Here tapaculo, here tapaculo
The next morning we went up to the Cerro Ñielol again to continue our search for tapaculos.
There's lots of introduced species along the road here -- maples, eg. so when I saw the fuchsia shrub that people grow in Vancouver and that lines the road in Ireland
I just assumed it had been planted here. Asian maybe? Not so I was informed it's native to Southern South America, Fuchsia magellanica (what was your first hint). Also, clearly a hummingbird flower, duh.
Fuchsia magellanica growing with blackberry, which I am pretty sure is actually introduced.
Lots of time standing in front of this kind of shrubbery trying to coax out the chucao tapaculo and the ochre-flanked huet huet.
Meanwhile lots of the usual Chilean birds darting about including the white-crested elaenia, the Austral thrush and the green-backed firecrown.
Not the greatest photo but you can see its long slender bill that differentiates it from the Austral parakeet
After lots of hard work from our guide we finally did get some great views of a pair of ochre-flanked tapaculos (dos bien avistados, says Lalo's field notes).
Next we drove back into town where we had a good view of a grassy portion of the cerro where a pair of rufous-tailed hawks were known to nest.
We attracted a fair bit of attention in this residential neighbourhood, but it wasn't too long before this South American version of the red-tailed hawk flew over us. Success. Lifer.
We moved on to an agricultural area on the outskirts of the city (also an area everyone seemed to go to dump their household garbage) in search of the unassuming but uncommon Hellmayr's pipit.
But it didn't take long for it to show up and show off:
Lifer!
We were supposed to drive up to the Villarica Volcano today, but the weather was cloudy and rainy, and Leo and I are familiar with volcanos shrouded in clouds. Nothing to see here folks. There are several volcanos in Costa Rica we drove a long way not to see.
So instead we just birded along the embarcadero of the town of Villarica (on Lago Villarica).
Villarica embarcadero complete with two happy well-fed dogs lying about
We had really good woodfired pizza at Pizza Cala.
Restaurants and hotels in Villarica tend to be post and beam wood structures to honor their timber cutting heritage
After lunch we followed the shoreline to see what we could see.
Right away we spotted a dark-bellied cinclodes. Lifer!
We'd now seen every species of cinclodes in Chile except the black cinclodes which only lives far south on and near Cape Horn.
Saw white-winged
And red-gartered coots,
Brown- faced gulls
And yellow-billed teals.
We continued along the waterfront, past the Villarica paddling club's boat shed
To a spot with a population of breeding great grebes.
We watched a pair build a nest.
The pair in the back were displaying
Great grebes are similar but much larger than our red-necked grebes.
And back to the pizza place for an excellent ice cream.
I had manjar (Chilean dulcet de leche), yum.
And that was the end of our tour. We drove to the airport to say goodbye to our guide and pick up our rental vehicle for the next week on our own.
Hyundai Tucson, destined to sit in the Holiday Inn parking lot for 3 days.
Species seen today: 36 Lifers: 5
No comments:
Post a Comment