guides and pelagic trips central chile (1 Viewer)

Hello,
Inca tern, seaside cinclodes (endemic) and rufous-chested dotterel are not hard to be seen in Viña del Mar, not only in Concón. I would definitely suggest to visit Mantagua, which is the wetland on the North side of the Aconcagua estuary. Last time I was there in winter we were able to check 53 species, including raptors, passerines and shorebirds.
Other cinclodes (buff-winged, dark-bellied) are not rare (but also not abundant) in the wetlands you've already listed in the vicinity of Santiago.

Hello,
here some pictures from last weekend taken here:

S29 33 06.2 W71 18 58.5, 208 masl

- Tapaculo
- Tinamou
- Miner

willito, Great image of the tapaculo. We saw it completely in the open, but at that time the camera was in the rucksack on my back; not to scare the birds away completely, I chose to be very slow when bringing it down (and first I had to satisfy my eyes). Therefore, the images are not as good as what I saw. Could I entice you to load this image into the gallery; my two images are the only ones in there of this species.

Dieter, I use the Panasonic FZ18. It has the advantage of being able to choose a very small area as the area to focus within. It is my second autofocus camera, and the first that comes close to matching my old manual focus SLR. The panasonic is not a dSLR, and most of those are supposedly better yet; this one weighs 1/4 of what they do, but it has a problem with image quality, especially in low light. The FZ38 is better according to reviews but the newest members (fz40/fz100) are back to the levels of fz18 according to reviews.

Lots on the fz series and other superzooms in the camera section here on BF.

Cheers
Niels

Niels, I'm painfully sorry. I didn't see those were your pictures, I just thought they were from anywhere in the internet. My comment wasn't suppose to be arrogant, now I realize it really was though. I just wanted to show the better chances I had over there.

Actually, as an absolute amateur photograph, I never claim to have made a good picture, the merit relies always on the birds I aim to, and this is particularly true in this case, as you can see. So that's what I was thinking about when I wrote before.

Once again, my apologies for my roughness.

willito said:

Hello James,
for the 4 species you mention I could also suggest the Yerba Loca National Park, about 1 h from Santiago towards the Andes. Especially for tapaculo and turca, you'll have a far better chance to get good pictures, elsewhere you should only hear them.
By the way, last weekend I spent in La Serena and thereabouts (approx. 500 NW from Santiago), where I could also get reasonable pictures of tapaculo, tinamou and miner, but that's maybe way too far for a trip. Anyway, if you want some more details on the path I did, just let me know.

Click to expand...

Hello Guillermo,
i would be very interested to know more about Yerba Loca.
thanks,
James

willito said:

Niels, I'm painfully sorry. I didn't see those were your pictures, I just thought they were from anywhere in the internet. My comment wasn't suppose to be arrogant, now I realize it really was though. I just wanted to show the better chances I had over there.

Actually, as an absolute amateur photograph, I never claim to have made a good picture, the merit relies always on the birds I aim to, and this is particularly true in this case, as you can see. So that's what I was thinking about when I wrote before.

Once again, my apologies for my roughness.

Click to expand...

No worry

Niels

Hello James,
my wife and me spent last New Year in Yerba Loca, volunteering for the so-called "proyecto Cóndor", a binational project (along with Argentina) aiming to reintroduce Andean condors born in captivity. Since this was not a full day task, we had time also to look for other species. Among the ones I can remember there were tapaculo, tinamou, turca, white-browed ground-tyrant, white-crested elaenia, blue-and-white swallow, band-tailed sierra-finch among the not all-too common species.
From Santiago you can take during spring and summer a quite ordinary 4x2 car and go through the road to Farellones. It'll take approx. 1 h to reach the entrance where you pay the normal fee for National Parks in Chile, by now about US$ 6,- Then you continue by car through a narrower way to "Villa Paulina", about 3 km, where you can camp. From here there are several alternatives you can trek in search of birds, but from October on you can also find all kinds of native flowers among alstroemerias, acacias and others.
I've attached some low-res versions of the pictures I could get there that time. Tonight I will look in my files for the GPS coords you may need for this.

Regards,

Guillermo.

For detailed site specific information you can start fiddling with e-bird (www.ebird.com). Go to view and explore data. Make a bar chart for a specific region in Chile. This will let you know when they have been reported, then click on the species on the left and a map shows up of where they have been reported. Click on the "pin" on the map and you get dates and numbers reported for each species. Chile now has one of the largest ebird datasets for any Latin American country, so you can use ebird as a bird finding tool quite efficiently!

Here is WT Tapaculo for example: http://ebird.org/ebird/GuideMe?cmd=decisionPage&speciesCodes=whttap1&getLocations=states&states=CL-RM&bYear=1900&eYear=2010&bMonth=1&eMonth=12&reportType=species&parentState=CL-RM