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Back from Chile



All,

I know this is off topic, since the birds listed below aren't Carolina 
birds. But, I'm a carolinabirder, and several people who read this 
listserv helped me prepare for my trip.  If you're not interested, 
delete now.

I was in Talca, Chile (about 200 miles south of Santiago) basically all 
of last week to attend a conference and present a paper. The first three 
days of the trip, my host's technician (a birder) took me around to see 
the sights and birds. While Chile does not have the bird diversity one 
generally associates with South America, it does have lots of neat 
endemics and some truly spectacular species.  The first day we went to 
the Andes (up to about 2000 m); the big highlight- 11 Andean condors! A 
bird with a 10.5 ft. wingspan is impressive in any case; to see them  in 
those magnificent mountains was truly awesome. We saw one at the end of 
the road to Argentina (it was closed for construction) and celebrated; 
on the way back down, we stopped to help some folks find a lost dog (we 
found it) and saw 10 more condors streaming across the sky 1,000 ft. 
overhead, on their way to an appointemnt with a dead cow or llama, I 
suppose. Other goodies were torrent ducks, Austral pygmy owls (2), many 
green-backed firecrowns and a giant hummingbird, Magellenic Woodpeckers 
(not ivory-bills, but in the same genus- and huge!) and chilean pigeons, 
among others. On Monday, we visited a huge freshwater marsh and saw 
black-necked swans, several species of puddle ducks (Chiloe wigeon, 
brown pintails, silver teal), great and white-tufted grebes, and the 
many-colored rush tyrant (probably the gaudiest little bird I've ever 
seen, up to and including painted buntings). From there, we went to the 
coast,  saw silvery grebes and lake ducks (but missed the flamingo that 
was at the lagoon the day before) and got lost down a quite remarkable 
(and gut wrenching) cliff-hanging dirt road before being set straight by 
a fellow leading an ox cart. Tuesday we returned to the coast and saw 
Peruvian boobies, red-legged cormorants, and Inca terns in the midst of 
a huge windstorm.

All in all I added 50 species to my life list (about 50% of what the 
region I was visiting had to offer), ate some marvelous seafood, drank 
some excellent wines, saw some awesome sights, and, most importantly, 
made some truly wonderful friends. If anyone should find themselves in 
mid-Chile, I can hook you up to an outstanding guide! Chile is an easy 
country to travel around, is very safe, and the people are terrific. If 
anyone is interested in a complete list from this trip or in seeing some 
pictures, e-mail me.

I promise, Will, I won't do this again any time soon! The trip was just 
too awesome to not share it with my extended birding family.

Take care,

Clyde Sorenson
Clayton and Raleigh, NC