Paul Chapman
Well-known member
Well. If you are going to do a Cruise from Buenos Aires to Santiago & the ship carries on to Los Angeles, it would be daft to get off wouldn't it? Then when you land in Los Angeles, if you have never been to California before, then it would be silly not to drive to San Francisco and throw a little bit more birding into the mix before flying home.
Any way. That was the planning phase of this 40 day trip. My friend and I have very understanding wives and this is our second similar length trip after one in November and December 2023 when we combined Brisbane, Sydney to Melbourne, Tasmania, a few days in South Island New Zealand and a Subantarctic Cruise down to Macquarie Island and back via the Chathams. Part of this as a result is a bit of a seabird refresher on some of those seabirds but with a few possible additions.
The trip should take me to six countries that I have not previously visited where even brief stays may get me new species from the commonest species encountered. My returns in Costa Rica & Peru - the most diverse areas ironically - will have fewer potential returns because of previous visits.
I try and work hard on my identifications & my birding but having not done any dedicated birding trips outside the Western Palearctic before I retired, I am entirely happy to mix & match my birding efforts and take help from wherever it is available - sometimes my trips are totally independent, sometimes they have some local assistance & sometimes they are with tour companies - with varying results. For the Cruise element of this trip, we have assistance from Wings which should help the land-based excursions.
I had done my preparation splitting the trip into seven segments to get my head around potential targets and hopefully not fluff up too many identifications but I will chunk this into three eBird Trip reports.
Today, the first section ended. Buenos Aires to Santiago. My trip list at this stage is 242 species of which 136 were lifers. Two of those species were heard only being Red-and-white Crake & Black-throated Huet-huet.
The eBird Trip Report for the first 16 days can be found here & expandin by tapping on "Show all details" alongside "Species Observed" shows the breakdown of sightings & my current placeholder Back of Camera pics:-
https://ebird.org/tripreport/342786
Sightings are my own. So there are a couple of things with which the group did not connect & a couple of things that I missed for instance a brief Pintado (Cape) Petrel and a Heard only Austral Pygmy Owl spring to mind.
Additional birds were seen obviously that were not recorded in Checklists when travelling and incidentally but there are no additional species. Some lacunae in the eBird numbers. Rosy-billed Pochard was a Tick but not shown as such because of previous sightings of British escapes & four species are shown as photographed despite being either escapes or aggregates (Muscovy Duck, Mallard, large skua sp. & white-rumped storm-petrel sp.) So actually, 217 species have been photographed.
To date, there have been four species of Penguin & twenty five species of seabird including eight albatrosses, three storm-petrels & three pterodromas. Highlights amongst those for me have been the penguins, Snowy Albatross & Stejneger's & Masatierra Petrels.
Otherwise personal highlights were Lesser Rhea, Elegant-crested Tinamou, Spectacled Duck, Nacunda Nighthawk, Magellanic Plover, Snowy Sheathbill, Lesser Horned Owl, Magellanic Woodpecker & Chestnut Seedeater.
So the next leg will be from tomorrow (leaving Santiago) to arriving in Los Angeles & will comprise the next seventeen days.
My trip totals for the countries visited so far have been:-
Argentina - 168 species
Uruguay - 77 species
The Falklands - 40 species
Chile - 90 species
Seven species of cetacean have been seen with Common, Peale's & Chilean Dolphins, Orcas and Southern Right, Humpback & Sei Whales.
The next leg carries on the Chile list. Arrangements to date have been smooth but disruptions to sailing have significantly interrupted three days - arrival in Puerto Madryn was over four hours' late so the time ashore was significantly reduced & the Valdes Peninsula National Park could not be visited, sailing to the Amalia Glacier was cancelled & arrival in Puerto Montt was over three hours' late so the time ashore was significantly reduced & the Alerce Andino National Park could not be visited. The operation of tenders needed to visit some locations as the ship could not moor alongside a jetty has been poor & caused additional delays of up to three hours on disembarkation. In addition, birding in Buenos Aires was affected by heavy rain delaying birding on the third day & preventing entry to the Costanera Sur Reserve for the second time. As a result, on the first leg, we have had three disrupted days out of eight in respect of the land birding days & in addition, on a number of occasions, we were evicted from our favoured seawatching spots for seabirds on the cruise ship due to weather conditions & had to seawatch from less favourable positions.
But challenges are there to make you stronger & at the end of the first leg, we are smiling with some absolutely fantastic experiences, scenery & birding under the belt.
A few pics - Snowy Albatross, Stejneger's Petrel, Masatierra Petrel, Lesser Rhea, Elegant Crested Tinamou, Spectacled Duck, Snowy Sheathbill, King, Magellanic & Gentoo Penguins, Magellanic Plover, Lesser Horned Owl, Magellanic Woodpecker, Chestnut Seedeater, Chilean Dolphin, Orcas, Stanley in the Falklands, Striated Caracaras over Cape Horn Lighthouse, the Patagonian Fjords & the Cruise Ship interior.
All the best
Paul
Any way. That was the planning phase of this 40 day trip. My friend and I have very understanding wives and this is our second similar length trip after one in November and December 2023 when we combined Brisbane, Sydney to Melbourne, Tasmania, a few days in South Island New Zealand and a Subantarctic Cruise down to Macquarie Island and back via the Chathams. Part of this as a result is a bit of a seabird refresher on some of those seabirds but with a few possible additions.
The trip should take me to six countries that I have not previously visited where even brief stays may get me new species from the commonest species encountered. My returns in Costa Rica & Peru - the most diverse areas ironically - will have fewer potential returns because of previous visits.
I try and work hard on my identifications & my birding but having not done any dedicated birding trips outside the Western Palearctic before I retired, I am entirely happy to mix & match my birding efforts and take help from wherever it is available - sometimes my trips are totally independent, sometimes they have some local assistance & sometimes they are with tour companies - with varying results. For the Cruise element of this trip, we have assistance from Wings which should help the land-based excursions.
I had done my preparation splitting the trip into seven segments to get my head around potential targets and hopefully not fluff up too many identifications but I will chunk this into three eBird Trip reports.
Today, the first section ended. Buenos Aires to Santiago. My trip list at this stage is 242 species of which 136 were lifers. Two of those species were heard only being Red-and-white Crake & Black-throated Huet-huet.
The eBird Trip Report for the first 16 days can be found here & expandin by tapping on "Show all details" alongside "Species Observed" shows the breakdown of sightings & my current placeholder Back of Camera pics:-
https://ebird.org/tripreport/342786
Sightings are my own. So there are a couple of things with which the group did not connect & a couple of things that I missed for instance a brief Pintado (Cape) Petrel and a Heard only Austral Pygmy Owl spring to mind.
Additional birds were seen obviously that were not recorded in Checklists when travelling and incidentally but there are no additional species. Some lacunae in the eBird numbers. Rosy-billed Pochard was a Tick but not shown as such because of previous sightings of British escapes & four species are shown as photographed despite being either escapes or aggregates (Muscovy Duck, Mallard, large skua sp. & white-rumped storm-petrel sp.) So actually, 217 species have been photographed.
To date, there have been four species of Penguin & twenty five species of seabird including eight albatrosses, three storm-petrels & three pterodromas. Highlights amongst those for me have been the penguins, Snowy Albatross & Stejneger's & Masatierra Petrels.
Otherwise personal highlights were Lesser Rhea, Elegant-crested Tinamou, Spectacled Duck, Nacunda Nighthawk, Magellanic Plover, Snowy Sheathbill, Lesser Horned Owl, Magellanic Woodpecker & Chestnut Seedeater.
So the next leg will be from tomorrow (leaving Santiago) to arriving in Los Angeles & will comprise the next seventeen days.
My trip totals for the countries visited so far have been:-
Argentina - 168 species
Uruguay - 77 species
The Falklands - 40 species
Chile - 90 species
Seven species of cetacean have been seen with Common, Peale's & Chilean Dolphins, Orcas and Southern Right, Humpback & Sei Whales.
The next leg carries on the Chile list. Arrangements to date have been smooth but disruptions to sailing have significantly interrupted three days - arrival in Puerto Madryn was over four hours' late so the time ashore was significantly reduced & the Valdes Peninsula National Park could not be visited, sailing to the Amalia Glacier was cancelled & arrival in Puerto Montt was over three hours' late so the time ashore was significantly reduced & the Alerce Andino National Park could not be visited. The operation of tenders needed to visit some locations as the ship could not moor alongside a jetty has been poor & caused additional delays of up to three hours on disembarkation. In addition, birding in Buenos Aires was affected by heavy rain delaying birding on the third day & preventing entry to the Costanera Sur Reserve for the second time. As a result, on the first leg, we have had three disrupted days out of eight in respect of the land birding days & in addition, on a number of occasions, we were evicted from our favoured seawatching spots for seabirds on the cruise ship due to weather conditions & had to seawatch from less favourable positions.
But challenges are there to make you stronger & at the end of the first leg, we are smiling with some absolutely fantastic experiences, scenery & birding under the belt.
A few pics - Snowy Albatross, Stejneger's Petrel, Masatierra Petrel, Lesser Rhea, Elegant Crested Tinamou, Spectacled Duck, Snowy Sheathbill, King, Magellanic & Gentoo Penguins, Magellanic Plover, Lesser Horned Owl, Magellanic Woodpecker, Chestnut Seedeater, Chilean Dolphin, Orcas, Stanley in the Falklands, Striated Caracaras over Cape Horn Lighthouse, the Patagonian Fjords & the Cruise Ship interior.
All the best
Paul
Attachments
-
20250314_201120~3.jpg -
20250309_164804~3.jpg -
20250315_150207~3.jpg -
20250316_215534(0)~3.jpg -
20250316_211309~3.jpg -
20250313_195211~3.jpg -
20250313_193848~3.jpg -
20250313_194636~3.jpg -
20250315_151349~3.jpg -
20250311_211712(0)~3.jpg -
20250316_210446~3.jpg -
20250320_153233~3.jpg -
20250320_152334~3.jpg -
20250314_094558~3.jpg -
20250319_183942~3.jpg -
20250313_093046.jpg -
20250320_075651.jpg -
20250315_173626.jpg -
20250314_212436~3.jpg -
20250311_211940~3.jpg
Last edited:
