Derek¡ all I can say is WOW! What a trip! Incredible photos too! It¡¯s like something out of a National Geographic documentary. Love the Sheathbill and the Giant Petrels.. they are such a beast!
Daniel Bastaja
danielbastaja@...
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On Jan 19, 2024, at 23:36, Derek Matthews <derek@...> wrote:
Birding Chile, Antarctica, South Georgia & The Falkland Islands
We have just returned from a 6-week birding trip to Chile, Antarctica, South Georgia & The Falkland Islands.
Chile section:
Our travels took us from Vancouver to Santiago, where we met our good friend and bird guide Julian Vid¨®z and then flew up to Arica and drove to Putre to look for the high-altitude species in the high Andes.
From there we drove back down to Arica to bird the coastal area at Calleta Vitor and the Chaca Valley. We then flew back down to Santiago and drove up to the Fallerones ski area and valley in the Andes for several specific species and from there we drove to Concepci¨®n in south-central Chile.
We left Julian at Torres del Paine so he could spend a few days over Christmas with his family, which did not stop us from birding on Christmas Day when we found a spectacular life bird ¨C the near-threatened and shy Spectacled Duck! Not many people can say they had a duck for their Christmas present as opposed to their Christmas lunch! We met up with Julian again at Torres del Paine and made our way to Punta Arenas and across the border into Tierra del Fuego province in Argentina and down to Ushuaia to board the boat for the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and on to the Antarctic peninsula! Some of the highlights of the Chile section of the trip were:
? Searching for the near threatened Diademed sandpiper-plover which Carol almost didn¡¯t make as she had really bad altitude sickness ¨C we¡¯d been up in the high Andes for two days at 15,000+ feet and on the first day we had to bring her down as she thought she was dying. Still, that didn¡¯t deter us from going back up the following morning at 6 am, and after a hike UP another few hundred feet to a bog area Julian had scoped out in November, we got it! As I said to Carol if you must die birding, at least let it be for a bird like this!!
? The next was for Chilean Woodstar, the critically endangered endemic hummingbird with fewer than 50 remaining in two tiny fragments of habitat in the Chaca valley.
? Searching the vast high Andes plains at Putre for Puna Tinamou ¨C perhaps the ultimate needle in a haystack but we got it!
? A pelagic feeding frenzy at Calleta Vitor where we found a deserted beach on the coast with a feeding frenzy of thousands of Gray and Franklin¡¯s gulls, Peruvian boobies, Elegant terns, Peruvian pelicans, Red-legged and Guanay cormorants, Black skimmers and South American sealions all competing for food ¨C to be there on the beach amidst it all was magical!
? And a special day on Chiloe Island when fabulous views of Flightless Steamer Duck finally took our life list to 6,000 species which we had seemed to be inching towards forever!
Antarctica, South Georgia & The Falkland Islands section:
¡°Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak ¨C crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, it lies unseen and untrodden¡±
-- Captain Roald Amundsen, 1911
Amundsen offered his description of Antarctica over a century ago but the superlatives still apply today and no one who goes to Antarctica can be untouched by its raw wilderness and exquisite natural beauty. The legendary wildlife still flourishes and during the austral summer, seals, whales, countless penguins, and other pelagic birds flock to the Southern Ocean to feed on the huge schools of krill, the vital link in the Antarctic food chain.
With stunning scenery surrounded by rocky headlands and snow-capped mountains with thousands of seabirds around us; penguins, albatrosses, giant-petrels, petrels and diving petrels, shearwaters and skuas. In the Falklands we visited a colony of Southern Rockhopper Penguins and Black-browed Albatross. South Georgia was another highlight where we wandered among thousands of King Penguins and visited a colony of Macaroni Penguins. And on reaching the Antarctic Peninsula visiting a colony of more than a million Adelie Penguins on Danger Island, taking our penguin species list to 9 for the trip, and watching feeding frenzies of seabirds among pods of orcas and feeding humpback whales.
The pelagic birding in these southern waters is among the best in the world with 6 species of albatross, several species of prions, storm-petrels, diving-petrels, and shearwaters. It really was the trip of a lifetime!
We finished the entire trip with 301 species of which 121 were new for us. For anyone interested in photos and videos of the birds we saw, they can be seen by visiting the VARC Fb page:
We will post the full trip report on our birding website (www.worldbirdtraveler.com) with information on the itinerary, accommodations, guides, and bird lists etc., and, as always, we will be happy to help and provide more information and advice for anyone thinking of planning a trip there.
Happy 2024 birding to you all!
Derek<image003.png>
Derek J. Matthews
Chairman, Director Communication
NABC Certified Trainer
Vancouver Avian Research Centre
Registered Canadian Charity #82118 2656 RR0001
4115, East Braemar Road, North Vancouver, BC, V7K 3C9
T: (604) 218-1191
E: Derek@...
W: www.birdvancouver.com
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