Vilches and Altos de Lircay

I know I keep saying Best Day Ever but since our trip is now over I can definitively say this was THE BEST DAY EVER!

We spent the whole day walking the trails of Altos de Lircay park through beautiful nothofagus (southern beech) forest.  We had a bag lunch and the dinner at our hotel was modestly proportioned so we didn't even overeat!

Birding on Hotel Picamaderos grounds

We were barely out of the hotel grounds when we spotted a striped woodpecker

And a thorn-tailed rayadito.

Pretty quickly we spotted a chestnut-throated huet-huet darting around the base of this tree.

Check out the huet-huet's song.

There were lots of flowers blooming.

Oxalis rosea

Look at this lovely vine:

An orchid

I know domestic strawberries were developed from a South American species so this could be it:

Wild strawberries

Attractive shrub

And a beautiful hummingbird flower:

Just such a pleasure to walk through this beautiful forest with giant deciduous trees.

Nice new boardwalks

I had my photo taken in front of this 500-year-old coihue tree:

We walked by this big old log.

We saw another Austral pygmy owl and Lalo found us a rufous-legged owl.

We heard a very loud Ca-thunk. It was the drilling of a Magellanic woodpecker and we soon hunted down a pair:

Male

Female

Birds of the Day!

Eventually we walked out to this stupendous view:

We discovered on this trip that bamboo is native to South America, I always thought it came from Asia.  In fact Wikipedia tells me that there are bamboos native to southeastern USA.

Anyway the bamboo is the habitat of the Magellanic and the chucao tapaculos.  They are very hard to see in the dense foliage.  We were able to see the Magellanic but despite its very loud call the chucao kept hidden. 

At some point I looked up and spotted a hawk in the sky. This was quite a coup because the white-throated hawk doesn't fly much and is impossible to see perched high in the canopy.  We identified it by its diagnostic dark "armpits."

We saw several of these brightly coloured lizards:

Thin tree lizard, Liolemus tenuis 

Got a good look at the Austral parakeet, unfortunately the photo doesn't do it justice.

Hard to get a good photo of a silhouette

And Leo got a photo of the fairly common fire-eyed duicon:

Total species seen:  27, Lifers: 14