Peter´s Birding Trip

Reproduced with kind permission from Peter´Coo. The original article on birdforum. http://www.birdforum.net/forum.php (Why not join?It´s free! Huge resource.)

Chile trip 26 Dec. 2010 - 2 Jan. 2011

Central Chile - Mountains and Sea
"I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the
leisure to make it shorter." - Blaise Pascal

This past Christmas, I was fortunate enough to have a few ‘free’ days off, which I could cobble together a whole week (yes, seven whole days, whoo-hoo!) for a vacation. The Significant Other and I decided we’d do another one of our ‘quick get-aways’, this time to central Chile. Why [I hear some people cry] go there, a good 10¾-hour flight away? Especially given that there are so many perfectly-good tropical birding destinations to be visited, at only about half the distance? Well, several independent factors coalesced to motivate this choice of destination, but the main ones were these:

#1 – New country, ergo, new everything (pretty nearly). Neither of us had ever seen Chile before. We had done a couple of previous trips to South America, but these had barely taken us beyond about one degree south latitude. So, there was a whole bio-region there – the south temperate – which was terra incognita for us. As south American countries go, Chile has a very limited overall checklist, but virtually all of these would be lifers.

#2 – We would be hitting the ground in Chile just a few days after the Summer solstice; this meant the sun would rise before 0700, and not set until after 2100. The long daylight hours were a big draw, not just because there’d be more time for bird-watching, but also because they would make life easier for traveling – more time to get from place to place, in an unfamiliar country.

#3 - As always, for us, convenience plays a large part in our choice of destination, especially for trips of such short duration. We chose Chile partly on the strength of the fact that we could reach Santiago via a direct, non-stop flight from Toronto Pearson (which is less than an hour’s drive from our house); we wouldn’t have to go through security several times, worry about transferring luggage, and, most importantly, would have to waste any of our precious 168 available hours sitting around, waiting for a connection.

With only a week, and non-infinite funds, we couldn't afford to be very ambitious in our itinerary. The blue rectangle in the attached outline map shows, very roughly, the area we visited on this trip.

Practical miscellanea
(Warning! Travel advice in this post – nothing about birds! Anybody just interested in hearing about birds, you want to skip ahead to my next post….)

The flight:
Air Canada direct Toronto to Santiago. This is not a particularly inexpensive flight (C$1660 pp double) but has, as I mentioned, the advantage of being direct. Another plus about this flight is that it is an overnight flight, both ways – outbound, it leaves at 2355, and arrives 1215 (Chilean summer time); the return departs 2145 from Santiago and gets us back home 0610 the next day. This had huge practical advantages, especially as we had a very tight schedule; the early-afternoon arrival meant that we could get some of the way towards our destination on that first day, and the evening departure meant that we would have enough time on our final day to do something worthwhile, rather than just rushing back to Santiago to make our flight.

Reciprocity fees:
If you are unlucky enough to be a citizen of Canada, Australia, the United States, Mexico, or Albania (huh?), you will have to pay for the privilege of just entering Chile. This is thanks to hare-brained actions of your respective governments, which have imposed steep fees upon Chilean citizens wanting to get a visa to enter your country. In response, the Chilean government has taken the equally hare-brained step of imposing retaliatory fees on all citizens of these countries who visit Chile. (At the Santiago Airport, at least – I hear that it does not apply if you are entering via land crossings, for example.) What a brilliant way to stifle tourism …. (“A plague o’ both your houses! I am sped!”)
And the wronged Chileans, they who are being so brazenly ripped off by the governments of Canada, Australia, et al? When may they expect to see some of these funds, being collected on their behalf? About the same time Sarah Palin sells her rifles and joins PETA, I expect. (“Your houses!”)
The fee is payable at a special booth just inside the terminal (do NOT try to go through immigration first) and the amount varies, depending on citizenship; currently, Canadians have to pay $132 U.S. each – which is about the same in $Can., at the moment.

The car rental:
Whether to get oneself about in a rented vehicle, or to try to make other arrangements, is always a contentious issue on these trips. It is never easy to strike a balance between the high costs of renting a car, on one hand, and the potential loss of freedom and flexibility inherent in relying on other means of transport (whether that be cheap public buses or expensive hired drivers). I have had a – let us say “checkered” – history when it comes to hiring cars in Central and South America. Sometimes, the car – and in one memorable case, the company – has simply evaporated somewhere between my booking and our arrival. So, I always think long and hard about alternatives before renting.
For a short trip like this, to a large country like Chile, I decided that the cost and anxiety involved were justified; there was simply no way we could have seen what we wanted to see, in the brief time available, without having our own vehicle. Local buses did go to most of the places we ended up going, but making the connection would have cost us a great deal of time. As it turned out, the “gamble” paid off well, because the company we went with (Econorent, right in the airport) gave excellent service. They had the car type we wanted, at the rate we expected (on the high side, but all 4-wheel drive cars in Chile are expensive, it seems), and the check-in and return were both quick and hassle-free.

* Me, myself, your humble scribbler.
* A young lady I’ll only refer to a DMM; my longtime travel companion, confidante, and a bird-finder extraordinaire. We’ve been birding together since … we’ve been birding.
* Also joining us for this round, a grey 2009 Suzuki Gran Vitara. This small 2-door 4X4 used to be called the “Sidekick” over here. I think the new name is more than a little absurd, given that it barely could hold us and our baggage; Suzuki “Pequeño Vitara”, would be more like it. Still, it worked fine for us, and despite the 1.6 L engine, was surprisingly good on hills.

* As well as our usual binoculars, we also took my ancient, well-worn scope and tripod (looks like something recovered from the deck of HMS Hood). On other trips, I have found that this combination to prove to be just so much dead weight; on this trip, however, it proved to be very useful indeed – we found ourselves at a few good waterfowl spots in Chile.
* A Sony a DSLR with two lenses: a 28-70 f4, and a 70-300 mm f4.5-5.6. I found this “long” lens to be really not long enough, this time around. But… I’d rather have another trip than a new big lens.

* Birds of Chile, by Alvaro Jaramillo (Princeton Field Guides series 2005). The essential bird book for Chile, compact and well illustrated. A wonderful reference.
* A Wildlife Guide to Chile, by Sharon Chester (Princeton U.P., 2008). This generalist field guide includes birds too, but for our purposes, was the “guide for everything else”. Includes sections on habitat types, flowering plants, mammals, reptiles, etc.

The iPod touch. I loaded a few of bird songs onto the Touch from Xeno-canto; however, in the rush leading up to our departure, I did not time to do so in an exhaustive fashion. So, as luck would have it, the ones I had downloaded were not the ones I really needed! On the plus side, it certainly doesn’t threaten to put my baggage over the weight limit.

>
Arrived in Santiago at about 1245 local time, about half-an-hour late due to headwinds.
As ever, when we arrive at a brand-new destination, DMM and I play the “what will be the first bird?” game. She was betting on Barn Swallow – statistically, one of the safer bets one could make, given that species’ ubiquity (and predilection for airport buildings); I however, was thinking some Killdeer-like beast, given that almost every airport I’ve ever been to, from Cairns to Costa Rica, has some sort of plover (or plover equivalent) on the infield.

In the end, we were both entirely wrong; not a single swallow, of any description - nor any kind of plover – was in sight. Instead, our first bird, seen foraging on a very dry patch of grass just outside the deplaning ramp, was some sort of thrush. It was American Robin-sized, but entirely different in plumage – a sort of warm ochre-brown on the breast, with a darker back. Not wanting to delay too much (we hadn’t even reached immigration yet) we just took some notes and moved along, figuring to look it up later. (Bird #2, incidentally, was seen right along side it – House Sparrow. No shortage of those here. Must be the absence of Sparrowhawks in this country.)

After paying our extortionary “welcome to Chile” fee (see above), picked up our bags and our car, (thankfully without incident) and headed down south on the “Ruta cinco”. What a feeling - a new country, binoculars, and the open road stretching out ahead … !

(Oh – I do apologise, but, even though we’re only two birds in, I’m afraid it’s already time for one of these…)

[Aside] Chilean roads. Another factor in our choice of destination was Chile’s reputation – and this was largely bourne out by experience – for having very well-maintained highways. I can’t personally speak for the roads in more remote parts of the country, but right around Santiago, there is an excellent system of big, fast, multi-lane highways. These are very attractive to us time-pressed foreigners who mostly want a way to get the heck out of Santiago as quickly as possible!

The downside, such as it is, is that all this tarmac needs to be paid for, so there are tolls everywhere (some cash, but mostly electronic toll roads, or ETRs). I don’t mind at all paying these kinds of fees – but the problem is, that if you rent a car in Santiago, you end up paying a flat daily fee for the transponder that the rental companies must provide, in order for you to be able to use these roads at all (it seems that they all do this – recording your actual usuage, and passing that on to you, seems to be too complicated). For those of us who only use these roads twice – on the way to and back from the hinterland – this seems like a terrible rip. However, aside from renting your car in a different city, I could find no way around this…
Outside of the metropolitan area, you will also find tolls on the major, limited-access roads – but these are cash only (so be sure to have some small denominations handy), and very reasonable – I think they ranged from 1500-1900 pesos (about $3 - $4). And even the secondary roads in the regions we visited were in pretty good shape, almost everywhere we went – including some of the ones going way up into the Andes (see, especially, the road up the Rio Maule, which I’ll get to (eventually) on day 4)

The short of it is, we found driving in Central Chile to be a breeze – a lot like home, except with fewer cars! A regular, compact car would have been fine, for most of the roads we used. It was only in the most rural of places that we found ourselves really needing the better traction and higher ground clearance that “El Pequeño” afforded us.

Since I knew we’d be rather bushed after the overnight flight, I had taken pains to ensure we’d not have to do anything really stressful on our first day. I had, therefore, reserved our first night’s accomodation at a place relatively close to Santiago – a small hotel called Il Giardiano, just outside Rancagua, about 1 ½ hours’ drive south of the airport.

At first, there wasn’t much to see on the way, except the occasional feral Pigeon. At one point, however, DMM was startled by the sight of something very much like a nighthawk! At least, it looked a lot like a nighthawk – a large, long-winged brown bird, with a short neck, and big white crescents in the wings. I knew there was one such species in Chile – but thought it very unlikely that we’d be seeing it in mid-afternoon! Surely not – but what else could it be? Even the flight pattern looked right; long, deep beats, with the wing held slightly crooked at the wrist.

Then we saw another … and another. Hmm. Although I didn’t get very good looks at any of these individuals (I thought it best not to spend too much time craning my neck to look at birds, whilst doing 120 km/hr on an unfamiliar freeway – at home maybe, but not here), I was sure they were all the same species – and therefore it couldn’t be anything really out of the ordinary, such as a day-flying caprimulgid. Well, when all else fails, check the book … so DMM dug Sr. Jaramillo out of the pocket of my bag in the back seat … and inquired of him, what does Chile offer, that is large, long-winged, brownish, and fairly common? Let’s see … there’s the Chimango Caracara, which (he explained), is “abundant, the ecological counterpart of … crows” Oh, and look – extensive white patches at the bases of the primaries – that certainly seems to be our boy. (Well, du-uh.)

After a small detour into Rancagua (none of the exits seemed to go east, which we needed to do) we arrived at our hotel mid-afternoon. I had chosen the location very carefully – as I mentioned before, I wanted something that was an easy drive from Santiago, but with at least a bit of vegetation around it, so there would at least be some chance that there would be birds there. Il Giardiano met all of these conditions; it had a some good trees, and a fairly pleasant “short-grass-habitat” (a.k.a. lawn). The area was a bit more developed than I had hoped, but it was “country club” sort of development, so not very dense – in fact, the property across the street was a polo club.

While hauling bags in from the car, I saw our thrush sp. (from back at the airport) again. A hotel employee noticed my binoculars, and helpfully provided me with the name – he called it a Zorzal. This, it seems, is a generic name for “thrush” in Chile, because I noticed in the field guide that there are a couple of different “zorzals” , as well as a few “zorzalitos”. This one, not surprisingly, was the common, widespread species, the Austral Thrush (you might call it the “default” zorzal.)

Also seen on the hotel grounds were some of the more common “suburban” birds of the area – Eared Dove, Chliean Swallow, and (Southern) House Wren.

As there wasn’t much else to see at out hotel at that moment (it was, after all, mid-afternoon), we decided it would be an excellent time to get a non-birding errand out of the way; since we had booked into self-catering cabins for our subsequent six nights, we needed to do some shopping. So, after dumping the luggage, we hopped into the car again, and headed back down the road towards town – and immediately ran into a whole pile of birds! It just happened that the polo club was watering one of their lawns at the time, which was attracting crowds of them. Mostly it was more Chimango Caracaras (which really do hang out in great mobs (murders?) like crows), but there were also a fair number of Southern Lapwing (a strikingly large plover), and Shiny Cowbirds.

Once our shopping in Rancagua was out of the way, we returned to Il Giardiano. Too worn out by all the day’s travel to contemplate anything really ambitious, we contented ourselves with a walk on some of the local roads and laneways. DMM wanted especially to find some good vantage points to photograph the nearby Andean foothills (there are always wires, everywhere….) Certainly, this area was not much for birding – the amount of traffic around, for one thing, was much greater than expected – but nonetheless, we got a few new lifers before the sun went down: Picui Ground-dove, Grassland Yellow-finch, and, best of all, Long-tailed Meadowlark. This latter bird, to a North American at least, looks a little surreal; very much like one of our familiar meadowlark species – but dipped in bright red dye!

December 26 bird list:
1. Austral Thrush
2. House Sparrow
3. Chimango Caracara
4. Rock Pigeon
5. Eared Dove
6. (Southern) House Wren
7. Chilean Swallow
8. Southern Lapwing
9. Shiny Cowbird
10. Picui Ground-dove
11. Yellow-winged Blackbird
12. Grassland Yellow-finch
13. White-tailed Kite
14. Long-tailed Meadowlark
(Birds in italics are the lifers.)

Photos: First day’s route, from the international airport to Il Giardiano; the hotel (our room was behind the three trees left of centre – good view!); an Austral Thrush; some Andean Foothills; a Southern Lapwing.

December 27 Day 2 (Part 1) Machalí – Rio de la Cipreses – Machalí
We had two goals for today: 1) Visit the nearby National Reserve at Rio de los Cipreses, reputed to be a reliable spot for the "rare and endangered" Burrowing Parrot (Mr. Jaramillo's words, not mine), and 2) Afterwards, to move on to Vilches Alto, a somewhat off-the-beaten path town, a few hours south of Rancagua in the Andean foothills, where I had reserve a cabin for two nights.

Before leaving for los Cipreses, however, we felt obliged to hang about the hotel for breakfast - we had already paid for it, after all! This was a bit of a sacrifice, since breakfast could not be had before 0730 (a real birder would have gone hungry, I'm sure...) Anyway, we made the most of the pre-breakfast daylight hours be seeing what we could find in and around the hotel grounds. DMM made the first find of the day, calling me over to look at "something moving under the bushes." The 'something' turned out to be one - then two - then three pudgy, terrestrial birds with blobby plumes sticking out of their foreheads - California Quails! Not exactly what I would have expected in such a suburban environment. Then there were was that rarest of beasts, a distinctly-plumaged tyrant flycatcher, the White-crested Elaenia (unlike most tyrranids I've seen, with this bird, you actually get to see the central crown stripe).

While stalking the elaenia through the garden, trying to get a better angle on it, we turned up another delightful new bird - that being a Plain-mantled Tit-spinetail, foraging in a rose bush. Being one of the "ovenbird" fraternity, it has a plumage that tends towards various shades of brown, with streaks here and there; but ignoring the cryptic plumage, I thought it was very much like a chickadee, at least in shape and behaviour (well, a chickadee with a big spiny tail tacked on to its butt, that is!). A flock of Black-chinned Siskins rounded out the garden bird haul for the morning.

After filling up on a good Chilean breakfast, we high-tailed it up into the foothills towards "Los Cipreses". Unfortunately, our road map was a bit vague as to the location; we could see that it was somewhere up the Río Cachapoal past the town of Coya, but not exactly how to proceed from Coya to the reserve. As a result, we ended up wandering around the town for a while, looking for the right road - eventually, I overrode my adherence to the "guy code of conduct", and asked the gatekeeper at the local power station for directions. He was most helpful - although my Spanish is still very sketchy, I knew enough to gather that what we needed to do was "cross overt that bridge there, and turn left.e over to the far side. Our time in Coya was not entirely a loss, however, because it was there that we sighted our first country endemic, the Chilean Mockingbird. (After a while, naturally, we started running into them all over the place...)

As we continued up the (remarkably wide) Río Cachapoal valley, the habitat started to change - farms became fewer, their place being taken by a combination of dry bush and tall cacti (almost like the Organ-pipe). As well, we began to see numerous small birds flushing up from in front of us as we drove along. These, once we managed to find one perched, we identified as a little grey and white sparrow-like creature called the Common Duica-finch. (Although quite different in colour and pattern, ecologically they seemed to me to be remarkably similar to the Lark Sparrow of western Canada and the U.S.). VERY common, as it turned out, but I never tired of seeing them - nice song, too.

When we (at last) arrived at the reserve gate, it was getting close to 11 o'clock, so we knew we wouldn't be able to stay long. Nevertheless, we'd gone to all the trouble to get here, so ... we paid our entrada (4 000 pesos pp, and you'd better have exact change, boyo!), and drove in. The road, which had been nicely sealed for the last few km leading up to the reserve, very quickly degraded once it got past the visitor's centre there, becoming a mess of unsorted rocks and gravel that climbed quite steeply. After a few minutes of this, we decided to stop and have a look around. Not because the road was so bad - nothing el pequeño couldn't handle - by just because our time was so limited, and there was no particular reason to believe that the birdlife a few km further along would be better than what we would see right where we were. (And with all the noise the gravel made, we certainly weren't going to find anything while driving!)

It turned out that we had, quite by accident, picked a very good place (and time) to stop - because within a minute or two, we heard a distinctly parrot-ish screeching coming from overhead. Looking up, we saw a whole formation (well, 5-6 anyway) of Burrowing Parrots go cruising by! "Well," I thought, "that was easy, we must have done something right" (for which the birding deities were now rewarding us). I had barely had time to form this thought when, screech, screech, another nine birds followed, and then three more, and finally a straggling pair. This has to be the most numerous "rare and endangered" bird species I'd ever seen! A great sight though, not exactly brilliant in plumage (being largely olive and yellow birds), but the size of a small macaw.

The Burrowing Parrot was not the only good thing at this stop, though - a wild sort of laughing call coming from trees on a slope above us proved to belong to another lifer, a Chilean Flicker. Up beyond that, DMM spotted a couple of buteo-like hawks just visible at the top of a ridge - handily, I had set up the scope to look at the flicker - which turned out to be Harris's Hawk. Sadly though, we had pretty much used up all the time we could allow for Rio de los Cipreses, so we had to make tracks very soon afterwards. Got one more species on the way out, though, a pair of Austral Blackbirds bathing in a creek. (Also got a killer look at another Long-tailed Meadowlark just outside the reserve - see photo).

[aside] Here I was given a strong indication - certainly not the only time on this trip - that I had been very unrealistic in my expectations regarding how much we could do in a given day. I think the problem was that my sense of scale was "set" wrongly; I was thinking Costa Rica-sized, when I should have been thinking Canada-sized! It seemed a real crime to leave Rio de la Cipreses so quickly - in hindsight, I would not have tried to put this visit on the same day as the drive to Vilches Alto. Of course, if I hadn't, that would have meant that something else would have had to give ... as is always the way.[/aside]

We returned to Il Giardiano to gather up baggage and check-out, then made a beeline for the Ruta 5, turning south towards Talca.

15. California Quail
16. White-crested Elaenia
17. Plain-mantled Tit-spinetail
18. Black-chinned Siskin
19. Chilean Mockingbird
20. Common Duica-finch
21. Burrowing Parrot
22. Chilean Flicker
23. Harris's Hawk
24. Austral Blackbird

Photos: Typical habitat in R.N. Rio de los Cipreses; a flowering Quisco cactus; a very co-operative Long-tailed Meadowlark.

December 27: Day 2 (part 2) - Rancagua - Talca - Vilches Alto
Talca is a small city in the Maule region, about 250 km south of Santiago. Our plan was to go straight down there on the nice, fast toll road, then turn east again, towards Vilches Alto. Unfortunately, when we got there (a couple of hours later), the normally trusty Chilean road signs failed us completely - we got off at Talca, all right, but could not, even after much searching, find any major road going the direction we needed to go! It got so frustrating that we eventually gave up entirely, got back on the Ruta 5, and retraced our route north a few km., to a place where I had seen a clearly marked eastbound exit. This led us on a very scenic (i.e. time-consuming) drive across a whole network of country roads (which seemed to take hours), before we were finally able to get onto the correct road to Vilches.

However, "it's an ill wind" etc.; - all this time spent wandering around was not entirely without profit. One of the many wrong turnings we took that afternoon ended up as a narrow farm track that skirted an overflowing creek; much to our surprise, a long-beaked Plumbeous Rail wandered out onto the track in front of us as we crawled along! (No doubt the feeling was mutual - he probably doesn't see people along that road very often, either).

The area around Vilches Alto, when we did eventually get there, was certainly worth the drive. Here, you are getting up into mid-elevations, and cultivated land has given way to entirely to forest. Some of this is a second growth of exotic species, eucalypts and pines mostly, by there are also good stands of the Nothofagus species (Roble and Huilo) - the area around Altos de Lircay is where this type of native forest approaches its northernmost extent. This was very interesting to us from a birdwatching perspective, since trees like this are the place to see some of southern South America's most characteristic birds, including the Magellanic Woodpecker (I don't usually target birds on trips, but this one ... well, I really wanted to see this one.)

Our choice of accommodations for the next couple of nights was the Hosteria de Vilches, an assortment of cabañas of various sizes, located in the middle of the "town" of Vilches Alto (not that you'd notice it, with all the trees everywhere). This place came highly recommended, and I can certainly vouch for that - the location was good, the cabins were comfortable, and the owners, went to all kinds of trouble to help us out. For instance, when we found that the cabaña we'd originally asked for had no cooking facilities, we asked if we could possibly upgrade to one of the ones that did - and they cheerfully prepped another cottage, shifted some reservations around, and gave us a three-bedroom place with a kitchen. Not only that, but they still charged us the same rate as for the small one!

The real "draw" of the area was the National Reserve at Altos de Lircay, just a few minutes' drive up the road - but, given the lateness of the hour, it was far too late for that (the reserve would be closing soon, in any case.) So, instead, we just went for a hike along the "main street" of Vilches Alto. There were a few clearings along the road (most notably, the football pitch), where we saw both Blue-and-white and Chilean Swallows, and more Duica-finches, but for the most part, the road went through secondary forest. Soon we heard some parrots calling, up the road a few hundred metres; following these calls to a stand of conifers, we very soon found that they were coming from a small flock of foraging Austral Parakeets. Unusually, for a parrot, they were dead easy to see (in the New World, at least, I normally find that parrots, no matter how loud and rambunctious they are, have an uncanny ability to "melt away" into the foliage of whatever tree they land in.) Of course, the fact that they're about 14" long, and have big rusty-red tails, probably helped.

Also in the area, saw a couple of small, very active birds high up in the same trees. They had long, deeply forked tails, distinctly-striped heads and bounced around like kinglets. These stumped us for quite a while; in their head plumage (but in nothing else) they strongly reminded me of a familiar North American bird, the Worm-eating Warbler; but nothing in the field guide exactly matched that head pattern. In the end, we decided they must be Thorn-tailed Rayaditos, a common-enough furnariid in the area (and this was supported by the fact that we saw many of these, at much closer range, over the next couple of days). I must have just imagined the "three-striped" head pattern (the warbler has a distinct central crown stripe; the rayadito's cap is solid brown.)

25. Great Egret
26. Plumbeous Rail
27. Blue-and-white Swallow
28. Austral Parakeet
29. Thorn-tailed Rayadito

Photos: Route from Machalí to Vilches Alto; a scenic view of the reserve; a terrestrial bromeliad known as a Chagual - these plants have very weird, "artificial flower"-looking foliage.

Tuesday, December 28: Day 3 - Vilches Alto–R.N. Altos de Lircay.
Finally, a day with no net travel at all! We could actually spend the day doing easy, fun things (like hiking up mountains) rather than difficult, tedious things (like reading road maps). I had a plan, made well in advance, for the Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay: to get there as early as possible, and climb as high as possible, in order to try for the high-altitude stuff - birds that lived exclusively above treeline. I knew, from previous research, that there was a well-established hiking trail (the "Enladrillo"), which would take us there. I knew that we'd never be able to complete the whole thing, certainly not at "birdwatching pace" - but I was hoping that we'd at least be able to poke our heads out of the forest canopy far enough to find a Ground-tyrant or something ('something', in this case = El Cóndor, [all fingers crossed]).

You may have heard it said that "The best laid plans of mice and men/Go oft astray" (note to Caledonians and others of a poetic bent - I know Burns didn't write it that way ... but it is often quoted that way). This may well be - but this does not stop really half-baked plans from going completely astray too, and more often still.

Things actually started going wrong yesterday evening; somehow, while out on our walk, I accidentally pulled out the bezel on my watch. I noticed this upon return to the Hosteria, but somehow or another, I managed to reset it to a time that had only the slimmest relationship to reality. The upshot was that, we were very late getting away in the morning, and by the time we got breakfast and headed up the road, it was already about 40 minutes after we'd planned to start the Enladrillo hike! So, I think you will be able to appreciate the intense frustration I felt when, upon reaching the gate into the reserve, we found it padlocked!

Arrrgh - I couldn't understand it - there was a sign right there on the gatepost, giving the opening hour as 0830. Nowhere was there any further information - such as an indication of why the road in happened to be closed at this particular moment. Fortunately, there was a CONAF office on a little side road about 100m back; so there might be somebody to ask, at least.

[aside] CONAF = Corporación Nacional Forestal, the Chilean government body that both manages the forestry and runs National Parks and Reserve. Hmm, maybe some conflict of interest, there? Kind of like our own Ministry of the Environment, which manages (supposedly) wild places like Algonquin Provincial park - but also leases timber concessions in that very same park. Hmmm. [/aside]

Outside this office, we found a group of men conversing - the youngest of them wore a CONAF uniform. Okay, this is promising, I thought. So, I asked him (as best that I could), Can we get into the reserve? And he replied (as far as I could tell) Why yes, of course you can! I then tried to get across that, well, it's all very easy for you to say, but actually - no, we cannot. (The Spanish for "locked" was not a word I could conjure up, at the moment). He then said something that I could not follow at all, but I somehow took the meaning to be "Well, of course, but I'll come over and unlock the gate for you - that's obvious!" Then we all had a good laugh, and DMM and I drove back over to the gate, just hoping I had got it right - and a couple of minutes later, one of his amigos walked over and let us in.

So - a long story, but the point is, sometimes things don't work here the way we foreigners might be accustomed to - the way they would, for example, in a National Park back home. Here, we found, they don't spell everything out for visitors; you have to do a bit of asking around, in order to get what you want. And, in defence of CONAF and the ranger we met, I suspect that part of the problem was simply that they're a bit short-staffed.

While I was not overly thrilled with the organization of this reserve, I had certainly no complaint about the place itself - the habitat was fantastic, and the scenery absolutely beautiful! Great tall trees rose on either side of the track, and, except for the birds, it was very quiet - for the first hour or so, it seemed like we had the whole place to ourselves. Well, the two of us and the ranger, who raced past us on a motorbike as we drove in - he had to get up to the park office ahead of us, so he could collect the entrance fee!

After reaching the parking lot and paying (an absolute bargain at about $6.00/per vehicle), we were at last able to start the day's birding. Our friend the ranger (who had noticed our binoculars), asked if we were interested in birds, and what we most wanted to see. I told him that we liked them all, but a Huet-huet (which is a big tapaculo) would be nice. So, he gave us a topo map of the park, and told us which trail was most likely to have them. Acting on this advice, we took a small side trail, called the "Aliwenmawida", rather than starting up towards the Enladrillo trail right away. My original plan was becoming more and more tattered by the minute...

As it turned out, we didn't see a lot of birds along this trail - heard quite a few, but mostly just saw lizards. Things did improve, though, when we reached the return point of the trail, a mirador looking out over the deep valley of the Rio Lircay. It was a brilliant blue-sky early summer day; we had a fantastic view of the forest below, and an impressively sheer cliff across the way. The view was soon made even better by a Patagonian Sierra-finch, which popped up, flew in the crown of a nearby tree (thanks to the slope, this was at eye level), and began to sing at us vigorously. (I don't think these birds see people very often - showed basically no fear at all.) Also seen from the look-out: our first hummingbird of the trip, a Green-backed Firecrown; and a tiny lizard that actually stayed still long enough to have its photo taken (Thin Tree-lizard? Painted Tree-lizard?).

Photos: View across the valley from the mirador; burls on trees were covered with a strange fungus, called "Darwin's Bread"; flowers of a parasitic plant; a couple of images of the lizard at the mirador, possibly Liolaemus pictus ?

Day 3: R.N. Altos de Lircay, continued
The "Aliwenmawida" trail looped back up to the main park road. We proceeded on a bit further up along this road to reach the start of the "Endladrillo" trail.

In the first part of this climb, we found birds to be much more numerous - or, perhaps, just more visible - than on the trail we'd just come from. This may have just been a function of the fact that it took us into drier, more open forest. White-crested Elaenias were everywhere - we really had to learn that song/call quickly, to avoid having to look up every 30 seconds just to see the same bloody thing again. We also saw a couple of pairs of Rayaditos here, and got much better views than yesterday - it was actually possible to make out the elaborately "thorny" tails. The first new find along here was the White-throated Treerunner, a small, arboreal furnariid with a creamy-white throat and reddish tail; shaped very much like our familiar nuthatches from home, but climbing upwards, like a woodcreeper.

It was worthwhile to pay close attention to those treerunners, as we discovered. At one point, we could hear one, high up in a tree, making some very agitated calls. As we craned our necks to try to see what the fuss was about, a raptor - our first (and, it transpired, only) Chilean Hawk of the trip - glided into view and perched above our heads; the treerunner became even more displeased. The hawk crashed around in the foliage for a while, presumably trying to catch something; but the little passerine kept up a steady stream of invective, and the hawk eventually departed, empty-footed.

Continuing along, I was disappointed to find that the path stayed rather flat - going gradually up the Valle de Lircay - rather than climbing up out of it, as expected. It wasn't until we had done about 2 km of this (rather boring) walking that the trail took a sharp right turn, and started going straight up the side of the mountain we'd been skirting. Then, boy-o, did it ever climb! We must have gained about 700 m. overall; unfortunately, the trees stayed resolutely with us, even as we could see them, through the occasional gap, thinning out on the adjacent slopes.

Birds along here continued to be mostly of the 'elaenia' variety, with occasional call or song from something hidden and unfindable from time to time. Small brown lizards were constantly dashing out from underfoot, I never seen a place with so many. The only 'different' bird we found on this whole climb was the Grey-hooded Sierra-finch - a female. This was a rather interesting sighting - I didn't expect to find this species here, based on the range map in Jaramillo. However, the very distinct white eyebrow and dark moustacials left no doubt in our minds. I know that some of the population is migratory - breeding all the way down in Tierra del Fuego. Could this be a straggler from that population? (Awfully late in the season, though.)

By this time, it was getting on to about 2 o'clock. Our progress was slow, due to the considerable grade; I didn't really have a very good idea how long it might take us to get back to the car; and the treeline didn't seem to be getting any closer. So, regretfully, we decided that it was time to turn back.

On the way down, we stopped to take some scenic photos of the valley - there were a few places where the gaps in the trees were wide enough to allow for a good view. While I took some pictures, DMM scanned the opposite ridge (which, I'd estimate was about 2-3 km away). After only a few seconds, she called out "hawk". I switched over to the binoculars - took me a few moments, but then I found it too, when it helpfully soared above the horizon. It was still well up the valley at first, just a black speck, but was working its way towards us. As far as we could tell, it was not flapping at all, just using the updraft along the ridge for lift, as it rocked slightly on upturned wings.

Soon, despite the fact that it was still a couple of thousand metres distant, we could make out a bit of its plumage, or at least the pattern thereof. It had an black body, and wings also, except for a large white patch along the trailing edge of the upper side, "inboard" of the primaries. So, although it flew a bit like one, I could be sure, at least, that it wasn't a Turkey Vulture. Tried to think of any large bird (Mountain Caracara, Buzzard-eagle, even Variable Hawk) in the area - even went so far as to actually consult the book! - that might have this pattern, but eventually had to eliminate them all; only one possible conclusion, I told DMM - we've finally found it, the !vory-bi!!ed Woodpecker! (But what's it doing in South America? Hiding, I suppose...)

Alas, it was just an Andean Condor - but nevertheless, a moment to break out the champagne, if I were the champagne-swilling type, which I'm not. In reality, it was one of those vaguely unsatisfying sightings - where you see something well enough to know what it is, that it cannot be anything else, but don't really get the feeling of really having seen it. Still, it did make us feel we'd been rewarded for all that climbing.

The hike down, and back to the parking area where we'd left El pequeño, took a lot less time than I was afraid it might - under two hours. Nothing of interest to see, birdwise, along the way; which probably had a great deal to do with the fact that, this time, we were sharing the trail with hordes of Chilean teenagers, returning down the mountain from a camping trip. (Actually, probably only about a dozen or so, but they sure seemed like a horde). By this time, it was late afternoon. The weather had turned a bit hot and stuffy, so all we really wanted was a rest, and something cold to drink. I had noticed some small roadside food stands on the way up to the reserve that morning - one of them was called "El Rayadito", so naturally, we had to check it out.

Unfortunately, it was closed when we got there - but while we were standing in front of it, I heard a deep "thock-thock" sound coming from the woodlot around back. This sounded very much like the tapping of woodpecker of some sort; more specifically, of a LARGE sort. We went around to one side of the shuttered building, so as to see into the trees better; sure enough there was a tapping again, followed shortly by the swoop, swoop, swoop annnnnd perch of a huge black woodpecker - a female Magellanic! She was soon followed by her red-headed mate; but he was just so much icing, I was a very happy man already. (Personally, of the two, I preferred the female, with her crazy-long black crest of head plumes, and the neat row of white pearls on her shoulder, contrasting so vividly with the black wings and body.)

30. Tufted Tit-tyrant
31. Green-backed Firecrown
32. Patagonian Sierra-finch
33. White-throated Treerunner
34. Chilean Hawk
35. Grey-hooded Sierra-finch
36. Andean Condor
37. Magellanic Woodpecker

Photos: "Maraposita" or "Poor man's orchid" flower; treeless mountain slopes on the "Enladrillo" trail(so close, and yet so far....); a view across the valley of the Rio Lircay (can you spot the Condor? ).

Day 3 - Epilogue: Hosteria de Vilches
One more word, if I may, about Hosteria de Vilches: Having so little time in Vilches Alto at all, we spent very little of it at the Hosteria - which was really too bad, as we didn’t get much opportunity to take advantage of facilities there.

For example, trivial though it may sound, what I really regretted not getting more use of was the little patio beside of our cabin. There is not much to it, really - it was just a small paved area with some chairs, a rickety plastic table, and a barbeque. But it was a quiet, semi-private space, which looked out into the neighbouring second-growth forest; and when one is really tired out (for example, after having spent the whole day hiking up a mountain) it was an excellent place to just sit, do some journal writing, and wait for birds to come by. If you’re lucky, you might see something like this:

December 29: Day 4 (part1) - Vilches Alto-Colbún-Rio Maule
Now, I hate to complain (actually, I love to complain – but know that no-one really likes to listen), but I sure do loathe having to try to squeeze a trip like this into a single week! (I know, poor me). After just one day at Altos de Lircay, it was already time to head for pastures new. We were off to a property called “Hacienda Laguna Torca”, where I had rented a cottage for a the next four nights (the hacienda was right beside a very birdy wetland, and only a few km. from the Pacific – so I figured, lots to do there).

However, Laguna Torca being (at a rough guess), only 3 hours’ drive to the north-west, and having put aside the whole day to undertake the journey, we thought that we could afford to take a bit of a side-trip on the way there. And, having missed out on the Andean specialties we had been hoping for on our hike yesterday, we decided to take another shot at them (so to speak) today.

Just south of Vilches Alto, there was a secondary hightway which wound eastwards up the Rió Maule valley, right up into the Andes, and into Argentina. (If any of you are actually going, you’ll want to look for this road – it’s K-115). Just before it reached the frontier, there was a big alpine lake that I really wanted to see - called, appropriately enough, Laguna del Maule. I knew, from the field guide, that there were several species of waterfowl that were restricted (in summer, at least) to high altitudes; with any luck, we’d find one or two up there. Of course, because this lake was east, and the cottage we were heading for was practically on the Pacific coast, we’d be driving about 110 km in entirely the wrong direction – but what the heck…

Happily, there were other good things to look at along the way up the Maule. Our route first took us past the big reservoir at Colbún – in fact, the highway stayed very close to the whole of the reservoir’s north shore, allowing for multiple viewing opportunities. At the western (downstream) end, the birding was not so good – no sign of waterbirds at all. We did, however, get our first Chilean Pigeons here, feeding quite openly in trees alongside the road. Things improved considerably at the eastern end, where there were some shallows and sandbars; this habitat was very popular with a number of species of duck and grebe. In very short order, we picked out Great Grebe, White-tufted Grebe, Yellow-billed Pintail, Chiloe Wigeon, and Neotropic Cormorant. (Bravo, Mr. Scope!)

Up to the top end of L. Colbún, and a little beyond, the Valle del Maule, is decidedly “glacial” in profile – broad, U-shaped, and largely flat along the bottom. A few km. on, however, the character of the valley changes markedly, becoming a deep ravine; the highway winding along the bottom, boulder-choked river on one side, steep scree slopes on the other.

[aside] Given the challenges inherent in building a road through this kind of country, my hat is off to the Chilean Dept. of Public Works (or whatever it is called); we were positively amazed at how good this road was! Not only did it have an perfectly paved surface for almost the entire length (there was one short rough section, where some repair work was underway), but it was also a very safe road; there were plenty of guardrails, and they had also put up a large number of elaborate fences to reduce the danger of falling rocks. Looked like a bunch of “infrastructure” money had been thrown around up here, everything seemed very new. Whatever the reason for the spending, it was great news for us tourists! [/aside]

Once the road entered this section of the valley, it began to climb, slowly but steadily. Within a few tens of kilometres, we had risen above the 2100 m. contour, and we found ourselves (at last!) driving through a treeless landscape of stunted bushes and tundra-like herbs. We stopped briefly on the way, to look at a flock of Yellow-rumped Siskins darting across the road (there’s a good highland bird!); this lead to the discovery of a small, pudgy sort of bird, just standing by itself on a boulder – this turned out to be a Black-winged Ground-dove, another one that I'd been really hoping to see. (I think this is a very unfortunate name for this bird, whose most distinctive feature is a golden crescent on the side of its face. Especially as there are several other ground-doves with black wings…).

The views from up here were, to thoroughly beat the cliché into the ground, breath-taking; even without the birds, it was worth the trip for this alone. I will not try to describe any of it, just hope the attached photos will give you some sort of idea of what it was like…

Unfortunately, as the morning wore on, and Laguna del Maule consistantly failed to appear around the next bend, the curse of poorly-laid plans struck again – El Pequeño was running out of gas! Our highway map (which I had carefully consulted, before setting out this morning) showed several small towns along our route, and I had hoped to find a station in one of these – but no such luck. (The “towns” were, for the most part, just clusters of a few buildings.) So, with nothing ahead but Argentina, and not knowing how far back down the valley we’d have to go before finding any fuel, we very reluctantly decided we had to turn back.

Before doing so, we made one more stop for birds; there was a nice, wide pull-off at a mirador, which overlooked a narrow cleft through which the Maule flowed. At the moment (it being high summer) water levels were quite low, so it didn’t look like much; but in spring, I imagine that the torrent through here would be quite spectacularly violent. There happened to be a crew of orange-clad highway workers nearby, and one of them came by to talk to me for a bit – it took me a while, but I eventually figured out that he was trying to give me the name of the feature we were looking at … “the devil’s…” something: Gape? maw? mouth? Something like that, in any case. I thought, just maybe, that the name may have been suggested by the strange rock formations visible across the way, which were vaguely horn-shaped; for me, they recalled a Picasso painting of a bull’s head, rendered into 3-D.

Anyway, spectacular as the view of “Devil’s-body-part” was, we were here to look for birds, and did find one new species - the White-browed Ground-tyrant (another truly Andean species). Besides that, it was pretty desolate, birdwise; we had another Grey-hooded Sierra-finch, very friendly (practically hopping around at our feet - do people come up here and feed these things?!?), some roving Barn Swallows, and an American Kestrel surveying the scene from atop a house-sized boulder – but that was all.

We returned towards the central valley along the ‘good’ road all the way to Talca (no trouble finding our way going this direction!) And yes, we did find a source of gasolina along the way, with an eighth of a tank to spare, no less! (Obviously, we did, or I wouldn’t be home writing this – I’d still be wandering around the Andes somewhere). Only one bird-related incident along this stretch – DMM spotted a Black-faced Ibis flying along the river, pacing us, and fortunately got me onto it before it dipped back out of sight.

38. Turkey Vulture
39. Cattle Egret
40. Chilean Pigeon
41. Yellow-billed Pintail
42. Chiloe Wigeon
43. White-tufted Grebe
44. Neotropic Cormorant
45. Great Grebe
46. Yellow-rumped Siskin
47. Black-winged Ground-dove
48. Barn Swallow
49. White-browed Ground-tyrant
50. American Kestrel
51. Black-faced Ibis

Images: The route du jour (A= Vilches Alto, B = approximate turn-around point on the Maule trip, C = Laguna Torca); elaborate falling rock catchers along the highway; a view down the valley (the dark rock on the left was the Kestrel perch); looking across "La cosa del Diablo" at a formidable basaltic dike; Picasso-esque rock formations.

December 29: Day 4 (part 2) R.N. Laguna Torca
The Reserva Nacional Laguna Torca (towards which we now headed) is a small (604 ha.) wetland conservation area, located just a few km. inland from the Pacific Ocean. It consists mostly of a small fresh-water lake, surrounded by an extensive border of emergent vegetation; in addition, there is also a small upland section, with a campground, and a small island in nearby Lago Vichuquen.

Our immediate goal, however, was not the Reserva itself; mostly, we just was wanted to find our home for the next four nights. I had booked a self-catering cottage on a local farm called Hacienda Laguna Torca (HLT) - about which I will have much more to say next time. Suffice it to say that, after a few missteps along the labyrinthine road from Talca, we made it to HLT by about 1700. The sky, which had been mostly sunny all the way from Lago Colbún, became densely overcast, and a bit chilly, just a few kilometres before reaching Laguna Torca; I suspect it was just a local effect, caused by the proximity of the Pacific. (Our hosts apologised profusely for the inclement whether, claiming that "honestly, it's always bright and sunny here in summer! Well, except just before you arrived..." I countered by observing that - having just a few days previously left a country with -8 degree temperatures and snow on the ground - to us, this was positively tropical!)

After doing a quick tour of our new place (very nice!), and dumping all the baggage therein, we went out for a bit to check out the local bird situation. One of the big perks of HLT is just how close it is to the reserve - our cottage ("la Cascada") was part-way up a hill, just a few hundred m. away from the shore of the laguna itself. The cottage had a long, wooden "veranda" along that side, from which we had a pretty good view of almost one-half of the lake. From there, Black-necked Swan was the most obvious species, being so large and well-marked - we could count a few score from here, both in the air and on the water, feeding.

Aside from the swans, there were also a number of small gulls cruising about, with an almost tern-like flight; dark "hands" on the undersides of their wings identified them as Brown-hooded Gulls, although we could not see any that actually had a dark head (perhaps they were all 1st-years?) We could also see (and hear) a large number of coots on the water, but the distance was too great to identify them to species. So, gathering all the requisite optics, we started walking down toward the reserve.

Getting to the lake from the cottage on foot is a trivial hike; it would, in theory, be only a 10-minute walk down the farm lane to the local road, and there you are. This road cuts right through the lake, forming a causeway - which is not so great ecologically-speaking, but very handy for viewing purposes.

But I use the qualifier "in theory" here advisedly, because the 10-minute time I estimated assumes no distractions are encountered along the way - and in practice, this never happens; I don't think we ever made the trip in less than half an hour. These distractions were a mix of the more-or-less familiar (Eared Dove, House Wren, the ubiquitous White-crested Elaenia), and the entirely novel (Rufous-tailed Plantcutter, Spectacled Tyrant). The latter species was one of the most strikingly odd-looking birds of the whole trip, despite being mostly plain black and white. This was thanks of its extraordinary, puffy eye-rings - they looked like something that had been capriciously tacked-on at the last minute, back in the dream time, when facial features were being given out; some trickster god said "What's this? A plain black and white bird? Oh no, this will never do... tell you what, let's put uncooked bagels around its eyes, that'll make it much more interesting!"

Down at the laguna proper, we found it to be absolutely teeming with birds - from the road, we could see the full extent of it, and the Black-necked Swans alone must have numbered in the hundreds! (Had to wonder - what did this small lake have, that could support so many? Interesting ecological conundrum...) There were also many coots were easily seen from the road, and right away we could I.D. the big Red-gartered and the slightly more gracile Red-fronted. Also, a Pied-billed Grebe, a possible distant Great Grebe ... but surprisingly, no ducks at all.

Another excellent reason to visit R.N. Laguna Torca is the marsh boardwalk that CONAF so considerately put in for us. This walkway is a bit rickety, but impressively long (I just looked it up - 380 m.) and it gives excellent access to the giant sedge habitat. And - what a great birding trail it turned out to be - within thirty seconds of our starting along it, we had the found our "most wanted" bird for this site, the very appropriately-named Many-coloured Rush-tyrant. This species is frequently, and justly, billed as the New World's most beautiful flycatcher; the Chileans call it the "siete colores" (seven colours), which is probably an even more appropriate name. In any case, here at L.T., there was certainly no difficulty finding them, they were hopping about all over the place. I suspect that it probably helped that we were there right in the middle of breeding season, meaning that their numbers were bumped up by newly-fledged young. (We saw at least two duller-looking individuals that looked as though they were chasing after harried parents). ¡Maravilloso!

52. Black-necked Swan
53. Brown-hooded Gull
54. Rufous-tailed Plantcutter
55. Spectacled Tyrant
56. Red-gartered Coot
57. Red-fronted Coot
58. Pied-billed Grebe
59. Many-coloured Rush-tyrant

Photos: R.N. Laguana Torca (view from the hill behind HLT) - note all the swans; a male Spectacled Tyrant; Rufous-tailed Plancutter; a couple of Black-necked Swan close-ups.

[Important Notice] The following is not a paid promotional announcement (Ha! Not bloody likely! I paid them the princely sum of 70 000 pesos per diem...).

However, I suspect it may read like one.[/Important Notice]

Hacienda Laguna Torca was a very serendipitous find (love that word). The fact that we found out about it at all was a near-fluke - I was on the web, just looking for likely sites for Many-coloured Rush-tyrant, and this lead me to focus closely in on Laguna Torca (the reserve). It was only because of this that I came across HLT (via a Tripadvisor.com review.)

Now, I certainly don't know enough to be able to discuss the relative merits of the various wetland reserves of Chile (I have now seen a total of two) - so I can't say, with any kind of authority, that R.N. Laguna Torca is the best wetland birding site you could visit in the country, or even in this part of the country. What I can say, based on our experience, is that it was a very good wetland site; you will see a lots of great birds there. And, if you do decide to visit this site, I think I can safely say that HLT is the only place you want even consider staying.

This place combines all the qualities I believe are most important in a good birding "hotel" (broadly construed). Proximity to really good bird habitat is first and foremost, and that, I believe I established already up on post #22. Privacy is another consideration I value greatly; even though our cottage was within a stone's throw of the main house, it was tucked into a hill, and so oriented that we could feel like we had the whole farm to ourselves.
And, as an absurdly early-to-bed type who is also a light sleeper, quiet is probably even more important. At HLT, except for the chorus of calling coots from the laguna, we found it to be very quiet during the day - most of the time*. Night-time was blissfully silent - never had any trouble sleeping there. (In fact, it was a bit difficult dragging myself out of bed sometimes!)

A few other noteworthy merits of HLT: having a real, full-size kitchen, with a practically brand-new gas cooker/oven; the beautiful gardens, which we could look at through a whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows; the sauna downstairs (which we, alas, never had time to take advantage of).

(To me, even the showers in this cottage were pretty cool. La Casacada was built right into a hillside, astride a gully cut by a small creek, and each end is anchored to the rocky sides of the gully. The showers, one at each end of the building, incorporate some of this living rock into their tile walls. Nice touch.)

Of course, none of these things directly affect the "birding quality" of the location (well, I suppose the garden might....). But they certainly did contribute to the pleasure of the overall experience.

*Okay, now to the fly in the ointment - or, as I should say, the fliers in the ointment. Right across the laguna from HLT, there has been built - incredibly - a private airport! Yes, right smack-dab hard-against the reedbeds on the edge of the reserve, a little airport, so that rich Santiaguinos can fly down to visit their Lago Vichuquen 'second homes' for summer weekends. It's an utter, appalling, disgrace - just brain-dead, that such a thing would even be contemplated, never mind actually built. Try imagining a big stretch of Minsmere dredged up to moor yachts - or planting wind turbines all over Cape May. That level of stupid!

Now, as you can probably imagine, the HLT owners are far from thrilled about this, themselves - but of course, can't do anything about it. (From what I gather, none of their neighbours are very happy about it either). But they did assure us that the airport gets very little traffic for most of the year - it was just bad luck that our visit coincided with the beginning of the summer holidays.

And really, although we certainly could have done without them, the coming and going of a few light aircraft overhead didn't really detract from the birding experience much. It was more the complete lack of environmental sensitivity that galled me - the mere fact that people could get away with building a runway next to a major breeding and staging area for migrant birds. What part of "Reserva Nacional" did they not understand?

Photos: First and second, two aspects of "Cascada lodge"; the living room, and the gully behind; the view from the deck; some other residents of HLT.

Day 5: Thursday, December 30 - Part 1 (HLT - Pichilemu)
What I would have really liked to have done this morning, was to have just taken another complete break from driving anywhere - to have just lazed about at the R.N. Laguna Torca, looking for photo opporutnities, seeing what there was to see... but we had a problem - funds were getting low, and (like many small operations in Chile) Hacienda Laguna Torca did not take credit cards.

Now, we knew this well ahead of time, but had been counting on withdrawing additional Chilean currency from an ATM, on our way here from Vilches Alto. We had tried - and failed - to withdraw money in three or four different towns along the way; either the machines were "closed for servicing", or they wouldn't take any of our cards. After a while, we decided we'd have to get on to get on with the trip to HLT, and defer the money problem to another day.

Well, I didn't want this worry hanging over us any longer than necessary - so "another day" would have to be "today". Unfortuntely, there was no nearby ATM - the closest one, in nearby Vichuquen ,had been taken out by last February's earthquake, meaning that we needed to go on a medium-length field trip. Asking the advice of our hosts at HLT, they helpfully suggested a couple of not-too-distant towns that would likely have banks; from these, we opted for Pichilemu, a seaside town about 20 km to the north. This seemed a promising location, being a major draw for holiday travelers (especially surfers), which implied lots of tourist facilities (including, we hoped, a choice of banks). Besides, I had been planning to go to a drive up that stretch of coast at some point anyway. Nonetheless, it still irked me considerably to have to be spending any valuable birding time on this errand - so (finally!) getting back to today - I did not start the day (grumble, grouse) in the best of moods.

Funny, though, how one small thing can reallly turn things around for a person - well, in this case, a not-so-small thing. As I was walking down the path from La Cascada to the main house for breakfast, I encountered just such a thing; a small bush - with a Giant Hummingbird perched on top of it!

Make no mistake, this is one bird that is aptly named! Even though I had been hoping, even expecting, to see this species here at Laguna Torca, I was still not quite prepared for the real thing. Not at all prepared for it in fact; my brain went into a kind of crash/freeze mode. Here's an approximation of how my train-wreck of thought went at the time: "Oh look, a humming-" [no; it can't possibly be] – "wow, that must be Giant" - [don't be an idiot, even they can't be THAT big] – "but it must be one..." [two words for you buddy: im-possible] - etc.

It lifted off, like a small Sikorsky, and did some fancy flights around the garden. Aside from outlandish size, this humming-aircraft was distinguished by a really interesting flight pattern - fluttering wingbeats alternating with deep undulations, like a large swift trying to imitate a goldfinch.

The trip up to Pichilemu started out along a minor road along a high ridge, which was reputed to offer "panoramic views of the coast". Hmm... well, the weather this particular morning was not at all conducive to seeing much of anything - it ran to very low grey clouds, with occasional impenetrable fog bank. From our route, winding along the top of a high ridge, all we could see were hayfields, sloping down into gauzy whiteness; maybe there was an Ocean down there, maybe there wasn't.

We didn't really see the ocean all until we were just a few km. south of our destination; coming down into a small estuary, we caught a view of a very long, dark-sand beach with big long waves rolling in - I could see why this area would be so popular with surfers. Beaches, however, were not what I wanted to see; what I really was interested in were very rocky shorelines, because these were the habitat (the sole habitat) of the (Chilean) Seaside Cinclodes. This is a very specialized member of the ovenbird family, referred to in one of my books as the "most marine of passerines ... never straying far from salt water" - it's basically an honorary tubenose. It seemed like, if we were going to see it at all, this would be the place for it....

The first place we came to, which had accessible habitat of this kind, was actually along the waterfront at Pichilemu (I'm sure you could find better places, elsewhere along this stretch of the coast, if you took the time - but we were on a Mission). A good part of this was beach, but there was also a rocky headland, with parking nearby - obviously, it was a little more developed than would have chosen, but it did have some good birds. On the beach, a big flock of gulls was loafing, mostly oblivious to the human traffic; this flock seemed to be composed entirely of two species, the big, dark Kelp Gulls, and the more numerous, much smaller Franklin's Gulls. We went for a bit of a hike on the rocks - no cinclodes (of any description) here, although we did get several interesting fly-by sightings: Peruvian Pelican, Peruvian Booby, and Guanay Cormorant.

But with the money situation still nagging at me, we didn't linger here - I just couldn't really enjoy the day with that problem unresolved. So, we got back into "El Pequeño," drove up into 'downtown' Pichilemu (which turned out to be just a few blocks away) and went looking for a bank. Found one without difficulty, and went for it like a iron filings to a magnet; it was a Scotiabank, no less! (Blessed be the great Canadian banking system, its tentacles are everywhere!) What is more, it had an ATM which actually worked, halleluejah! I doubt if I have ever, in all my years of travel experienced such a mood swing, as I did when I saw that great whack of pesos come sliding out of that machine; clouds parted, the sun shone, and all things seemed possible. (Actually, the sun really did come out shortly afterward, I started to get a bit of a burn....)

Now that we had the means to do so, we spent a bit of time shopping for essential birding supplies - hitting every bakery in town (I have a real weakness for that sort of thing). There were a surprising number of these, for such a small place, and we picked up a real variety of items - dulce de leche wafers, dulce de leche tarts, dulce de leche cake, chocolate-coated dulce de leche biscuits...

Anyway, after blowing some more of our new-gotten weath on a nice lunch, it was time to look for some less "civilized" coast to explore. On our way towards Pichilemu, we had noticed a turn-off the main coast road going out onto a promontory called Punta Lobos. I thought this would be a good place to go, since it was a fairly substantial point (clearly visible on our not-so-detailed road map), and so might stick out far enough to "catch" the occasional pelagic species.

So, we started to retrace our route... on our way out of town, though, DMM "caught" one more lifer for us - a little black flycatcher with a rufous back, called an Austral Negrito. Delightful thing - with its short tail, short wings, and terrestrial habits, it looks like it's got some "pitta" back somewhere in its lineage.

60. Giant Hummingbird
61. Snowy Egret
62. Kelp Gull
63. Franklin's Gull
64. Peruvian Pelican
65. Peruvian Booby
66. Guanay Cormorant
67. Austral Negrito

Photos: Route map; just north of Llico, we passed these salt pans near Boyeruca (n.b.: photo was taken on the way back, when it was actually possible to see!); a dreary morning on the beach at Pichilemu; Kelp Gulll, very much in his element; - "There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

Day 5: Thursday, Dec. 30, Part 2 – Pichilemu-Punta Lobos-HLT
Punta Lobos, it turns out, is also a bit developed for surfing (although nothing like Pichilemu was). The bad part of this was that it was a bit of a challenge to find a place to park; on the plus side, if it hadn't been for the surfing, there probably wouldn't have been any road at all! I was glad we had come, anyway, the site had a lot of potential. At very tip was a cliff, with maybe ~20 m. drop down to the sea, which was helpful for sea-watching; just off the tip, a couple of rock towers (stacks?) stood, just covered with Peruvian Pelicans and Kelp Gulls (if you had patience and a long lens, probably an excellent place for photography); and a Blackish Oystercatcher was poking around the shingle at the base of these stacks.

We walked along the seacliff for a bit, to find a slightly quieter spot, and found a small bench to sit on (how thoughtful of someone to have put that here!). By now, the sky had cleared completely, and visibility was excellent. Far off, we could see many, many litte black "crosses" skimming back and forth across the water - some sort of shearwater, I presumed, but more than that I could not say without the scope (which I had left, wisely or not, back at the cottage; didn't want to be burdened with it in Pichilemu, but didn't want to leave it in the car either). At one point, something very large and dark, with a thick, light-coloured bill flew along, much closer to shore - immature Giant-petrel, maybe? Could not come to any safe conclusion - in this case, distance wasn't the problem, so much as my near-complete lack of experience with pelegic birds. If I'd known what to look for, probably could have done it... at this point, resolved that we would have to make a return trip, sometime in the next three days - and bring the scope this time!

The seabirds weren't the only attraction here, however. One very tame small passerine was foraging on the dry grass, all around where we sat. Since it was brownish, thin-billed, and walked, my first thought was that it must be a pipit of some kind. Checking in the Jaramillo guide, however, it became apparent that this was not possilbe - none of the Chilean pipits exactly *ahem* fit the bill - theirs were all typically straight, while this bird's was slightly decurved.

Eventually, we figured out that we'd been on the wrong track entirely - it was a furnariid, a Common Miner, just much more worn and faded than the painting in the book - life does that sometimes.

We left Punta Lobos mid-afternoon, and headed south towards 'home'. On the way, we made one more stop, at the small town of Buchamelu. No surfer dudes in evidence here - this is the proverbial "sleepy fishing village", with a big barrier beach along the waterfront, and a brackish lagoon inland of that.

Here, for the first time on this trip, we encountered significant numbers of shorebirds, in with the usual gull and tern species; a Snowy Plover, a dozen or so White-backed Stilts, and well over 100 Whimbrel (I counted 130, but didn't try to be too thorough). There were also a few small unidentified sandpipers (scope would have been handy, again). On our way back out to the main road, something different - our first Variable Hawk soaring above the valley.

68. Blackish Oystercatcher
69. Common Miner
70. Elegant Tern
71. White-backed Stilt
72. Snowy Plover
73. Whimbrel
74. Variable Hawk

Photos: Pelicans on the rocks at Punta Lobos; the sea rolls in; two views of a very inquisitive Common Miner; Franklin's Gulls, stilts, and terns at Buchalemu (yes, the gulls really were that pink!).

Day 5: Thursday, Dec. 30 - Part 3 - just a few more...
It was getting on to early evening by the time we got back to Hacienda Laguna Torca. Remarkably, the weather continued fine and clear, so I thought it would be a good idea to seize the moment, and get down the the Laguna to get some bird photos (maybe even one of siete colores?) So far, neither of us had anything yet (photos, I mean) from here at all.

As it was yesterday, the Rush-tyrant was not at all difficult to find, once we got onto the boardwalk - getting a photo, now that was another thing entirely. They hop around hyperkinetically in the tangle of reeds, never stopping anywhere for long, and never doing anything that might remotely be considered predictable behaviour. I just got a few, semi-blurred, semi-obscured photos before having to give up for lack of light. We did, however, find one pair of individuals that stayed quite still - there was a nest with two chicks in it, just a few feet off the boardwalk.

[Can I try to describe to you what it is like trying to take a picture of a Many-coloured Rush-tyrant? Ever go the cinema, and see those big popcorn poppers with the glass sides? Hundreds of popping kernals shooting around inside? Imagine one of them is brightly-painted, and you have to snap it as it flies around. That's what it's like.]

So the photography didn't go that well, but there were some compensations, such as: the flight of about a dozen White-faced Ibis coming in to land; a Snowy-crowned Tern over the laguna; getting a glimpse - one of those "just-good-enough" ones, but still - of Wren-like Rushbird in (where else?) the rushes. (This is another very aptly named bird; remarkably similar to our own Marsh Wrens in North America - even though it's a furnariid, not a wren at all.)

Heading back towards HLT, we were treated to one more very good sighting, when a Stripe-backed Bittern (a very small heron) spooked up from the sedges along the causeway. That was, possibly, the luckiest find of the whole day, if "seeing something one is unlikely to see" is one's yardstick; while I don't really know about this species, its counterpart back home (Least Bittern) is one of the shyest birds in our area. I live a couple of kilometers from some reasonably good Least Bittern habitat in Ontario, and I only see them once every two years or so, if I really try (and sometimes not even then -didn't see one at all is 2010, for example, and I was looking...)

75. Wren-like Rushbird
76. Snowy-crowned Tern
77. White-faced Ibis
78. Stripe-backed Bittern

Photos: The elusive Siete Colores, hiding in the reeds (heavily cropped); nest of same.

For today, we took a much-needed break from long-distance travel. We drove no farther than the nearest town; this was Llico, a fishing village about 6 km due west of our lodging at HLT. We had been told of a good trail there, which went south along the shoreline from the harbour - just get to the Pacific, turn left, and you can't miss it.

You may recall that, on our first visit the Laguna Torca (all of 36 hours previously!) we noted an abundance of birds (swans and coots) but a complete absence of ducks. Well, it turned out that this was only because we hadn't been looking in the right place. The road, which cuts right across the the bottom end of the laguna, continues west past the reserve, ultimately ending at Llico. And just on the other side of the lake (right near that accursed airport) the wetland continues for a while; but here it is much shallower, with a concomitant increase in the amount of emergent vegetation. That's where all the ducks were, staying close to the cover afforded by the many small 'islands' of sedge and grass. In very short order, we found Cinnamon Teal (many of these), and White-cheeked and Yellow-billed Pintail. It looks likely to be a very rich area, who knows what else may have been in there - but it was also an excellent hiding place for them, there could have been flocks in there.

After that, it was just a few more minutes' drive to the end of the road at Llico, where we found a very convenient parking space right up against the seawall. "Mr. HLT" had told us that this town (and the whole region) had sustained significant damage in last February's tsunami, and some traces of this were still evident - for example, in the concrete steps down from the wall, ending a full metre above the current beach level, and the 'orphaned' old jetty that now stood several metres out to sea.

Anyway, we got down onto beach level - a different way - and "struck gold" almost immediately. A dark, chunky-looking passerine flew right across our line of sight, landed on an outcrop of rock, and began to walk around on it like a shorebird - our big-deal target bird, the Chilean Seaside Cinclodes! Right in front of the town too - that seemed suspiciously easy...

After watching him forage and fly around for a bit (seemed to favour the wrecked jetty quite a bit - possible nest? I admit I have no idea what their nesting behaviour is...), we started to climb up off the beach to look for the trail. DMM, who was in the lead, called back to me that she had just seen "something running" along the top of the embankment above, "with a cocked up tail". That certainly sounded intriguing! We rushed up to the top, but as much as we searched, found no trace of anything terrestrial - just lots of Chilean Swallows (I think their broods must of fledged already, there were scores of them). Oh, and incidentally, the trail we were looking for.

The land here, to the south of Llico, was very "bony". Big spiny ridges of rock protruded into the sea, alternating with small bays. This meant a lot of clambering up and down slopes, and it was slow going. Down here on the coast, the weather was once again grey overcast, and a bit chilly -so birds were not being particularly active, or vocal. We encountered a fair number of the ubiquitous Diuca-finches, and some Long-tailed Meadowlarks, but not much else. The seaside itself seemed particularly barren - not just of birdlife, but any kind of life. Poking around in the tidal pools, along here, we found just kelp and a few very small crustaceans - which I thought was a little odd.

After 40-50 minutes of hiking, we finally felt we were getting somewhere into "the wild" - because at that point, we heard something completely novel. A yelping call was emanating from a waxy-leaved bush just uphill from us, and it was so odd that we weren't even sure that it was coming from a bird at all - I could imagine, for example, some sort of fox making it. We couldn't see much from where we stood, so we worked our way around to the side of it to get a better view; when our angle of view allowed us to see the very top, there was our "singer" - a Moustached Turca, what a find! Not just a tapuculo (at last) but a Chilean endemic tapaculo. (Probably it was just my enthusiasm running away with me, but the thing looked enormous - about the size of a hen!) What's more, it gave us great views, seeming to be quite content to just stand there and serenade us, as long as it could keep us in sight. (Unfortunately, the sky was just far too dim to even bother trying for a photo.)

Saw one other interesting bird at this spot. At first, I took it for 'just' another Seaside Cinclodes, as it somewhat resembled one, and also because it was standing on a rock near the water. Looking at this individual more closely, however, we decided that something was not quite right - the underparts colour was different, the bill noticeably thinner, the white supercilium definitely wider than the other bird we'd just seen in Llico. It turned out to be the distinct, but closely related, Dark-bellied Cinclodes.
Soon after that, we decided that we'd probably wrung all the best birds out of this walk, so we turned around and headed back towards town. There was a bit of a surprise waiting for us when we got there - El Pequeño was not quite where we'd left him! Apparently my perfect parking spot was required for a temporary bandstand (for this evening's A§o Nuevo festivities), and the good citizens of Llico had just rolled our vehicle away about 20 m. or so, so that they could begin to set up. Good thing I had inadvertently left the parking break disengaged!

While we were out and about, we thought we'd take a drive just a few km. south to the cottage community around Lago Vichuquen, just to look at it, to see how the 'other half lives,' you know (also, we needed bread - maybe we'd find a panadería on our travels...) Actually, having seen it now, I don't recommend the excursion; unless you own, or happen to be a guest at, one of these big properties, there's very little in the way of lake access here. We did, however, spot one new species - a large, stately-looking Cocoi Heron - on the way over there, so the trip wasn't a total loss! (No panadería though - but there was a tiny, artisanal pastelería, where we picked up a very good strawberry tart.)

After returning to "La Cascada" and having lunch, we decided to try some upland birding for a change. The Hacienda backs onto a very substantial hill, which was covered in trees - mostly, a pine plantation. We had been told that there was an old logging track, which led all the way up to the top of this hill. So even if we didn't get any birds, at least we'd get a good view of the Laguna Torca from above.

It turned out to be a long, mostly unproductive, walk; one of those climbs where it looks like you are coming to the summit - about a dozen times - only to find that there is always one more rise around the corner ... and it seems like there's not much point in going on, but you don't want to give up, because you've already invested so much time... etc. In any case, there was very little bird diversity up here, which probably should not have come as much of a surprise, given that the forest was mostly a monoculture of (exotic?) pines, with very little understory. All we saw were lots of Austral Thrushes, a couple of tit-spinetails (they are so three days ago...), and several flocks of Austral Blackbirds. The only really interesting animal sighting of any kind was a new kind of lizard - not positively identified.

[aside] The Chilean field guide describes the Austral Blackbird as the bird that "fills the same ecological niche as jays do elsewhere" (there being no jays at all - or, for that matter, corvids of any kind - in Chile). And after we spent a long time this afternoon tracking some unidentifiable bird sounds, which proved to be coming from a flock of these birds, DMM added that they also fill the niche of the "really annoying bird species that is loud and distracting" [/aside].

By this time, it was late afternoon, and the weather had changed quite dramatically. The sun was hot, the air was a bit hazy, and we had a stifling trek back to "La Cascada". However, I didn't want to let this rare sunshine go to waste, so after a refreshing break for tea and dulche-de-leche something or other, we headed out to the marsh to do some photography.

In contrast to yesterday, today it went quite well; we managed some fairly good shots of both male and female Rufous-tailed Plantcutters, a male Spectacled Tyrant, Black-necked Swan, and a couple of coot species. (Pretty well all the 'good' bird photos that I've shown so far on here were actually produced in this session). The quality of the light this evening was very much better than what we'd had up to now at Laguna Torca - although from a photographic standpoint it was perhaps just a bit too strong, tending to 'blow out' anything white, like the bills of the coots (at least, that's the excuse I'm going with for now...).

We were fortunate enough to have another encounter with a Stripe-backed Bittern on the causeway. Again, it spooked before I was aware of it; but this time, flew across the water and landed where I could see it, on the edge of reeds on the far side. I had the scope handy, so we both got a passable look; better still, we soon realized there were two of them over there, foraging close together. Maybe a pair of harried parents? I wonder if the extra pressure of having little beaks to feed makes them less retiring than usual...

[Another aside]I've just had a thought: Wonder what kind of predator a small bittern in Chile has to be concerned about? Then I had another thought ... we never saw a harrier over this marsh (and Chile does have harriers); it looks like a great place for a harrier, lots of food around, wonder why there weren't any? Then I had one more thought (better wind it up here, three in a row, I'm probably going to sprain something in my head...): Probably because their nesting habitat got paved over for that bloody runway.
Naw... [/another aside]

That evening, we had been invited over for dinner by "Mr & Mrs HLT" - very kind of them, of course. But being invited out for a social event of this kind has a downside, for me; that being, that I am forced to stay up well past my normal bedtime (during a birding trip, usually about sunset). However, I sacrificed for the common good (DMM is much more socially adept than I) and we all had a good time.

And, after thanking our gracious hosts, and saying our good-nights (at the positively obscene hour of 10 o'clock!), we received an unexpected bonus gift - a sighting, but of quite a different kind. The overcast of this morning, which had turned into a kind of heat haze in the afternoon, had tonight given way to a sky of crystal clarity. We were looking at a night worthy of Shakespeare; I wish I'd had the presence of mind to recite it at the time:

"...look now, how the floor of heaven/
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold"

The first thing - or, I should say, things - that the struck us, were the Magellanic clouds, thanks to their sheer strangeness. They look like something much closer, something faintly glowing in Earth's own upper atmosphere - but to think, when you are looking at them, you are actually looking right out of the galaxy! To the south, the blanket of stars was so thick that, even if I did know the constellations "down here", I don't think I could have picked them out - they would've been swamped, lost in the multitudes. (I do know the Southern Cross though - couldn't find it...).

To the north, of course, there were some familiar ones; Orion being the most obvious, although I must say he looked a bit funny walking around on this hands like that! Which gave me an idea - I ran to get the scope (hardly an astronomical instrument, but it would do...) I had never seen the famous nebula in Orion's sword, with my own eyes. (Obviously, I could do this just as well at home - in theory; in practice, the murk of our suburban air in Southern Ontario usually prevents us from seeing such subtle things as glowing clouds of hydrogen). Anyway, that was the one nebula that I knew how to find, without a reference. I trained the scope on that middle star and - lo and behold, there is was; awesome - in the original sense of the word.

79. Cinnamon Teal
80. White-cheeked Pintail
81. Chilean Seaside Cinclodes
82. Moustached Turca
83. Dark-bellied Cinclodes
84. Cocoi Heron
85. White-winged Coot

Photos: Shoreline trail south of Llico; lizard on the HLT property (Wreath Lizard?); the pine plantation; White-winged Coot; Red-gartered Coot.

Day one of 2011 dawned, in a marked contrast to the previous night, very misty and grey. It was the kind of morning that fools one into sleeping in - it appears much earlier than it really it is.

Today was our last full day in Chile - and not having anything really urgent that we had to do (financial concerns now all taken care of) I thought we'd wager our time on a last-ditch assault on the Andes (even on the coast, you're never very far from them here). I figured there was still a chance for a new caracara or seed-snipe or something. Thanks (once again) to my good buddy maps.google.com, I knew that there was a small alpine lake up at the headwaters of the Rio Teno; this was just slightly south of our home-away-from-home at Laguna Torca, and 'only' 195 km away by road. As a sort of secondary goal, I was hoping that we would be able to find some good native upland habitat along the way. As good as the wetlands around HLT were, all the habitat away from the reserve was highly modified - either by being turned into farm/grazing land, or planted with exotic trees. What we really wanted was to find some "spiny forest" a habitat type which, I had read in A Wildlife Guide to Chile, hosted several species (White-throated Tapaculo being just one example) that we were very interested in finding.

Setting out at the rather late hour of 0710 (thanks to the previous night's star-gazing debauch), we threaded our way through the basket-weave of roads east of Lago Vichuquen towards the small town of Hualañe. There, we picked up a good, paved, secondary highway that took us up the Rio Mataquito valley. Thought this area was highly agricultural as well, we could see that there were many hills around, which looked quite untouched - they seemed to be covered with just the wild scrub that we were looking for. Unfortunately, the approached to these hills were guarded by legions of grape vines and fruit trees in serried ranks - and it didn't look like there was any way around them. (On the other hand, if you were looking to buy peaches, apricots, or a melon, this was definitely the place to be! Roadside stands galore...)

Eventually, somewhere near a town called Ranco, we did find a turn-off that looked promising - a rough gravel road that veered of sharply, and headed straight up one of the aforementioned hills. We just had to get past one farm (where a whole posse of very territorial dogs came out, surrounded us, and did there level best to get run over), and then the road sloped down, and headed through just the sort of woodland we were after. It was dry, dense, and thorny. Now that were well away from the highway, we could hear that there was quite a bit of birdsong about. Actually seeing anything, in all those sticks, was a bit of problem; but we were able to pull out a few of the 'usual' passerines, like Crested Tit-tyrant and Plain-mantled Tit-spinetail. There was also a very cryptic (but interesting) new bird, the Dusky-tailed Canestero; particularly interesting, because it may well be another Chilean endemic (authorities differ on whether it gets into Argentina or not.)

Returning to the main road, we proceeded on into the central valley, and crossing the Ruta 5 at Teno. Then ... after a, ummm, brief tour of some of Chile's back roads, we found our way onto the secondary highway we needed; this was a good, paved road going up the north bank of the Rio Teno. At Los Queñes, we took the last bridge across the river, to get to the tertiary road that (we hoped) would take us all the way to Laguna Teno, right up near the Argentinean border. After Los Queñes, this road turned to gravel, although we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was still very wide and well-graded - especially for a road that doesn't really go anywhere (in contrast to the road to Laguna Maule, which does go through a major pass into Argentina). Certainly, this road was very well-used - scores of Chilean families were taking a holiday picnic, or camping, along the river here. It was also at this point that the birds started to get interesting again.

First and foremost was the trio of Andean Condors that we encountered, working their way along the cliffs along the far side of the river - wow! That was so much better than the little speck we'd seen back at Altos de Lircay! A few km. on, we saw them again, this time on our side, which is how I managed to get a few photos; would have liked to have been able to frame all three in the same shot, but they didn't fly in quite a tight enough formation. Well, you can't have everything... (Oh, and the second good bird: a lone male Torrent Duck - seen standing, naturally enough, out in the middle of the river. Very striking-looking thing.)

After about 10 Km. of this gravel road, we found out why it was so wide and well-maintained - there was a very big mining operation up here, and it had to be big enough to handle heavy transports. (So, it was a good thing we were here on a holiday ... I really don't like sharing mountain roads with big trucks.) Beyond the mine entrance, the road was immediately reduced to nothing more than a narrow track, cut into the mountainside - undulating and twisty, it seemed to go on forever, and not get us anywhere. Anyway, since it was very slow going, and looked like we might never reach our goal, I pulled over (which wasn't easy, here) for a very belated lunch stop.

By this point, we were well and truly above tree line - somewhere upwards of 3500 m. The vegetation regime up here (as far as I was able to determine) is something known as "Mediterranean alpine" - low-lying, prickly, and tolerant of both cold and drought. There weren't a lot of birds around, but of what there was White-browed Ground-tyrant seemed to be the most conspicuous. Back along the road a bit, there was a very small trickle of water seeping out of the slope, making a bit of a pool. In a place as dry as this, that was a pretty good bird magnet, attracting Yellow-rumped Siskins and a couple of Mourning Sierra-finches.

There were Barn Swallows here as well, and they had the most entertaining behaviour - as we sat there on a couple of rocks, eating our lunch, they would fly into the lee of our bodies (it was quite windy up here) and sort of "draft" there for a while, only a metre or so downwind. Not at all sure what they were doing - was it some version of play? Do they think that, as mammals, we just naturally attract flies?

Wanting to get some idea of what lay ahead, I climbed up to the ridge above our picnic spot, which gave a bit of view. Alas, no Laguno Teno in sight - just a small building ahead, with a boom lowered across the road - obviously, a Chilean frontier post. How disappointing! The one thing I really didn't want to have to deal with, at this time of the day, was any kind of bureaucracy. I just didn't have the energy to summon up that level of pseudo-Spanish. So....

Making our way back down the road, I wanted to make one more stop. On the way up, I had noticed a fairly extensive stretch of level ground, right about at tree line. A side canyon entered the main Teno valley at this point, and I presume the outwash had created this flat area at its mouth. From the road, a low berm blocked the view into the flat area, which seemed like it might be below road level - possibly hiding a small mountain bog? Lots of bird possibilities if it were...

So, I parked, and leaving DMM with the car, crossed the road and climbed the berm to investigate. I was very quickly disappointed - the area on the other side of the berm was bone-dry, just a shallow dish-shaped depression full of the same bushy plants as everywhere else. (Drat!) But, heading back, I saw that DMM was madly try to get my attention, while simultaneously keeping her gaze firmly fixed on one particular part of a nearby tree. Oh-oh - good sign that I'm missing out on something.* I rushed over, just in time to hear her say "There's a tiny owl perched on a branch here I tried to get you oh, there it goes..."

Around here, "tiny owl" can only mean Austral Pygmy-owl, a species that is alleged to common, but certain to be elusive. We crashed around in the thicket for a while, trying to re-find it, but to no avail. Did become well-acquainted with the "spinyness" of the local flora, though!

I did get a bit a of a consolation prize here, however. While hanging about the 'owl tree,' hoping for it to reappear, I heard a very un-owl-like long chattering call. The first thought to enter my head was that it sounded much like a very familiar bird from home, the Downy Woodpecker. Sure enough, when we tracked it down, it proved to be the Downy's Chilean equivalent, the Striped Woodpecker - a very interesting parallel, especially given the thousands of kilometres separating these two species' ranges.

*[aside]She's done this to me before, you see. About 15 years ago, on a rather unproductive birding hike at Rara Avis, C.R., we were picking our way down that so-called 'road'. I let myself wander on ahead of her a bit - just about 20 m. - so we were still within easy hearing of each other. At one point, she called out "there's a small hummer perched - right here - it's a Snowcap". By the time I had pulled myself back there through the muck, he had, of course, flown the coop. I've been back to C.R. twice since then, but still, no Snowcap...[/aside]

86. Band-tailed Sierra-finch
87. Dusky-tailed Canastero
88. Torrent Duck
89. Mourning Sierra-finch
90. Austral Pygmy-owl
91. Striped Woodpecker

Photos: Route map up the Rio Teno Valley; Condors in formation; DMM above treeline; Argentina, ho!; An elusive pygmy-owl.

The dreaded day had finally arrived - departure. (¡Que Lastima!) However, thanks to our the convenience of having an overnight flight back to Toronto (departing at 1945), we weren't really in a terrible hurry today; even leaving a generous amount of time (I estimated 5.5 hrs) for the drive back to the Santiago airport, we still had a few hours for birding along the way...

First, though, had to make a farewell visit to the Reserva before breakfast. For one thing, I was really hoping to get another crack at photographing Mr. "Pied Bagelface". So, replacing scope with camera atop the tripod, I started to march down the HLT entrance lane one more time. This lane runs through their olive grove, and I had just entered this stretch when I saw what I could only describe as a "problem bird". It was thrush-shaped, and it perched briefly on top of one of the small olive trees, calling once before dashing off again. It was both like and unlike a standard zorzal - it seemed to be the right size, but much too dark, especially on the breast, and the flight didn't seem quite right to me either ... hmmm...

Unfortunately, being burdened with a lot of photographic hardware, and lacking the assistance of my "spotter" (who still back at the Cascada lodge, fussing over the packing or something - I'm more of a "toss everything in the bag five minutes prior to departure" sort of person), I lost sight of this bird before being able to get any kind of reasonable look at it. Intriguing, though.

After staking out the Spectacled Tyrant for a while (without success), DMM joined me, and we paid a brief visit to the Rush-tyrants along the boardwalk. They were still at their popping-corn best, and it seemed like every adult we saw had a hungry young one chasing it around. We went along as far as the nest we'd seen the other day, and noticed that the young in it had fledged - or, at least, the nest was empty, we hoped they had fledged! (They did seem awfully young when we first saw them, just 2 1/2 days ago; on the other hand, it's true that small passerines can grow up very fast.) On our way back, DMM got a good look at a Plumbeous Rail from the boardwalk - I just managed to catch the brightly-coloured feet as it stalked away into the rushes.

After another wonderful breakfast at the main house, we very regretfully took our leave of Hacienda Laguna Torca. But the Hacienda - or, at least, its birds - were not quite done with us; before we were even halfway down the lane, I spotted my "not-thrush" again. It was perched in plain sight, and didn't seem in a hurry to go anywhere. This time, I had the scope handy (I'd made sure not to pack that just yet), so we got a much better view. We could now see that this was not a thrush at all, but actually a shrike-tyrant, one of a group of very big new world flycatchers - a very exciting find, indeed! Out of that genus, we were able, based on the all-dark tail, the heavily streaked throat, and very heavy bill, to narrow it down to the largest of the bunch, the Great Shrike-tyrant. (Oh, and the range was a bit of a factor too). This species is extraordinarily large for a flycatcher, slightly exceeding American Robin or (Eurasian) Blackbird in length and bulk; large enough, according to Birds of Chile, "to eat small birds" on occasion.

So - what a fine send-off from HLT that was! (I love these last-minute finds.) Or, it would have been our send-off, except that - after we had congratulated ourselves, packed scope, bins, and selves back into the car, and driven about 100 m. further down the lane - I saw a small, brown, blur: it crossed the lane in front of us, flew into the neighbour's pasture, and disappeared into a large thorn bush. That, in itself, was not so interesting; but the cacophony of angry bird-calls, which erupted from this bush immediately afterwards - this, most definitely, was.

[aside] I doubt that anyone who is reading this needs to be told this, but paying attention to bird sounds - even sounds which I don't recognize - is always incredibly important in the birding game. I would seldom see anything at all if I didn't hear it first, and I am still surprised at how surprised "muggles" are at this; they think they can natter away constantly on outings, and still expect to see birds...

Anyway, we hastily unpacked scope, bins, and selves again, and directed all of the above at the aforementioned bush. A Chilean Mockingbird was on the near side of it, jabbering constantly, while a Thorn-tailed Rayadito fluttered around on top, obviously in a state of considerable agitation. Also, somewhere in there, I could hear at least one Southern House Wren adding to the chorus of ire. And, there at the focus of it all, was a small round head, out of which stared a pair of baleful yellow eyes. What a lucky break, our second Austral Pygmy-owl in as many days! (And to give my her credit, la señora was very glad - relieved might be a better word - that I wouldn't be having to go home without one...).

One small problem was that the owl was out of camera range - and the six-foot-tall barbed-wire fence surrounding the pasture seemed to lack a gate anywhere. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I (verrrrry carefully) climbed over and stalked up to it - never got really close, but good enough for a few shots. (Hence, the picture from last week's instalment - it just seemed like a better place for it.) Looking at these two birds cost us a bit of time, but it was still only about 0900 when we tore ourselves away; this left us, in my estimation, a good 3-4 hours "flex-time" for sight-seeing on the way to the airport.

There were, roughly speaking, two routes available to get us up to Santiago. One, the fastest, would be to go through the wine country around Santa Cruz, and get back on the big north-south highway at San Fernando. The second, more time-consuming, route would be to stick with the coast until Pichilemu, and then take an angled route across country, approaching the capital from the south-east. We choose the latter option, partly because we thought it would be a more relaxed drive than the "Ruta 5" (and, incidentally, skip some toll booths), but also because we would be able to check out Lago Rapel along the way. This is a large artificial lake about halfway between Pichilemu and the southern outskirts of Santiago, and our road would take us right over the dam at the north end of it.

Our first priority, however, was to visit Punta Lobos again, for seabirds - this time, with scope! It was bright and sunny when we arrived, with an bit of an onshore breeze - good conditions for actually being able to see the pelagics this time, I thought. With better magnification, those few "little black crosses" we'd previously seen multiplied into hundreds - just clouds of them swirling about over the ocean's surface as far as the scope could reach. Even the closest of them were not really that close, but we could ID some of them as Sooty Shearwaters (who knows, they may have all been Sootys - they are supposed to be the most abundant shearwater in the area). It was interesting to watch their movements - they were by no means evenly distributed out there, but seemed to "clump" a lot. After a while, it seemed to us that we could detect a pattern to this behaviour - a "clump" of shearwaters would be gathered around an individual Peruvian Pelican, presumably using it as a "beater".

Once, however, we witnessed something rather different - the tubenoses were scattering, rather than gathering. Something large, and very fast, was flying amongst them, and the this "something" had big white patches in its wings - definitely a skua of some kind or other. I cannot say much more than that (it was very far out), except that it was a big bird - comparable to a Kelp Gull, one of which we saw it pursuing for a while.
We also saw a large, dark tubenose, not a shearwater, pass by again. This time, we were able to see the bill well enough to be able to say that yes, that's really massive - so it just had to be a giant-petrel. No way, though, that we could tell which giant-petrel without a much better view - we sat for quite a while, hoping it would return, but it never did. While waiting, DMM noticed a mammal in the waves below; not a surfer, for a change - there was a sea lion poking his head above the surface every once in a while. These can be distinguished from all the other local pinnipeds by their sharply turned-up noses - how about that? Learn a new thing every day.

After Punta Lobos, we visited Pichilemu again, to gas up the car. It was absolute mayhem in there, it seemed like half of Santiago had decided to come down for the weekend. I was worried, a bit, that we'd have some very heavy traffic to face on the way back to the city. Thankfully, this did not turn out to be the case, and once were on highway K-150 (to Las Damas and Litueche) all was relatively quiet again. Nothing of birdy significance, then, until we stopped at the Rapel reservoir. This was a bit of a bust, in that we only saw one species of waterbird there (Great Grebe), but that may have had much to do with the time of year; I can well imagine that, had we been visiting in fall or winter, we might have found it to be full of migrants from Patagonia and the high Andes.

After Lago Rapel, a bit of ho-hum driving across farming country took us to the small city of Melipilla. From there, we were back on to the fast toll-road system, which got us back to Santiago in a flash. Since we had made pretty good time, we still had a couple of hours to play with; so, we decided we could afford to continue right through the city, and visit the Lampa marshes, a bit to the north.

This marshy stretch, right along a road, is relatively well-known, largely because of the presence of South American Painted-snipe. Apparently, this is one of the best places in the world to find this species, or so I had read (although always with the qualifier "when the water level is right"). Well, I don't know if the water levels were right or not, but we certainly couldn't find any! Plenty of birds around, mostly Cattle Egrets, stilts, and lapwings, but nothing remotely snipe-like. To be fair though, we didn't have a lot of time to devote to this place, and mid-afternoon is hardly the best time of day. Nonetheless, I can really see why people would recommend alternatives to this place (like nearby Batuco); there's quite a bit of traffic going by, and also quite a bit of trash blowing around. There is a bit of a viewing platform, from which we saw some ducks (including Red Shoveler) and coots, but nowhere nearby to park! So, not a very good experience, from out point of view - I suppose the experience of Laguna Torca had rather spoiled us.

Anyway, the clock was pushing 1700, and I thought we might need about 45 minutes to get to the international airport - so, time to put the scope away, and get a move on. Managed to not get lost on the way, and returned the (very dusty) El Pequeño to the Econorent office at the airport just after 1800hrs. (They were wonderful about this; although we were, strictly speaking, more than four hours late, they charged us for only the regular one-week rate, plus one hour overtime. Better still, they chose to overlook the small, ahem, incident involving the gate post I grazed back at Lago Vichuquen.)

Not being ones to ever let any time go to waste, after our checking the baggage, we thought we'd did a quick walk around the airport grounds. Didn't turn up any new birds at all, but - after seven days and a bit - I finally, finally, managed to get a decent picture of a zorzal.

92. Great Shrike-tyrant
93. Sooty Shearwater
94. Black-crowned Night-heron
95. Red Shoveler

Photos: Route from Laguna Torca to Lampa; a female plantcutter at HLT; a slightly different angle on the Pygmy-owl; pelicans at Punta Lobos; neat lizard (species unknown) at Punta Lobos.

The flight home was – as they always are, if one is lucky – completely uninteresting. It departed Santiago around 2145 (right on time) and got us into Toronto Pearson around 0600 the next morning. The parents-in-law were good enough to pick us up – and drive me right to my office, which happens to be very close to the Toronto airport. I was back at my desk by 0800, just like any other work day … oh, joy.

But, want to hear something really funny? The first thing we saw on the news, when we hit Toronto, was a story about the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that had hit “central Chile” the day before. We said: “what quake?” We’d been chasing Austral Thrushes around the airport when it hit, and hadn’t noticed it at all. (Apparently, the initial news reports had been a bit vague, geographically – it was centred quite a bit to the south, not in “central Chile” at all – nobody else in Santiago noticed it either.)

To sum up: I need hardly say, after going on and on about it for pages and pages (19,622 words, up to the end of Jan 02 – I counted) that the trip was a success.

But, was it an unqualified success? Well, no; I have yet to see an earthcreeper of any kind, or a Huet-huet of any throat-colour. But, in light of what we did see, it would be more than a little churlish to complain. (What’s better - three Andean Condors? … a pair of Stripe-backed Bitterns? An entire flock of Burrowing Parakeets? And, regarding that Giant Hummingbird, I am even starting to doubt myself – I feel a sort of kinship with those Air Force pilots who report seeing UFOs …)

I am not one who believes in numbers much – I don’t really think that the number of birds seen per day, or per kilometre driven, are a measure of the value of a birding trip. Even so, numbers are something that I can unambiguously communicate, so they may be useful to somebody. Here they are: in about 7.5 days, we drove about 965 km, hiked roughly 22 km, and saw 97 species. Potentially a more useful thing to look at, if you want a number, is what I would call the “lifer ratio” – i.e. how many species were life birds, out of the total number we saw. By that measure, this was the best trip I’ve had in many years – as evidenced by the fact that, when I went to work this out, I found that it was much easier to just count the non-lifers, and subtract! Of the 97 birds positively identified, 69 were lifers, and four of those Chilean endemics. (Alert readers will have noticed that this does not match the numbering of the birds in this thread; that’s because I forgot to include a Black Vulture Back on day 2, and mistakenly used #37 twice on day 3.)

Strategically, there were some good decisions we made along the way, and some bad ones (I made all of the latter on my own, of course – but Somebody should have tried to stop me!). Among the good decisions – to ask for, and carefully consider, advice from people on Birdforum; that’s how we ended up at staying at Hosteria de Vilches, and I very much doubt if would have found it otherwise. Likewise, paying close attention to Tripadvisor reports (even though these have to be judged rather more sceptically), which is how I discovered both Hacienda Laguna Torca, and the car hire company.

Another good judgment call was electing not to be too ambitious about how far we would travel once we were in Chile. I had originally planned to visit one destination in the Santiago area, and another in the Lakes district, inland from Puerto Montt. That would have an excessive amount of travel; even as it was, seemed like we spent too much time on the road.

Speaking of which, here’s an example of a really dumb decision I made: To go on that “mad dash” to the mountains on January 01. The scenery was lovely, and it was the only place we saw condors up close, but driving all the way up the Rio Teno was not worth the investment of time. It would have been a much better idea to have stayed in the lowlands that day, and just concentrated on finding the birds we still “needed” there. (As a “for instance” on last day at HLT, somebody – I won’t say who – mentioned that they have a resident Chilean Tinamou there. Ahhhhh! Now you tell us!) That said, I would do the drive up the valley of the Teno, and the one up the Rio Maule, again - but only if I were staying overnight somewhere much closer by.

In effect, I would characterize this trip as a having been not so much a birding vacation, as a very successful scouting expedition – we have now acquired some idea of where the really good locations are, all we need is another (ideally, three-week-long) trip in order to see them properly….

Hasta luego,

Peter C.

Chilean Farm Stay Holidays

Chile trip 26 Dec. 2010 - 2 Jan. 2011

© 2009 Hacienda Laguna Torca| Llico,Vichuquen,Maule, Chile | Chilean Farm Stay Holidays