Tierra del Fuego, 9/16/23 Part 1

When I scheduled my trip to Argentina for September, I knew it was not an optimum time to look for birds.  But being the off season for tourists, I found good airfare and Air B&B prices were lower than normal and the Argentine peso was in a free fall so I figured I could find some good birds somewhere.  I was going to just stay in the north where it was warmer.  However as time for the trip approached, I could not resist the lure of travelling to the tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, where evolution has created a whole set of cool birds in this isolated temperate climate.  Who knows when I would have another opportunity to visit one of my most dreamed of destinations so I booked flights with Areolineas Argentinas from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, to El Calafate and back to BA.

My flight down via Cordoba took all day (but cost half as much as a direct flight) and with getting the rental car, finding my remote Air B&B and getting groceries for a couple of days I wasn't able to get out in the field till the next morning when I awoke to 32F and snow.

I had chosen an Air B&B named Mira Beagle that was out of town a bit and overlooked the Beagle Channel.  In fact there was a trail from the lodge down the hill to the water's edge which I didn't feel like walking in the inclement weather so I drove to the nearby Rio Pipo Estuary.

Wet snow and 32F was a shock to the system after 80 plus days of 100F this summer in the Rio Grande Valley but there was no wind wind and lots of birds so I made the best of it.  One of my first was the Flightless Steamer Duck.  I'm not sure how losing the ability to fly is an evolutionary advantage, but they seem to make do with their tiny wings.

Here in temperate Tierra del Fuego, Chimango Caracara seems to have assumed the niche of American Crows.  They are everywhere in noisy flocks eating anything they can find.

It snowed off and on throughout the morning, making photography difficult at times, but I felt it helped to capture the essense of this part of the continent.  Here's my lifer Magellanic Oystercatchers.

A passerine feeding on the groud proved to be the common but aptly named Dark-faced Ground-Tyrant.

A flyby Imperial Cormorant.  They are quite common.

I thought I had missed Magellanic Cormorant on this trip but after I returned home I discovered it was one of the first species I photographed.

Something flushed a distant flock of shorebirds and luckily they flew in my direction.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect but they landed nearby and I was happy to discover they were Rufous-chested Dotterels.  What a striking shorebird!

Among the species I wanted to see in this remote part of the world were the really cool geese.  First to show were Upland Geese.  They were the most common species and later proved to be abundant at El Calafate.

And just a bit later four Ashy-headed Geese arrived.

It took a little work but I soon found the third species, Kelp Goose.  Males are snow white and females are dark.  They seemed to be restricted to the water's edge where they fed on plant material.

A little yellowish passerine was flitting along the rocky shore.  I knew it would be something good so I chased it down.  It was joined by three others.  Turned out to be one of my most wanted species, Yellow -bridled Finch.  After consulting the field guide I discovered they occur in both yellow and gray subspecies.  Turns out this little flock consisted of three "xanthograma" and one "barrosi".  The streaked bird is a female yellow form.

The most common ducks were Crested Ducks.  I had seen a couple decades ago on a wetland at about 13,000 feet on the Peruvian altiplano.  Here they occur in very different habitat.  The blurry spotting on their sides make all the photos look out of focus but that's just the way they are.

Two species of gull were common in the area, one being the Kelp Gull.  I saw my first over thirty years ago at the salt ponds on the Salinas Peninsula in Ecuador.  Later I saw the East Beach bird at Galveston and even got one at the Brownsville Land Fill.  They look better down here where they belong.

The other gull species has now claimed the top spot as my favorite gull.  The comedic Dolphin Gulls were everywhere grabbing mussels from the exposed beach which they would carry into the air and then drop, hoping to get at the good stuff inside.

Yellow-billed Pintails are common throughout Argentina.

Locals were out getting some exercise.  Snow means nothing to them as they can get it anytime of year.

Just as a particularly heavy snow squall occurred, several large buffy colored birds arrived, Black-faced Ibises!

The ibises flew inland and as I followed them I was distraced by a couple of passerines.  Rufous-collared Sparrows are common at Tierra de Fuego as they were in Buenos Aires but down here the gray headed race occurs.

A yellow flash turned into a pair of Black-chinned Siskins.  They occur in the southern Andes and along the southern coast of Argentina.

Back along the shore Southern Lapwings fed with the continuing flock of dotterels.

And then there was a familiar little brown peep.  Back in August I had seen migrating Baird's Sandpipers at the Sugar House pond in the RGV.  A month later they were thousands of miles to the south on their wintering grounds.

Another little brown bird scurring among the rocks was my lifer Buff-winged Cinclodes.

Chile and some snow capped peaks across the Beagle Channel.

 And behind me the "suburbs" of Ushuaia.

Well that was a cold, wet pretty fantastic morning!  The afternoon didn't turn out so well.