Perito Moreno Glacier, El Calafate 9/19/23

Today's goal was to see the Perito Moreno Glacier and maybe find a few birds.  The sunny, arid Patagonian grasslands were such a contrast to the dark, wet, forested Tierra del Fuego and made for a beautiful fifty mile drive to the glacier.  Here's Lago Argentina with the southern Andes behind.

A couple of very large birds soared over the ridge to my left and I had a good guess they were going to be Andean Condors.  I had seen a few many years ago in Peru at Colca Canyon but it was nice to finally get some photos.  I love the shadows agains the mountain.

I made a few stops at marshy areas along the way but saw just the same stuff I had seen the day before at Laguna Nimez.  After a while the highway followed along a forested mountain on the right and a fiord on the left which was an extension of Lago Argentina.  Those big floating chunks of ice were looking a little suspicious.  Where did they come from?

A shot of my only Clilean Flicker was a bit fuzzy with the running engine of the car.

Entering Parque Nacional Los Glasciares.

I paid the rather stiff entry fee of 10,000 pesos and entered the park.  There were lots of visiting tourists considering the time of year, including a few Americans.  Most were Argentinians.  The tails consisted of raised aluminum walkways that mazed about the mountainside facing the Perrito Moreno glacier.

What can I say?  The Perrito Moreno glacier is one of the most impressive natural spectacles I have ever seen.  As most glaciers around the world are facing a losing battle to the warming environment, this one is said to be doing a little better but I'm not sure how true that is.  The glacier towers about two hundred feet above the water's surface.  The good sized tour boat in the lower right is dwarfed by the massive glacier.

What impressed me most was that this glacier is not a static visual sight but actually a dynamic moaning, groaning, cracking river of ice inching it's way from mountians above.  Every few minutes small to huge chunks of ice would explode of the glacier's face and tumble into the frigid waters.  I was not patient enough to capture this event with video.  Probably close to a dozen blocks tumbered inot the water during the two hours I was present.  But many more could be heard with a loud crack and splash as they fell unseen in the interior of the ice flow.

A Patagonian Sierra-Finch begged for handouts.

The maze of trails is expansive enough that it is possible to enjoy a few minutes of solitude.  I found an opportunity to whistle some Austral Pygmy Owl calls hoping for the owl itself.  Instead I got more sierra-finches and this cooperative Thorn-tailed Rayadito.  A family of tourists wandered over and were happy to see the birds.

An immature Andean Condor circled overhead.  I pointed it out to another tourist but he seemed uninterested.

Having my fill of Perrito Moreno, I headed back towards El Calafate birding along the way.  Finally I found a Red-eyed Diucon.  I was hoping for one of these south Andean flycatchers but they are tough to find in winter.

A stop at the closed park picnic area turned up a flock of Austral Thrushes acting like American Robins.

The Southern Crested Caracara seems to occupy the ecological niche filled by Common Ravens in the Northern Hemisphere.  Some authorities treat it as a full species but not the AOS and eBird.

Lots of traffic on the return to El Calafate including many tour buses.  The shallow bay of Lago Argentina that fronts El Calafate was filled with birds including many Chilean Flamingos and Black-necked Swans.

I drove along the west shore not seeing much different but this Gray-bellied Shrike-Tyrant was a nice surprise.

Back in town I stopped at the Wanaco Bar for a nice helping of the local sheep stew and a cold Patagonian.

I don't see as many species as the participants on the expensive bird tours but I have the freedon to play tourist and bird when I like.  And there's a lot more adventure when you're not led around by the nose.

Reserva Laguan Nimez, El Calafate 9/18/23

"Down below the roaring forties, 
I am gonna fly some sorties.  
So you best reserve that cherished window seat."  

Jimmy Buffett from Party at the End of the World.  

Well as expected the skies brightened just as I was schedulated to leave Ushuaia.  Maybe I can get down here here again some day but I'm glad I took this opportunity despite the bad weather.  My chest was still hurting from my faux pas but I enjoyed the flight from Ushuaia to El Calafate.  Lots of snow capped peaks and glaciers below.  My destination was sparked by the desire to see the Perito Moreno Glacier.  Also there was a slim chance at Spectacled Duck and Magellanic Plover.

I arrived at noon and picked up my rental car.  The Nissan Versa had a simple, normal manual transmission with a logical sequence of gears.  It was a pleasure to drive after that dreadful Toyota Yaris.  My Air B&B was not going to be available for a few hours and I had chosen it because it was close to the Reserva Laguna Nimez.  The entrance fee of 4000 pesos seemed a bit steep but it was good for a week so I was happy to pay it.

(I guess I would be remiss if I failed to talk about the US dollar to Argentine peso exchange rate.  People complain about inflation in the USA but it is northing compared to what is going on in Argentina where the current rate of inflation is about 150% per year.  Basically this means pesos are losing value every day compared to American dollars.  As of the time of my visit, the official exchange rate was 350 pesos to the dollar.  This is the rate at banks and ATMs.  It was 300 to the dollar just a few months earlier when I bought my airfair.  So the key to saving your money if you live in Argentina is to buy American Dollars and hide em in your matress.  This has driven the black market rate for the US dollar to 700 pesos per dollar for crisp new $100 dollar bills with the blue stripe.  They are called "blue dollars."  So my entrance fee to Laguna Nimez for me was less than $6 but for locals would be about $11.  It's a good time to visit Argentina if you come armed with crisp new $100 bills and don't mind buying pesos from the local black market dealers.)

Reserva Laguna Nimez consists of several shallow lakes surrounded by Patagonian grasslands near the shore of Lake Argentina.  I had walked just a few meters down the trail when I found my first life. Long-tailed Meadowlark.

A few meters more and I found this lifer Scale-throated Earthcreeper looking and acting much as a thrasher, a good example of parallel evolution.  They are members of the neotropical family Funariidae which includes ovenbirds, spinetails, foilage gleaners and more.  The day before I had seen the White-breasted Treerunner and Thorn-tailed Rayadito  which are also funariids at Tierra del Fuego National Park.

A flock of Brown-headed Gulls flew laps around the lake.  Illuminated by the afternoon sun I could see the head was not black like our Laughing and Franklin's Gulls.

I had missed Coscoroba Swan at Costanera Sur so I was glad to find a few at Laguna Nimez.

I flushed a few pipits who flew up from the grass with white outer tail feathers like our Sprague's Pipits.  Eventually I found one mousing through the grass.  I think the pale braces on the back identify this one as the common Correndera Pipit and not the more rare Helmayr's Pipit.

Patagonian Mockingbird is not that different from the Chalk-browed Mockigbird.

A fence separted the reserve from the shallow lagoon on Lake Argentina where a flock of Chilean Flamingo fed.  A few days later I would do some exploring on the mudflats.

Pairs of Upland Geese with white males and brown females were scattered around the reserve.

Noisy Southern Lapwings were also common.

The pleasant sunny and reltatively warm afternoon was a nice change from frigid Tierra del Fuego. 

Reserva Natural Municipal Laguna Nimez, Lago Argentino, Santa Cruz, AR

Sep 18, 2023 1:46 PM - 4:01 PM

Protocol: Traveling

2.131 mile(s)

20 species

Coscoroba Swan  6

Upland Goose  25

Crested Duck  6

Yellow-billed Pintail  12

Lake Duck  2

Chilean Flamingo  30

Red-fronted Coot  3

Red-gartered Coot  1

Southern Lapwing  12

Magellanic Snipe  1

Brown-hooded Gull  25

Kelp Gull  1

Black-faced Ibis  3

Crested Caracara  1

Chimango Caracara  1

Scale-throated Earthcreeper  1

Patagonian Mockingbird  2

Correndera Pipit  1

Rufous-collared Sparrow  2

Long-tailed Meadowlark  4

Tierra del Fuego, 9-17-23

I woke up with a very sore sternum after yesterday's accident.  It was extremely painful getting in and out of bed, but otherwise not so bad.  Outside the temperature was in the upper twenties with snow flurries and quite windy.  I decided to run into town and get a decent breakfast and be a tourist.  First stop was the beached St. Christopher.  This old ship was a rescue tug for the British Royal Navy during World War II and ran aground on the coast of Ushuaia in 1957 where it remains to this day.

There are usually a few birds around like these Imperial Cormorants.

And my new favorite the Dolphin Gull.

Black-crowned Night-Herons occur on every continent except Antarctica.  Here in Tierra del Fuego they are very dark.

Something scurried among the baracle covered rocks.  Was it a rat?  No.  It was my lifer Dark-bellied Cinclodes.

I walked from the St. Christopher just a few block to the tourist part of town, ate some breakfast and bought a couple of souvenirs from "el fin del Mundo."

Although I really wanted to do one of the Beagle Channel boat tours, with the icy cold wind and my chest contusion I decided instead to finish my original plans for yesterday and drive to Tierra del Fuego National Park.  My targets were some of the forest birds and Spectacled Ducks.  The snow covered countryside was spectacular.

Once inside the park, I drove the slush covered dirt road through snow covered trees.

I stopped and whistled an imitation of the call of the Austral Pygmy Owl and birds came a running.  Austral Thrush was common.

A striking rufous and white nuthatch-like bird proved to be my only White-breasted Treerunner for the trip.

Then came in a noisy flock of Thorn-tailed Rayaditos acting like bushtits.  That's got to be one of the coolest bird names ever.

There were plenty of streams and lakes in the area having eBird records for Spectacled Duck.  But finding a black and white duck in the dark streams with snow covered banks and rocks proved to be difficult.  At Bahia Lapataia I found a couple of Austral Blackbirds.

 A female Upland Goose flew by.

I found a few more Black-chinned Siskins.

It was getting late so I headed back.  A couple of Chimango Caracaras chased a Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle into view.  I've seen a few of these through the years.

Well, not a fantstic day but still a pleasure to get to see this remote part of the world.  Tomorrow I'm off to El Calafate.

Tierra del Fuego, 9/16/23 Part 2

I've travelled independently to quite a few places and never had a seriuos problem but my luck ran out on this trip.  Actualy it could have been worse so I won't complain.  After a fantastic morning of birding my plan was to head to Tierra del Fuego National Park to look for some forest species.  I studied the route on my phone and noted I had to make it through a couple of rounabouts.  Now after a trip to Australia four years ago I developed an absolute hatred of roundabouts.  Traffic circles as we call them are at every intersection in Australia and though I can see some benefits, I still hate them.

I won't go into all the details but after making it through the first roundabout, I wasn't so lucky at the second.  It was probably a mixture of being cold, wet, tired and driving an unfamiliar manual transmission combined with a dark sky and a muddy poorly signed roundabout, but I wound up smacking into a small gray, nearly invisible, light pole.  Fortunately the air bags didn't deploy, but it was a pretty good hit and hurt like hell where the shoulder strap kept me from hitting the windshield.  Area passerbys immediately came to my attention, as did the police and later an ambulance.  They checked me over and urged me to go with them to the hospital.  I was hurting but nothing seemed broken and the car was drivable so after some convincing on my part, they let me go.  I have to say at this time how impressed I was with the kindness and generosity of all the Argentine people I met.

I drove back to my lodging and was hurting and feeling pretty low.  I dreaded calling the car rental agency but did after resting a spell.  They sent someone over who looked the car over, pulled the grill up and removed a couple of broken pieces.  He apologized that he didn't have a replacement vehicle.  I told him this car would do fine.  Again I was so impressed with how nice people were.  And in the end I got off easy only having to pay the insurance deductible.  I highly recomment FoxRents car rental in Ushuaia.

Well, I still had some daylight.  My upper sternum and adjacent ribs were hurting from the seat belt impact but the trail behind the condos was calling so I gingerly put on my coat and strapped on the binocs and camera and was on my way down the slippery snow covered hillside to look for birds.  My first find was an uncopperative Austral Thrush.  They act just like American Robins down here.

There was some brush along the hill and then it leveled out towards the shore.  I was whistling an immitation of the resident Austral Pygmy Owl hoping to call in birds or even an owl.  It sounds much like our Ferruginous Pygmy Owl but higher pitched and faster paced.  Dang!  I got an answer!  Well it kind of sounded like a pygmy owl except the "toots" were in pairs.  But there often is variablity in pygmy owl calls so I kept whistling and the sound started to come closer.  Just one problem.  The pygmy owl should be in a tree, even a small one, and this call sounded like it was coming from the ground.  I kept  whistling and the "owl" kept coming closer.  Now it was really close and low.  "doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot"  And there it was just a few feet away.... on the ground.... a Magellanic Snipe!

As I moved for a better shot it waddled into the snow.  My pain and misfortune were forgotten.  Wow! I was hoping for Magellanic Snipe but I didn't think I would have one at my feet!

I moved to the east below the hill and came to a fenced in horse enclosure near a lodge.  There was a dead tree and something was hammering away.  A big black something with a red head!  My only Magellanic Woodpecker of the trip.  There was a pair but I never got a shot of the female.

I whistled some more owl calls and a flock of brightly colored birds approached.  These were my first Patagonian Sierra Finches, about twenty of them.

I walkd to the shoreline of the Beagle Channel and got a pair of Flying Steamer Ducks.

There were a few more Kelp Geese.

That was enough for the day.  My sternum was hurting so I made the painful slog up the hill to my room.  I was too tired to go out to eat so I had some bread, cheese and fruit.  Tylenol helped me get some sleep but it was a painful night.