Lauca National Park

 

Today was the day we ascended to the highest altitude in our trip.  We took our altitude pills and got in the van.

Today we hit three main habitats as we ascended in altitude.  The first was the arid pre-Puna shrubland.

Here we found the ornate tinamou, a large grouse-like bird.

As we ascended in elevation we hit the Puna grasslands.  

The bright green bogs in the riparian areas are the bofedales.

Puna in the rear, Bofedal in the foreground

Here we found vicuna poop!

Andean goose:

The crested duck:

And the prize of the day, the diademed sandpiper plover.

Common sight: our guide Lalo waiting for us with his scope propped on his shoulders

Our next stop was las Cuevas, a loop trail past rocky outcrops with caves 

that provided shelter for hunters 9000 years ago, now the home of various animals.

Sign says drive carefully, area frequented by vicunas

This is a Peruvian viscacha:

There were also Bolivian Greater Mice:

Larger than a pica, smaller than a marmot

We spotted some mountain caracaras and followed where they landed to their nest.

A little further up we found a group of puna tinamous. 

According to Lalo they travel in threes and when we played their song they responded in a chorus.

At some point Lalo spotted puna rheas but they were far far away.  Nevertheless we get to check them off the list.

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Finally we reached Chungara Lake, the highest lake in the world* at 4,517 metres (14,820 ft), home to giant coots

And three species of flamingos.

Andean flamingos have yellow legs and a black triangle on their closed wings.

Chilean flamingos have a pink bustle and red knees.

And James's flamingos are smaller with bright red legs (no decent picture).

Our last stop was the pueblo of Parinacota (means place of the flamingos).  We were moving pretty slowly by this point.  My lungs were burning and we all had headaches.  I remember struggling to walk up a slight slope in the road.

We did manage to track down an Andean flicker here.  They nest in burrows here as there's no tree trunks to excavate.

Alas no decent picture.  However I'll finish off with a great shot of some vicunas.

At one point vicunias were endangered because of their valuable wool.  Now they are rounded up every year and sheared so the locals can earn income and the vicunas are spared.

All in all a great day and a highlight of the whole trip. The scenery was fantastic and we saw tons of birds.

Total species today:  60   Lifers:  49

*We were told that it was the highest lake in the world but it turns out it's more accurate to describe it as one of several lakes reputed to be the highest in the world.  It is higher than Lake Titicaca, which is the highest commercially navigated lake in the world.  There are other smaller lakes in the Andes and the Himalayas that are higher than Chungara.

Drive to Putre

 

From Gerardo's we drove along the Lluta River valley and up into the Andes.  We stopped along the way to view an Andean ibis in an alfalfa field.

Further along we turned off for the village of Molinos.  

A forest of these plants.

It was actually a giant horsetail (equisetum) that towered over our heads.

We'd come to Molinos to find a Peruvian pygmy owl but had no luck.

Molinos' church

But we did see a Vermillion flycatcher.

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There were two very long waits for highway construction on the route so we didn't arrive at our destination until dusk.

As we were driving into our hotel on the outskirts of Putre we saw a nightjar on the road.  Then when we pulled into our hotel we saw another one perched on a bench outside our rooms.

Band-winged nightmare ( blurry but it was nighttime.)

We didn't get to our restaurant till 8 pm.  By then we were all starving and service was terribly slow. 

Inside our restaurant in Putre

We had that authentic Andean specialty, Hawaiian pizza. And it was not bad at all.

Total species seen today:  44  Lifers:  23

A Pelagic Trip

Areca Harbour full of fishing boats.

Today was a part of the trip that had me a little worried.  A pelagic trip off the coast to see seabirds that don't come into shore.  The Markham storm petrols, whose nesting site we visited in the desert, fly back to their burrows after nightfall and return to the sea before dawn. 

 I'm very prone to motion sickness of any kind.  Don't worry, our guide Lalo said, it's very calm here, I never take anything, it's our trip off Valparaiso in the south that gets rough.  Great, I thought, but I'll be taking gravol.

The problem with gravol  is it makes me sleepy, so I fall asleep and then when it wears offI get a gravol hangover that makes me cranky. Long acting Gravol helps alleviate the sleepyness and the crankyness so that's what I took and hoped for the best.

Do I look sickly, sleepy or cranky?

The other problem is that seabirds are all variations of white, gray and black.

Belcher's gull

They all kind of look alike and it's very hard for me to care about the differences. Especially when sickly or sleepy or cranky.

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Except for the Andean tern.

Come, on look at these dandies

So the job was to manage the symptoms.  Look at the horizon, and minimize looking through the binoculars or standing up and especially standing up and looking through the binoculars at the same time.  And try not to look too sick or too cranky or too bored.

So we set off on the long trip out into the ocean.

I did get excited about this sealing blending in with the giant concrete rip rap.

The other problem is that Leo's automatic camera does not do well in an unsteady boat. Many of his pictures turned out blurry.  So I spare you a bunch of blurry pictures of black/grey/white birds that look like seagulls.

Also his camera is not that fast so lots of photos of empty ocean. That I will also spare you.

We passed these sport fishers who were being followed by this mystery sea creature.

We were joined by another guide with two clients and a few other Chilean birders.  Here the two guides confer.

In English:  Oh I hope our clients get to see some albatross today.

In Spanish:  Let's see if we can make these gringos puke.

Here's a sooty sheerwater.

And here's an Elliot's storm petrel.  We did see one Markham's storm petrel, the species whose nest site we visited in the Atacama desert the previous day.

Species of note:  Salvins and black-browed albatrosses, a cape petrel (usually seen much further south),  and Peruvian boobies.

Our fellow birder Nick, with a better camera (and, no doubt, expertise) got better photos.

Back  in the Arica Harbour we saw a new cormorant, the very attractive red-legged cormorant.

And the Peruvian pelican, which is larger than the similar brown pelican and has a blue pouch (not very evident here).

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You would think a 6-hour pelagic trip would be enough excitement for one day, but there was still more birding to be done.

But first we stopped for an excellent lunch at the home of Gerardo, an artist and chef.

Gerardo built the ramada and all the furniture as well.

The starter was corn cakes with 3 sauces, pureed olives, basil and one other.  Very delicious.

Also he had hummingbird feeders freque ted by the oasis hummingbird and the Peruvian sheartail.

Peruvian sheartail shows off his tail.

Fun fact:  Chile has only one species of  sparrow, the rufous-collared sparrow, and he's a looker!

Affectionately known as a rufy

Lifer! But we were to see these every day.

Another common bird:

West Peruvian Dove

If you're noticing a theme with the names of these birds we are seeing in Chile, that's because most of these birds are seen only in the far north of the country (and throughout Peru.  Birds, of course, don't observe borders, but they do recognize the Atacama desert which is so dry nothing can survive. (Except nesting storm petrels,  but they feed in the ocean.)

The birding was not done for the day, but this post is.