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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Peter C." data-source="post: 3386462" data-attributes="member: 68872">Day 8: "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig"Sunday, January 04, was our last day in Chile - at least, for this year! Really hated to leave; not least because we knew were heading back to January in Canada (ugh.) We needed most of the afternoon to get up to Puerto Montt, and thence to Santiago for our flight home, but that still left us a good part of the morning free to do something on Chiloé Island.  I thought it would be a really good idea to return to Senda Darwin, to have another look around; with any luck, we’d be able to settle the question over whether that really had been a Ochre-flanked Tapaculo in the underbrush, or not…I was hoping that, by getting there in the early morning we’d hear a lot more bird song than the previous day - but the woods at Senda Darwin was strangely quiet. We had a Grassland Yellow-finch singing in the parking lot, and a House Wren along the footbridge over the river, but not much else singing persistently. This time, we came prepared, bringing along our collapsible camp stools, our camera (already mounted on the tripod), and as much patience as we could muster.  We walked straight in to yesterday’s  “magic spot,” sat down, and settled in for a long siege – I was determined to sit there quietly until the birds came to us. Alas, it did no good whatsoever. I basically didn’t budge from the spot from about 07:45 until 10:00 (Herself gave up and wandered off  about an hour into it), but saw much less in that time than we’d seen in five minutes the previous afternoon - no huet-huets, no wiretail, and certainly no Ochre-flanked Tapaculo! Turns out, as often is the case, that we’d just had really good luck yesterday, and that’s all there was to it. I did, however, get my best view of Chucao Tapaculo yet - one relatively confiding individual that bounced around right in the open (but not for long enough to let me aim the camera, unfortunately.)After 10:00, we really did have to get a move on, to get to Puerto Montt/El Tepual Airport in order to return the vehicle in time. The ferry ride back to the mainland was beautifully smooth (again), and the sky very clear, so we had high hopes for seeing some more pelagic birds on the way across. It was still frustratingly difficult, but we did a little better this time, adding Pink-footed Shearwater and South American Tern to our trip list. We also saw a few small, fast, buzzy-winged things flying low over the water – these surely must have been diving-petrels, but there being three species possible in the area, there was no way we could tell which these ones were.The return drive to airport was uneventful, and we actually had a fair amount of time (about two hours) to kill once we got there.  So, we went for a wander around the grounds, hoping for a few last-minute birds. Unfortunately, this airport’s surroundings consist largely of a kind of prickly scrub, so it really isn’t the kind of thing you want to walk around in! One thing I will say for “El Tepual” airport though – it has very nice bench seating in the departure lounge – no armrests! An absolute godsend for the weary traveller…Peter C. New birds:84. Pink-footed Shearwater85. South American TernImages: Grassland Yellow-finch; wandering around at the airport; the best airport benches in the Western Hemisphere.</blockquote>

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