Arenas ferry. We were surrounded by huge numbers of Black-browed Albatross, which we estimated conservatively as 1400.

Thanks for sharing.

Alan.

Hello Niels,

Your report sounds very interesting.
My is not ready yet ( I bought a near PC last week ).
At the and of my vacation ( 11.12. ) I was in El Yeso.
Saw 14 Diadem Sandpiper Pover there.


Best regards
Dieter

Alan,
I think yours was one of the reports I had gone through before planning my trip, very useful.

And yes, the King Penguins were a huge surprise.

Dieter, I am envious! Too bad we did not find time to go back, but then there is a reason to visit Chile again

Thanks both!
Niels

Photos for the third day (Nov 18):
White-throated Tapaculo image one and image two
Common Duica-Finch
Giant Hummingbird

Cheers
Niels

Hi Niels, thanks for posting.

My wife and I visited Chile in 2008 - but we cheated and did it the easy way (with Birdseekers)!

Throughout our years of birding, we've mostly concentrated on the Holarctic region - we've never been great fans of the tropics with its overwhelming numbers of mostly sedentary species. But running out of new places to bird in the north, it seemed a good idea to spend a few years instead focusing on an alternative temperate zone (the Southern Cone), and Chile was our first destination there.

We found it fascinating to experience this upside-down world for the first time, where despite similarities in climate, equivalent niches are often occupied by completely different families: tinamous vs galliforms, penguins & diving petrels vs alcids, seedsnipes vs sandgrouse, chimangos vs corvids, miners vs larks, ground tyrants vs wheatears, etc; with even the most familiar families represented by dramatically different species - wildfowl, waders, gulls & terns...

Your report brought back some great memories of a beautiful country - but we're very envious of your King Penguins! We hope to visit again some day by ourselves to catch up with a few missed species, and to take time to enjoy some of the best areas at a slightly more relaxed pace...

Richard

PS. In your list, you've attributed all records of Variable Hawk to Buteo poecilochrous. But my understanding is that even if recognised as a species, poecilochrous is largely restricted to c3500m+, and in Chile is usually considered to occur only in the north (eg, Bierregaard 1994 (HBW2), Ferguson-Lees & Christie 2001) - so probably only your Lauca sightings would be candidates. [See this thread for discussion and links.] I'm sure that Alvaro ('Scelorchilus') could clarify...

Richard Klim said:

PS. In your list, you've attributed all records of Variable Hawk to Buteo poecilochrous. But my understanding is that even if recognised as a species, poecilochrous is largely restricted to c3500m+, and in Chile is usually considered to occur only in the north (eg, Bierregaard 1994 (HBW2), Ferguson-Lees & Christie 2001) - so probably only your Lauca sightings would be candidates. [See this thread for discussion and links.] I'm sure that Alvaro ('Scelorchilus') could clarify...

Click to expand...

Hi Richard,
I probably should have made a comment on that, because I really used Puna hawk as a placeholder for Variable Hawk; the field guide does not recognize the split but my listing software does. I used Puna instead of the alternative because all drawings in Jaramillo are showing long-winged birds (beyond the tail in resting birds) and that would according to other field guides indicate Puna. I did not see any of these sitting, so no personal observations.

The discussion on SACC about the proposal to recognized two species instead of Variable Hawk did confuse me a bit. For example, the comment by Alvaro states that the form in Putre is polyosoma but that poecilochrous is found just a little further down (south and lower elevation!) in Chile; and I remembered this wrong when I made the bird list.

I have gone back to the word document and change to designation to Variable Hawk for all sightings, which is attached to this post; I hope that the status of these birds get worked out better at a later date. Unfortunately, I did not get photos of any of them.

Thanks for pointing this out, and for sharing your memories of Chile :t:
Niels

Photos for Nov 19-22 (Santiago):
Kelp Gull first cycle and second cycle
Austral Blackbird
Eared Dove
And this still unsolved raptor.

Attached a couple of more photos, view of a high rise section of the city (no match for the Andes in behind), and of a dessert we had one evening

Niels

So here are images from November 23, 2009, at Altos de Lircay/Vilches NP.
First a view of the area including a viewing platform that is reached from the trail Aliwenmahiuda.
Attached is another landscape view, just to the right of what is included in above link.
Next up is a Thin Tree Lizard and an unknown lizard
Magellanic Woodpecker did not disappoint
And the same for Chilean Flicker

Cheers
Niels

November 24: as detailed in the file, this day started out with a lot of rain. The attached photo of the road near Laguna Colbun shows the dark and dreary weather, and, I hope, the almost fluorescent yellow of the flowering bushes along the road.

Other images are from the area below Rio Cipresos NP (later in the day, after we had driven a fair bit north):
Yellow-winged Blackbird
Long-tailed Meadowlark
Plumbeous Rail
Chilean Mockingbird
Blue-and-White Swallow
Picui Ground-Dove

Cheers
Niels