The Science of Birds - From the Field: Patagonia

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

In this "From the Field" episode, which is number 112, host Ivan Phillipsen shares his recent experiences birding in Patagonia while leading a two-week tour through this remote and breathtaking region. Speaking from Puerto Varas, Chile, he provides an immersive account of the landscapes, birdlife, and unique ecology of Patagonia, spanning both Argentina and Chile. Ivan explores the geography of the region, highlighting the towering Andes, vast Patagonian Steppe, and dramatic glacial fjords. He also dives into the region’s ecological dynamics, including the stark contrast between the lush Magellanic subpolar forests and the arid steppe, shaped by the relentless Patagonian winds.  Ivan recounts the group’s birding adventures, from the southernmost city of Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego National Park to the legendary Beagle Channel, where they encountered Magellanic and Gentoo Penguins. Throughout the journey, the group pursued an ambitious goal—spotting all eight bird species with “Magellanic” in their name. Ivan also highlights memorable moments, such as an unforgettable sighting of a Snowy Sheathbill, a leucistic (partially albino) Scale-throated Earthcreeper, and a massive Andean Condor scavenging scene on the Patagonian Steppe.  Ivan reflects on why this wild and remote region captivates him, from its evolutionary history and glacial landscapes to its unique yet sparse biodiversity. ~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Link to this episode on the Science of Birds website Support the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This episode, which is number 112, is a From the Field episode, and it's all about my recent experiences with the birds and birding in Patagonia. I was just there leading a birding tour for about two weeks, and it was marvelous, and it's a great place to experience nature, so I think this will be a fun episode to share my experiences

and for you to learn a little bit more about Patagonia. Now, since this is a From the Field episode, I am recording it in a, I guess you'd call it a cabin. And I'm actually in Chile right now, in sort of south central Chile. After the Patagonia tour, I went on my own to central Chile to do some exploring for a future tour here. So I have a rental car. I've been driving around exploring, and it's been really cool. Right now, I'm in the lovely town of Puerto Vadas, in the late. district. And this is about as far south as I'm going to get before I fly home in a couple

days. So depending how you define Patagonia, some might say I'm still in Patagonia, even though I was recently in central Chile from Santiago to the coast, to the Andes, and the Central valleys. Anyway, since I'm recording this in this lodging, there might be some ambient sounds. I never know what's going to make it through my editing process, but you might hear some dogs barking, or perhaps more interesting would be the birds that you might hear out there. There are chimango caracaras, black-faced ibises, and even slender-billed parakeets making a racket out there, at least every so often. And that's pretty cool. That's definitely a reminder that I'm not home. You know, dogs I got at home, but I do not have any slender-billed

parakeets in Portland, Oregon, as far as I know. Right, so let's go ahead and get into it, and And let's talk about the Wonders of Patagonia. So let's start with a little bit of geography, a little background. So picture the continent of South America. And if it's kind of like an ice cream cone, then you have the southern cone, that portion is Patagonia. Patagonia knows no boundaries, no borders. It spans both Argentina and Chile, the southern parts of those two countries. So Patagonia is not a country, it is a region. And it has no hard border on the north, but it runs roughly between 40 degrees and 55 degrees south latitude. The southernmost

point of South America, Cape Horn, is still considered Patagonia. So, of course, South America is famous for its bird diversity and just biodiversity in general. But as you move toward Antarctica, toward the southern pole, as latitude increases, biodiversity of birds and just about everything else tends to decrease. Patagonia is a temperate environment. It's not tropical. So as you move south, you have fewer species, and then finally, when you get to Cape Horn, it's a relatively, an area with a relatively low biodiversity. But of course, Of course, Antarctica has everyone beat on the low biodiversity score, so we won't get into that. I'll try not to talk too much smack about Antarctica in this episode.

So, Patagonia, right? So where did that name come from? What is its etymology? So the name Patagonia comes from the word Patagon, which was the term that Magellan used when he came through in the early 1500s. And he used that word to describe the native people that were living. here at the time. Relative to Europeans that Magellan was familiar with, these people that we were greeting him on the shore were tall and almost giant-like. So he was basically describing them

as like giants, because apparently Patagon was a literary character, kind of like Bigfoot or something that was familiar to Magellan. Not really an appropriate description, you know, not really accurate, but the people here in Patagonia were apparently taller than Europeans at the time. you have this southern cone of South America, and geographically, one of the most important things is the Andes Mountain Range. That, of course, is super important for South America in general, but it really influences the environments that you get in Patagonia. And we'll get to this sort of biogeography in a moment. So in terms of the Andes in Patagonia, they're not the highest part of the Andes. The mountain peaks tend to decrease in elevation as you go

south on average. But we can say that there's somewhere between 5 and 13,000 feet in terms of the overall range where maybe most of the peaks are somewhere between 6 and 9,000 feet. In terms of meters, that would be between roughly 1,800 meters and 2,700 meters. I think I got that right. So running along the west coast of Patagonia, you have the Andes Mountain Range. And on the west coast, you have all of these islands, there's just kind of this really, this jumble of islands and archipelago there, especially in the south, and lots of deep fjords. And all of that, all of this was carved out by glaciers during the last glacial maximum of the ice age. So it's a really complex topography in the sort of west and south of Patagonia because of the mountains and the

interaction with the glaciers and the ocean and all that. And a big part of that is fairly inaccessible. unless you have a boat. Now there are a couple of these fjords, these deep channels carved out by glaciers, that are well known and very important to the geography of the region. The first is the Strait of Magellan. You've probably heard of that one.

This was the passage that Magellan and his crew discovered that allowed them to get through the southern tip of South America to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. The Strait of Magellan is roughly 350 miles long, which is 500,000. and its width varies a lot from something like two miles to about 20 miles, but it's a pretty wide channel in general. The Strait of Magellan separates the large island of Tierra del Fuego to the

south from the mainland of South America. And Tierra del Fuego, that's the name of the big island, but it's also an archipelago. So there's the actual island of Tierra del Fuego, which is split between Chile and Argentina. And then there are lots of little islands associated with that that are also considered part of the region of Tierra del Fuego, which is a region within the region of Patagonia. And separating the larger island of Tierra del Fuego from the smaller islands at the southernmost part of Patagonia is the Beagle Channel. So this again is a glacially carved channel, and it is narrower and shorter. It's only about 150 miles long or 240 kilometers, and its width ranges between 3 and 8 miles or 5 to 13 kilometers. And the Beagle channel

gets its name from the HMS Beagle, which is a ship that you may have heard of. It was made famous by the voyage of Charles Darwin, who traveled around a large part of South America and described his adventures in the book, The Voyage of the Beagle. So I mentioned glaciers. There are plenty of glaciers in the southern part of Patagonia in the mountains. There were a lot more during the last glacial maximum in the ice ages. But the remnant of the massive ice sheet that used to cover all of southern South America, one of those remnants is the southern Patagonia ice field, which is still there.

It's the world's second largest piece of ice, of sort of contiguous ice, outside of the polar regions. So it's this massive ice field that's roughly 220 miles long from north to south or 350 kilometers, and it has an area of about 6,350 square miles or 16,500 kilometers squared. And that runs along the crest of the Andes and is divided between Chile. and Argentina. And I should point out, just in case you don't know, that Chile is on the western part of Patagonia and Argentina is on the east, roughly. Okay, so that's just a little bit about the basic geography of Patagonia. Now, what about the sort of biological or ecological aspect? Well, you've got the mountains there that has a strong influence on what kind of habitats or ecosystems that exist in Patagonia. And it's the interaction with the mountains and the prevailing

winds that really drives the whole scene. The winds tend to come in from the west off of the Pacific Ocean, and they carry lots of moisture. When those moist winds or air masses hit the Andes, they drop precipitation on the west side. That could be rain in the northern parts, or it can be lots of snow, especially in the winter. And that, of course, sustains the southern Patagonia ice field, and all those glaciers. The glaciers, I should mention, are, there are many glaciers that it radiate outward from the southern Patagonia ice field. It is the source for those glaciers. So you have this wind coming in from the west. Precipitation drops on the western slopes of the mountains, and then as the air masses continue to the east, they don't have much

moisture left, and they dry out even further as they drop down in elevation to the relatively broad, flat plain that extends from the east slopes of the Andes all the way to the Atlantic ocean. Because other than the Andes, Patagonia is in many places quite flat or just kind of a rolling flat landscape. And it's very dry. So the eastern part of Patagonia is very dry. And because of the latitude, it's quite cool or cold, especially in the winter. So this is a pretty harsh environment, which is why it isn't super biodiverse. Even though it has lots of interesting species of all kinds, unique and fascinating ones, it isn't all that diverse. So we have two major ecoregions that result from this pattern of precipitation and temperature. On the slopes of the Andes, and also

running down into southern Tierra del Fuego, you have an ecoregion called the Magellanic subpolar forests. So an ecoregion includes multiple habitat types, but it's a broad sort of way of describing the ecosystem. So these Magellanic sub-polar forests are dominated by just a couple tree species. There's really not a lot of tree diversity. And those tree species are both in the same genus. There's two or three species. They're in the same genus, Nothophagus, N-O-T-H-O-F-A-G-U-S.

These are called commonly the Southern Beaches, Beach as in B-E-E-C-H-E-S. And yet these beaches are not close relatives of the beaches we know in the northern hemisphere, those in Europe and Asia and North America. So these Notha-Fegas trees, they have small, dark-greenish leaves with kind of a toothed margin. And the trees do vaguely look, I guess, kind of like oaks or beaches. They're quite beautiful. And the two species that are most familiar would be Notha-Fegas Pumilio, which is the Lenga beach, what they call it Lenga, locally.

And that's a deciduous species, so it gets some really nice fall color around this time of year, drops its leaves. And then there's the evergreen species, Notha Vegas Betioloides, Magellan's Beach, it's called, that's one of the common names, or Gwindo, by the locals. So the cool thing about these Notha Vegas trees, and I'll try not to go on and on about this, is that other members of this genus are distributed in other places, other southern latitudes of the world. so in southeastern australia including tasmania in new zealand new caledonia and new guinea and the reason these close relatives of these trees are distributed like that is because they're

really ancient it's an ancient lineage and they hearken back to gondwana the southern supercontinent that all of these other places were a part of millions of years ago many millions of years ago prior to the extinction of the dinosaurs. South America, Antarctica, Australia, those are all connected, as well as New Zealand and New Caledonia and all of that. So it's just cool to see North of Vegas forest because you're seeing kind of a glimpse into the old Gondwanian forests. And this group of plants did provide some really great evidence

for the idea of continental drift. You know, we always have to remember that it wasn't that long ago that nobody thought of or even believed the idea that the continents moved around on the surface of the Earth. We just thought the continents were in place and they've always been there and that's just how it is. But eventually we figured out that the continents move around very, very slowly. One of the strong lines of evidence was finding groups of closely related species

or even the same species distributed around the planet in places that they probably couldn't have gotten to by dispersal, by moving either with seeds or flying or swimming or whatever. So you have these Nothophagus trees, and it's unlikely that they got to where they are today by dispersal. They're there, most likely, because they were on some larger continent, and they had a continuous distribution, and then that continent broke up into pieces and carried fragments of those forests on the pieces. Anyway, I have to cut myself off, because, yeah, it's just a cool topic. But the Magellanic subpolar forests are quite lush.

They get a lot of rainfall, so they're very green. There are lots of things like moss and lichens everywhere, small shrubs, ferns, and these forests support a particular group of birds and other animals. And we'll get to talking about those very soon. So that's one of the two major ecoregions we're talking about. The other is the Patagonian steppe, S-T-E-P-P-E. You can think of these as the Patagonian grasslands, except that when we talk about step,

we're talking about a really dry grassland. It's almost desert. The grasses are not very tall, not very lush. So anyway, yeah, the Patagonian steppe, because it's so cold and dry for large part of the year, and because there's this strong desiccating wind, it's just really hard for many plants to survive. So there are almost no trees on the Patagonian step,

barely even any shrubs sometimes. It's just these kind of low grasses and small herbaceous plants. This is a particularly difficult environment to live in for birds and other wildlife. And I just mentioned wind. I should just point out that Patagonia is famous for its wind across the whole region. And that doesn't mean it's always windy, but it is quite often.

And I personally, you know, from a pretty young age, I decided I didn't really like wind all that much. And I'm trying to have a better attitude about it. But even with that sort of dislike for wind, I really, really like Patagonia. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I'd want to live here, but I certainly like visiting and I haven't really had a problem dealing with the wind. Oh, but I should say that when we began our tour, and I'll get to what we did in a moment here. But when we arrived to Ushuaya,

the city in the southernmost part of our adventure, when we left the airport to get into our bus, our little small bus van thing, the wind was super high and we had to be really careful not to open the doors so that they just ripped off of the vehicle. In fact, we had the luggage lined up on the sidewalk, and everybody was loaded in the van, and I was outside, and I actually had to, like, chase one of the pieces of luggage

as it was like rolling down the sidewalk being blown by the wind. It was really intense and kind of funny, honestly. Okay, so we have these two ecoregions, the Magellanic subpolar forest, and you can imagine where the word sub-polar comes from. It just means we're not quite at the poles, but we're close to the southern pole. And then you have the Patagonian step. Now, across the region, there are some, I would say, some special bird groups that are kind of highlights, and we'll talk about a lot of these along the way today. There are the Rias, and those are an ostrich-like flightless bird. I'll talk about them in a moment. There are two families that are famous in the neotropics in South America, then Central America, for being

incredibly diverse. These are among the most diverse families in the world. One is the family fernaridi. This is the family of oven birds and wood creepers. I wish it had a better sort of common name, but that's what we say. So we call birds in this family fernarids. There are over 300 species in the family and they come in many different flavors in terms of their bill shape and their habits, where they feed and how they feed. They show this really remarkable diversity of body form and beak form or bill form. And you know I will be doing a podcast episode about them before too long at some point, and it will probably be a really long one because it's a really fascinating group in South America. So that's fernariadi. Then the other

family is Tyrannadie. And these are the tyrant flycatchers. We have a few of them in North America, but their stronghold is in South America. And this is actually the most species-rich bird family in the world. There are over 400 species in the family Tyrannity. And there were some interesting representatives that we saw in our time in Patagonia. So those are large families that are found across South America, and they have some interesting representatives in Patagonia. Then there also are a couple monotypic or really small families in Patagonia. And so these would be birds that you would probably only see, or almost certainly only see,

in Patagonia. And I'll talk about those as we come to them along the itinerary. Of course, Antarctica is famous for having penguins, as well as islands like South Georgia and, you know, those really southern islands that have colonies of penguins. But you can see penguins in Patagonia as well, and we did, and it was really cool. More on that later. And then lastly, just in terms of general bird groups, and there's probably more I could think of here, but I think of Karakaras as being one of the special things in Patagonia. There are certainly Caracas in other parts of Latin America, but you have a couple species that you see along most of the journey in Patagonia, and that would be the crested Caracara, as well as the Chimongo Caracara, like the ones that I just heard and saw out my window. All right, here we go. So now I'm going to walk you through a little bit of the actual experience we had.

each of the different parts of the journey and highlighting some of the birds and maybe other natural wonders along the way. So we all met up as a group in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but that is not technically Patagonia, so I'll kind of just gloss over that part. But then we took a flight, about a three and a half hour flight, I believe, down to Ushuaya, which is the southernmost city in the world. It's in Argentina and it is on the south coast of the island of Tierra del Fuego, and it sits right. right on the Beagle Channel. So in terms of latitude, we're talking that it's, you know, somewhere around 54 degrees south latitude. So way down there.

And it's actually a pretty cool town. Like, I really, really like Ushwaya. It is a touristy town. It is the jump-off point for many cruises that go to Antarctica. So there's pretty much always big cruise ships there, at least in the austral summer. But yeah, this is often said to be El Fin del Mundo, the end of the world, and it's in Tierra del Fuego, which I didn't mention earlier, which is

Spanish for the land of fire. Because I guess when some of the first explorers were coming through, they saw the campfires of the native people on the shore. So it became the land of fire, Tierra del Fuego, which I don't know about you, but to me that is just so evocative, you know, that name, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, these are places that, you know, before I ever went there, I heard about since I was a kid, and they just always sounded so adjudicative. adventurous and exciting and exotic. Okay, so now our group is in Ushuaya, and the adventure begins. We start birding.

We're starting to see special birds of the area. And we do two really cool things. The two main sites that we explore are Tierra del Fuego National Park, and then we take a boat ride on the Beagle Channel. So we head west of the city, west of Ushuaya, into the national park, and this is characterized by really lush Magellanic subpolar forest or southern beach forest with lots of old trees and beautiful mountain slopes and it's still right on the ocean, it's on the Beagle Channel,

so you've got these bays and there's rivers feeding into the bays and little lakes and things and it's just gorgeous. So we start birding and we're walking around and right away we see some of our first Andean condors, which for many of us that would be a very exciting bird to see in this part of the world, especially if you've never seen one. And sure enough, there they were. They were kind of circling around pretty high,

but it turned out over the course of the two-week adventure that we saw quite a few condors. So we were very satisfied with the experience with our condors. And then we started seeing other sort of common birds, things like austral thrushes. The austral thrush is in the thrush family. It's a close relative of the American Robin. It's in the same genus, tortoise.

So Austrol, that word turns up a lot when you're in this part of the world. Austral obviously makes you think of Australia, and it actually refers to the south. Because Australia means something like southern land. So when you have something like an austral thrush, it just means a southern thrush. And some other austral birds that we saw on our trip were the Austral Negrito, the Austral Blackbird, and Austral parakeet. And speaking of austral parakeets, this is a really exciting species. to see in Patagonia because it's pretty much, at least when you get down to Ushua,

it's the only member of the parrot group of the order of parrots in the region, and the austral parakeet is actually the southernmost parrot in the world in terms of its distribution. This is a charming species. It's green overall with some blue and kind of rusty accents, and they're squawking and flying around, often in pears, sometimes in flocks, and they're primarily forest birds. so they live in these southern beach forests. So we started seeing some of those, and another bird that is really iconic

and exciting to see in the southern forests, the southern beach forests, is the Magellanic woodpecker. I've talked about this species on the podcast before. It is one of my favorites for sure. So again, there's that word magelanic. So the Magellanic woodpecker is one of eight species of birds that have the word Magellanic in the common name.

So we came up with the arbitrary goal of seeing all of the eight species that have the word Magellanic in the common name. So here we have the Magellanic woodpecker. This is a large woodpecker. It's got a black body overall. The female's entirely black, and she's got a cool little curly crest. The male has an all red head and neck. And so they're both really striking-looking birds.

And they're monogamous. They hang out together all year round. traveling around in the forests, sometimes in small family groups. They're loud, and yet sometimes they can be tricky to find. So really just an awesome bird. Another special bird in this ecoregion, in the sort of forested ecoregion, is the green-backed fire crown, a hummingbird. And it has the special distinction of being the southernmost hummingbird in the world,

just like the parakeet, the austral parakeet, is the southernmost parrot. and with the firecrown, it's the only hummingbird that you see, at least in southernmost Patagonia. So if you see a hummingbird, that is it. In Tierra del Fuego National Park, we started to also see birds that would become pretty familiar like the thorn-tailed rayadito. Thorntailed riotito. This is a member of the Fernaridi family that I mentioned. This is a really charming little bird. It has these kind of stripes on its head of buff and black and white. A really bold pattern in the wings, and the tail indeed has these little, what look like, spiky projections sticking out.

The tips of the tail feathers don't have any barbs, so you're just seeing the shaft or the rakus. And these birds are noisy, they travel around in flocks, and they make these cute little calls and songs, and they can be often quite confiding, so you'll often see them fairly close up. And when we were in the Tierra del Fuego National Park, we had this big flock of them that came in, or just crawling around on the tree trunks and branches all around us, and it was really awesome. So the thorn-tailed Raiadito has the scientific name Afrastura Spina Cata, and that comes from Greek,

and I think it means something like marvelous tale, the genus name anyway. So just kind of a side note is that a couple years ago, there was a paper where researchers identified a new species of Riodito, living in the southernmost part of Patagonia on a little group of islands called the Diego Ramirez Archipelago. And they used genetic data to identify this new species and they named it Afrastura Sub-Antarctica.

At the time I'm recording here, that species is still not recognized by the Clements checklist of birds, which is the one that I typically refer to. But maybe it'll make it onto the list and that there will be a new species there in that these islands that are right at the southern tip of South America, and if that species is designated, if we agree that it is a real thing, which probably we should,

I think that the special distinction there would be that it would be the southern most songbird in the world. So keep an eye out for that, Afrastura, sub-Antarctica. So the thorn-tailed Riodito is in the family Fernarie Adi, and another member of that family that's pretty cool is the white-throated tree runner. And this guy, this bird looks like a nut hatch. And it kind of behaves like that. It's almost like a cross between a nut hatch and a little woodpecker or something. It has a nut hatch-shaped bill, but it braces itself against the tree like a little woodpecker. And, of course, it's not closely related to either of those types of birds.

But this is another species that is closely tied to Notha Vegas trees, to the Magellanic subpolar forests, and it scoots around on the bark looking for invertebrates very much like a nut hatch. Along the coast of Tierra del Fuego National Park and of Ushuaya, there are some really cool ducks. And these are the steamer ducks. In particular, the species, the flightless steamer duck, is my favorite. That's Tachieres Tenerys. This is a big, heavy-bodied bird. It's almost goose-like in its proportions, very thick.

And it is indeed flightless. It can only just paddle around in the water, like a little steamboat. And this bird, because it's flightless, it's always just right on the coast. They'll come out onto the rocks or under the beach, but basically they just are otherwise out in the water, poking around in the kelp beds and things. And so that is a special bird to see in Patagonia and nowhere else. So we're seeing all these birds in the forest and on the coast and we're having a great time and the National Park is beautiful. But then it's time to go back to Ishwaya and jump on a boat with a bunch of other people and head out into the Beagle Channel for a five-hour tour where we are primarily out. there looking for birds. So we've got this catamaran and we're cruising along in the

channel and we got lucky with the weather because the day before as I was mentioning when we started it was ridiculously windy. All the boat trips had been canceled so we actually got lucky that the day we wanted to go out worked out. So we go out there and right away we're seeing some great sea birds there are black-browed albatrosses quite a few actually swooping around over the water. So anytime you see an albatross, that's pretty exciting. And there are also giant petrels, these kind of grayish brown birds that are scavenger sort of opportunistic seabirds. There are both northern and southern giant petrels in the area, and those can be pretty difficult to identify at a distance. So our first major stop is on this really small group of little islands that are

uninhabited. They're just little rocks, basically, and there's a lighthouse there. And we've got some seabird colonies as well as a colony of southern sea lions. So we're bobbing around the water looking at this scene and it's really awesome because first of all we've got two species of cormorants. There are the imperial cormorants and the Magellanic cormorants. So there's another Magellanic bird and they're just covering the rocks. These birds are all over the place in and among the sea lions. But then we spot a couple of these bright white birds. There's just two of them that I recall. And this is where I kind of lose my mind because it turns out that these are snowy sheathbills, Cionis albus. So if you've never heard of a sheath bill, there's only two

species in the world, and this is one of them. They belong to the family Cioniddy. And they're just weird, unusual birds. And I have for years wanted to see one. And this was the first time I ever saw a sheath bill in the flesh. So I was just freaking out. I was pushing little old ladies out of the way. I was knocking people into the water. I was just like, get out of my way. I got to see a sheath bill. It was total chaos. No, no, I maintained my cool. I tried not to show how excited I was about the sheath bill, but I was really, really excited. This could possibly be my bird of the entire trip, honestly. So what do these things look like? I should be more specific. Okay, so you've got kind of a pigeon-like body, sort of, something like a cross between a pigeon, a chicken, and a shorebird. It has

thick gray legs and feet, and its bill is sort of a greenish color, and it has bare pink skin or on its face, but with lots of warts, lots of coruncles. And yes, there is a caratness sheath that surrounds part of the bill. It's unusual for birds. It's kind of unique among birds. So broadly speaking, the snowy sheath bill, or sheath bills in general, birds in the family Cionnody, are shore birds. Their closest relative is the Magellanic Plover. And we're going to talk about that bird in a moment. So not really, yeah, it's just they're odd taxonomically in terms of what they look like and what they actually are, odd in their habitat and their eating habits.

And I don't know, I just like I just like they seem like many people would find them unappealing and unlovable, but that makes them all the more lovable to me. So yeah, maybe someday, well, almost certainly someday I will talk more about the sheath bills when I talk either about the birds of Antarctica, or maybe I'll give those birds an entire episode just to talk about them. Who knows? So anyway, there we are floating on our ship,

looking at these islands. And another bird that we see there is a small songbird, the blackish synchlodes. Synchlodes is spelled C-I-N-C-L-D-E-S. Synchlodes is the name of the genus for the bird, and there are 15 other species in that genus. and most of them just have the common name Sinclodes.

They're in the family Furnariadi, and they look kind of like, some of them look kind of like thrushes, some of look more like mockingbirds, but of course they're not related to those birds. They are fernoreids, and the blackish Sinclodes is one of several that we saw on our trip, and this one was really exciting because it only lives on the shore, and it pokes around in these colonies or along the rocky shoreline looking for little invertebrates and things. And so it is one of the target birds you would want to see on the Beagle channel. And we did, in fact, see it.

Again, I'm freaking out. And some of my fellow travelers in my group were freaking out. But, you know, all these other people on the boat that are just out there taking selfies and whatnot, they couldn't care less about this little black, grayish bird that's walking around on the shore. We tried to get them excited about it, but they weren't having it. But the main attraction of the boat trip is the penguins. That's why most of these people are doing this. They're there to see the penguins.

So we travel for another hour or so on the water, heading east to some penguin colonies. And of course, we're really excited, too. That's probably the main reason we're doing it as well. So we get to these small islands where there are colonies of two species, and it was so cool to see them up close. We stayed on the boat. We didn't walk around among them, but we got to see them quite well. We got to see the Gen 2 penguin in smaller numbers. Maybe there are several dozen. And then we saw maybe several hundred Magellanic penguins. And they were basically side my side. And this was just really cool because these were lifers for most of us, including me, I'd never seen either of these two penguin species. And we got to watch them frolicing around,

standing on the beach, preening, going into the water, swimming, the whole shebang. So the boat trip was a great success. It was super fun. And we saw some amazing birds. Again, the highlight being the snowy sheath bill, everybody's favorite bird. But yeah, we saw some penguins too, I guess, if you, you know, if you like that sort of thing. After a couple of days of exploring the region around Ushuaya and southern Tierra del Fuego, it was time to head north to continue our journey. But first, before we left town, we stopped at the all-important birding site, the dump, the landfill.

Because if you've been birding for a while, you know that much like sewage treatment ponds, The dump can often be a great place to go find birds. And sure enough, we found one of our target birds there at the Ushuaya dump, and that was the white-throated Karakara, which is quite a nice-looking bird. And remember, if we haven't talked about it before, Karakaras, they're raptors, and they have a hawk-like appearance, but they're actually in the falcon family. So they're kind of specialized falcons. So we saw the white-throated Karakara.

We saw a few of them, which was great. And at that same site, we also had our friends, the Chimongo Caracaras and Crested Caracaras in greater numbers. So we got the trifecta there. Now, there is another species that we maybe could have seen, and that's the striated Caracara. I've talked about that a little bit before. But we didn't see that one, unfortunately, so maybe another time. So leaving the dump, then we got in our little bus, and we headed up over the Andes to the north. We head up and over the mountains, and then we drop down.

And then we get into the relatively flat part of Patagonia, and we're still on the island of Tierra del Fuego. But the landscape flattens out, and the forest starts to give way to the step. At first you get kind of an open woodland with a different species of Nothophagus, NothaFegas, Antarctica, I believe it's called. And now we start to see one of the other icons of Patagonia, and that is not a bird, but a mammal, the Guanaco. Guanacos are members of the camel family, their New World camel lids, and they're really beautiful, really charming, and it's really exciting to see them at first,

and it's always exciting, but you end up seeing a lot of them throughout Patagonia. Anyway, they're really cool. They're beautiful animals, and they're especially adapted to the harsh landscape of the Patagonian steppe. But in terms of birds, as we're heading across this flat, dry part,

sort of the northeastern part of Tierra del Fuego, we have one major target, and that is the Magellanic Plover. So there you go, another Magellanic bird. All right, we're getting them. We're knocking them out, because we did, in fact, find the Magellanic Clover. Pluvianelis Socialis.

Now, if I just pointed out the Magellanic Plover, and I said, hey, check that out over there. It's a Magellanic Plover. And you didn't know anything else about the bird. You might be like, well, that's cool. It's like a little gray kind of shore birdy-looking thing, kind of chunky, not overly distinctive looking necessarily. And maybe that's true, but here's the thing about the Magellanic plover.

It is the only species in its family, pluvianelidae. So pluvianelidae is a monotypic family. It has just one species. This bird for a long time was considered a true plover. It was treated as being a member of the family Caradriadi. But more recent research and genetics and all that good stuff has caused ornithes. to reclassify it, putting in its own family, and that family is not even all that closely related to the plover family. The Magellanic plover is more closely related to the

thick knees, which are shorebirds in the family, Burhinidae. And as I mentioned earlier, the Magellanic plover is also a close relative of our friends, the sheath bills. So on these mudflats, we did see some Magellanic plovers, high fives all around. We, my fellow leader, Trip leader David and I tried to get everybody hyped up about why it was exciting to be seeing this bird because again just just based on its appearance it's honestly not all that exciting but yeah people got it and we got excited and again we got this other species with the word Magellanic in the name for our arbitrary goal of getting all eight and in terms of the Magellanic Plover I don't know you know if it'll ever get its own podcast episode maybe

but I should mention that it is definitely a specialty in Patagonia and behaviorally it is different than your typical plover. It has a more methodical approach to the way it forages in these mudflats. A magillanic plover sort of repeatedly pecks at the mud or the substrate as it walks along, bobbing around. Unlike typical plovers that are using their eyesight to run around and grab its stuff. And the magillanic plover will also dig with its feet to find food and sometimes dig quite a hole to look for its prey, and that is unusual for a shore bird as well. So like the sheath bill, if I didn't say, I mean, you know, seeing my first sheath bill meant I also was seeing a representative of a new family for me. Well, the Magellanic blover

was that as well. This was a lifer, and this was my opportunity to see a bird in the family pluvianility, the only bird in that family. And as I've said before, I'm always excited to see a new bird family, to see a representative of that particular lineage on the avian tree of life. To me, that's just really cool. So the last highlight on the island of Tierra del Fuego before we went to the mainland was we visited a penguin colony, not a Magellanic penguin colony, not a Gen 2 penguin colony. This time, it was a colony of king penguins. That's right, king penguins, the second largest species in the world after the emperor penguin.

Many king penguins breed elsewhere, not on the South American mainland or Tierra de Fuego, but this is a colony of several hundred or maybe 200 plus birds that are quite accessible, and you actually have to get sort of a special access. You have to buy a ticket anyway to get into this thing, and you have to be guided. And it is amazing. You're just seeing these birds on this bay in the Patagonian steppe. There's grassland and little sand dunes around, and there they are, and they're gorgeous. And it's amazing to be seeing king penguins.

And so while we're visiting the colony, taking pictures and all that good stuff, we discover, we are told by our guide that there is a special visitor in the colony. There is a vagrant bird that is a long way from home tucked in among the king penguins. There's another penguin species, one individual of snares penguin. This is a much smaller bird than the king penguins, and we did see him, and he's kind of just tucked in there among the king penguins. in there among the larger penguins just hanging out, acting like it's no big deal, hoping maybe he doesn't get noticed. And where is Snares penguin actually native to? They breed on the Snares Islands, which is a cluster of uninhabited islands off of southern New Zealand, further south

than Stewart Island. Who knows how this Snares penguin got to Tierra del Fuego? Maybe it ran into some king penguins and decided to follow them and ended up there. Who knows? The The guides and researchers at the king penguin colony affectionately named this individual snares penguin Hugo or in Spanish, Hugo. And so, yeah, we got to see Hugo and he was cute and it was really cool. And the snares penguin is kind of a smallish penguin and it has a prominent eyebrow or supercilium of pale feathers on what is otherwise a pretty much black head and a thick orange bill.

So that was completely unexpected. I don't think I would have ever imagined that in my life I would actually get to see a snares penguin. So that means, on this trip in Patagonia, we ended up seeing four species of penguins. And just FYI, as an aside, since I've been traveling in Chile, I picked up another penguin species. On the central coast of Chile, I saw Humboldt penguins right off the coast. So I've seen five penguin species on this trip. So finally, we left Tierra del Fuego. We got on a ferry with our bus, and we took a ride across the Strait of Magellan.

Only took about 45 minutes because we went across the sort of narrow part of the strait. And we scoured the waves on either side of the ferry, looking for yet another Magellanic species. We were looking for the Magellanic diving petrel, a seabird. But try as we might, we did not get that one. But once we were on the mainland, we were rich. rewarded with our first sights of the lesser Ria. So Ria is spelled R-H-E-A. The species is Ria Paneda, and this is a, again, large, flightless bird, much like an ostrich in appearance or a cassowary. Rias, there are only two species and they're in their own family, Ria-D, and that family is in its own

order, Reaformis. But these birds are more or less related to ostriches, cassowary's, all those guys. Those are all in the clay, the sort of lineage of birds we call the paleognaths. So we're driving along and you see these things that kind of look like little brown bushes out in the grass in this empty landscape. But no, those sort of fluffy balls with legs, with two legs, are lesser rea. And they're very, they're lovely birds. And much like the Guanacos, they are amazing in their ability to thrive in the harsh environment of the Patagonian step. So I should mention that we have now transitioned from Argentina to Chile, just before we

saw the King Penguin colony on Tierra do Fuego, we crossed the border into Chile. So now we're in Chile, now we're on the mainland, having crossed the street of Magellan, we're heading north, and our destination is the next major set piece of the adventure, and that is Torres del Paine National Park. Torres del Pine is in the Andes, and it is a beautiful national park. park that is characterized by mountains that have been heavily sculpted by ice, by glaciers. So you have the torres or towers themselves, these pinnacles that look tooth-like or very, very tower-like. And then there are the quernos, the horns, which are also these iconic peaks

that have these sheer sides and just really amazing appearances. So the landscapes of this park are really one of the big reasons you go. The first couple days that we were there were actually kind of cloudy and then it kind of rained a lot, so we didn't get those big views, big landscapes at first. But finally on our last full day,

we were rewarded, the sky opened up, we got amazing views of the mountains, and it was spectacular. Another famous thing for that region is the presence of a mountain lion population or Pumas. They're called Pumas or Cougars, right?

But locally, they're called Pumas. So many people go to that area to see these big cats, often that are active during the day. They hunt the Guanacos primarily. We did not see any Pumas. We weren't really trying specifically for them. You kind of have to go with like a tracker, and it's a whole thing. But there was one that we were warned about at our lodge. They said, yeah, there's this female Puma in the area near the river,

and she's got a youngster with her that she's training to hunt, so watch out if you go for a walk. So that was kind of cool. And a side note about Pumas is that apparently on the east coast of Argentina in Patagonia, the Pumas there will actually eat Magellanic penguins. Like that's one of the main things they eat. How crazy is that? Like a mountain lion hunting a penguin. That's just kind of crazy.

So, but that's mammals. Let's get back to the birds. So, you know, again, we're mostly enjoying the landscapes, learning about the geology, some of the ecology, considering the glacial history of the park. But there were some good birds as well. Some of the same species we had been seeing from our time in Ushwaya, but we picked up some new ones like the Tufted Tit Tyrant.

This is a great little bird. Very charismatic, kind of like the thorn-tailed Riodito. But like its name, the Tufted Tit Tyrant, or the Triple T, T-Cubed. This species is in the family Tyrannity, the Tyrant Flycatcher family. tufted tit tyrants are small and they're energetic they have a kind of short little bill and a crest so in some ways they do act and look sort of like a tit like a member of the family parody so it has this cool little jazzy crest that curls upwards and then kind of curls forwards these thin little feathers on the head and the head the face and head and neck are thickly or dramatically striped they're these parallel stripes of basically black and white. That to me is pretty dramatic. And then the eyes, the irises, are pale. So it has this bright-eyed look. It's just a great little bird. And then we got Magellanic woodpeckers, a really good look at Magellanic woodpeckers in the forests of Torres del Pinae. We got our first look

at a Chilean hawk. And one, we got yet another Magellanic species, a Magellanic tapaculo. Tapaculos are a special bird in the neotropics. There are about six. 65 species. They're all in the family rhino-cryptody. They're famous for being skulky, secretive birds. They're often really difficult to see. You hear them far more often than you see them. And they're kind of wren-like. They're often stout-bodied, kind of little, little feathered balls with legs, and their tails are cocked up. And they're really just really hard to see. So it was very exciting to see a Magellanic Topiculow. And that species is basically kind of really dark gray or black all over. And that was a lifer for me as well as pretty much everybody

else in the group, except for our local guide. And I did get a recording of a Magellanic Tapaculo while I was here exploring in Chile. And so I'll play that for you now. It's, there's a lot of background noise because there was a stream nearby, right where the bird was calling from. So we had a lovely time at Torres del Pined National Park in Chile, and then it was time to head back to Argentina. So we headed east, crossed the border, and now we are squarely within the Patagonian step. We're seeing kind of the best example of that now, and it just extends as far as the eye can see for miles and miles and miles, for hours along our drive on that day. And at this time of year, I mean, it's, it's, we're basically in fall in the austral fall. So the grass is brown and kind of straw colored.

And yeah, it, it appears to be a pretty lifeless environment. And again, the diversity is low. But of course, you have things like guanacos and lesser rea and condors and all kinds of other birds. And we actually saw an armadillo. So armadillos are primarily South American animals. We do have the one species in North America. America. But we spotted a large hairy armadillo. That's the actual common name, large hairy armadillo. It was on the side of the road scuttling around. And so it was digging into the

ground, kind of making a burrow by a fence. And so I walked up to it. And I could really just see the back and the tail. And it indeed was quite hairy. And yeah, I was just really jazzed because I'd only ever seen one other armadillo ever. I saw one in Texas one time. And so this was just really cool to see it. So our destination on this day as we've crossed back into Argentina is the town of El Calafate. And as we're approaching, as we're crossing the step heading towards El Calafate, we stop at a viewpoint, looking out over this vast landscape, but we can also see the Andes in the distance, the snow-capped peaks. In particular, we get this view of Mount Fitzroy, also known as Cerro Chalten, or El Chalten. This is a peak that's

about 11,100 feet in elevation or 3,400 meters. It's pretty famous for climbers. And I learned at that moment, as I'm looking at the thing through my scope, that this is, if you know the brand Patagonia, which I have quite a bit of their stuff, I like their sweaters and outerwear and bags and stuff, the logo for Patagonia is actually the thing that I was looking at, which is this skyline of those peaks with Mount Fitzroy or Cerrochaltan right there in the logo. So that was kind of weird. Anyway, so it was cool to see that because we didn't really get to see that peak anywhere else on our trip because we weren't really going there. So we continued to El Calafate and got settled in at our lodge.

El Calafate is kind of like Ushwaya, a bit of a touristy town, but also has some charm. I like El Calafate quite a lot. It has built up a lot in the last couple decades around the tourism industry, primarily because of the presence of the lake that it's sitting on. Argentino or Argentino, which is this massive lake carved out by a glacier during the ice ages. And also the tourism is focused on the nearby glaciers and the mountains and trekking and all that stuff. So there are lots of lodges and restaurants and outdoor gear shops and all that and lots of foreigners. So right around the town of El Calafate, there's some good birding that you can do. You can go into the step environment and find special birds that are only found

out there in the grasslands like the Patagonian mockingbird, sharp-billed conistero, and scale-throated earth creeper. So the latter bird has a scientific name Upasurthia Dumataria. It lives in kind of shrubby vegetation on rocky slopes and in the step in general, mostly in grasslands. And it looks, if you're from North America, it looks a bit like a thrasher. It has a relatively long, down-curbed bill, kind of a longer tail. But this bird is in. in the family for an areaidae. And this was a cool bird to see, you know, the very first one we tried really hard. It was very distant and we're trying to get everybody on it with the scope and describing

where it was. And it was very challenging. And then we traveled down the road a little further and they were just everywhere, which was really cool. And dig this. We saw, this is amazing. We saw one of these scale-throated earth creepers that was lucistic. We see this white thing in a bush and we think, oh, this must be a piece of wind-blown

trash or something, plastic. like, no, that is a bird, and that bird is entirely white, and it has a long down-curve bill, and it is a scale-throated earth creeper that has no melanin in its feathers. Now, we looked at it through our binoculars and with photos, and we could see that the iris of the eye was dark. So it's not, it wasn't an albino, because an albino bird would have no melanin whatsoever, no pigment anywhere, including the eyes. But because this bird had darker eyes, it means that the melanin was not getting deposited

it into the feathers, which makes it lucistic. And I'll do the, I'll do an episode, a podcast episode about that. I think that would be really interesting to talk about melanistic birds, lucistic birds and all of that stuff, albino birds, just to try to explain how that works at the genetic and cellular level. So anyway, here we are. We're looking at this scale thwarted earth creeper, and we're all just realizing how rare this is to be seeing this bird. And right away, of course, we came up with a name for him. we named him Pedro Blanco, and Pedro Blanco was an adult bird, presumably, and who knows how old he or she was, and hopefully by being white and being an easy target that Pedro Blanco will survive for as long as possible. Anyway, that was super cool. So the other birding you can do right

in Alcalafate is along the lake shore. There's a wetland area there that's protected. It's called Reserva Laguna Nimes, and it's really fantastic. birding, and we got another of our target birds there, which was the Chilean flamingo. We saw just a couple individuals, but it was really exciting, and lots of other great waterfowl and water birds, marsh birds. So Laguna Nimes was really rewarding. And then our last major site was we headed west from El Calafate to the mountains, and we went to see the glacier. So there's Los Glacieres National Park, and there is the Paris. Moreno Glacier that comes out of the Andes and meets Lago Argentino, and it's one of these glaciers

you can just be standing right in front of looking at it, and you can actually, on a clear day, see almost the entirety of the thing as it extends 20 miles up into the mountains, and the face of it is three miles wide, and it is spectacular. So we went up to enjoy the glacier, and right where the glacier is meeting the lake, there's kind of this little peninsula of land, and it is forested, so you have this Magellanic subpolar forest right up against this glacier, and there can be flowers blooming, and there are birds flying all around, and one of the craziest things to me is the presence of these austral parakeets. Now, to see a flock of parakeets flying in front of the face of a glacier is just kind of surreal. And while we were enjoying the scenery of the

glacier, we got rewarded with this massive calving event where a big, big chunk of ice broke off and fell into the lake. And it was enormous. And we were just like, oh my God, it was incredible. You know, it splashed into the water with an enormous roar and then it rolled and rolled as it was bobbing in the water. It was insane. Our local guide said he'd been coming there for 35 years and had never seen a piece that big break off. It was a lovely day. We were rewarded with basically a windless day, which is again very rare in that part of the world. And we could see the entire glacier. There were some great birds, and we just had this great walk and a great day. So I want to end this episode with just a few general thoughts on my experience and my

impression of Patagonia. I've had the good fortune of traveling to many different places around the world, and I do have a number of favorite places, although that's always kind of an evolving thing. It's kind of like my list of favorite birds. It's always changing, always evolving. But I really, really like Patagonia. It really speaks to me. And I just find it fascinating and beautiful and yeah, a really great place to explore. As I've mentioned, it's not the most diverse place in terms of species, but the species that are here, the particular mix of species, is really interesting. You have a fascinating mixture of geology and the climate patterns with the climate history in terms of the ice ages and the geographic position of Patagonia, which is this weird

thing, right, where it has this kind of, as we say, the southern cone of South America with no large landmasses anywhere nearby. And so it's isolated in its own way. And yeah, it really does feel like you're at the end of the world, El Fin del Mundo. So if you don't mind a little wind and you are drawn to temperate environments that are way out there, this might be a place that you would really enjoy. You can certainly see unique birds here, maybe pick up some penguin species, see some interesting mammals like Guanacos, Armadillos, maybe a Puma if you're lucky. And if you want to complete your Magellanic bird list, this is the place you got to come. I should mention that we also got Magellanic Oyster Catcher and we got Magellanic Snipe on our trip.

So we got seven of the eight Magellanic birds. We just missed that diving petrol. Now I have to make it my life's goal to get the Magellanic diving petrol. Otherwise, my life will be a waste. Also, in terms of just general thoughts about the area, it's a sparsely populated part of the world. So you have most of the population in the towns that you pass through, which there aren't that many.

So that's where most of the people are. Otherwise, it feels like a pretty empty landscape. There are lots of ranches and things, but the population density is low. And it feels like a safe part of the world to travel through. I've traveled through with a group as a tour guy, but also independently, and I've never had any problems. It always feels safe. People are friendly.

And even on the highways, people don't drive all that aggressively. I have found I feel like it's pretty chill within reason. So, yeah, I think it's an inviting place for a natural. list or a birder to visit, whether that's with a group or on their own. So yeah, in case it's not obvious, yeah, two thumbs way up for Patagonia from this guy. So I will leave you with a little vignette, a little thing that happened on our last full day in Patagonia, where you just, we were just like, yeah, this is, this is happening. We are truly in Patagonia now. So we're driving on the way west from El Calafate to Los Glacieres National Park, and we're still kind of in an open landscape

of step, but that's starting to transition into woodland or forest. And we see some commotion out in a field off the side of the road. So we pull the bus over, we get out, we get the scope, and what is it? There is a big group of birds in a pile on something. And pretty quickly we figure out, okay, it's probably a sheep carcass. And these are scavengers. So we've got condors, Andean condors, that are kind of sitting off to the side. But then on the sheep, there are a whole bunch of crested caracaras and some chimango caracaras, like dozens of them. And I would say there are 15 condors. And it looks like maybe the condors have already had their fill and their crops are full

and they're just hanging out, digesting for a while. Maybe they're considering going back for seconds or thirds. Because remember from, I think it was episode two, I talked about the dominance hierarchy of these scavenging birds, right? So the condors being big bruisers, they come in. They tend to be the first birds that can dominate. the kill, and then later on, the kherakaris can come in and get the scraps. Anyway, there we are. We're standing on the side of the road. We've got the scope and our

binoculars, and this is one of the better looks we get at condors. Some of them are spreading their wings with a big, bold, black and white patterns. We see some of the males with their reddish skin on their heads and big crests. And all the adults have a big white rough of feathers around the base of their neck. Just really beautiful, amazing animals. And so we're enjoying that. taking our time, soaking it in. And then here comes another bird. We see this black-chested buzzard eagles swooping in. And that was one of the target birds we'd been looking for.

We'd only had kind of distant views of it. And here it comes. It lands among the Karakara's, a great, beautiful raptor. And it just kind of surveys the scene for a while, and it flies away. It didn't seem to eat anything. I don't know what it was doing there, but I think that species does sometimes scavenge. And then we keep scanning around, and we actually then see some gray foxes. that are looking towards the kill, they're kind of skulking forward,

maybe thinking about poking around and getting some food, and then one actually does get quite close. And then, you know, if you look around a little further, oh yeah, there are some lesser Ria over there, some Rias, there are some gonacos over there. So, you know, then you've got the Andes in the distance with the glaciers and the ice, and you're on the Patagonian step,

and you just go, yeah, all right, this is cool. Yeah, this is why you do this. This is why you travel and come to a place like this is like moments like this where you're like, this is so amazing. You just can't even believe it. So yeah, that happened and it was great. And yeah. And things are great here.

I'm happy. Life is good. I am in Chile for another couple of days. There are some cool parks around here, some volcanoes, snow-covered volcanoes with forest on the slopes. I've got a few more target birds that maybe I'll pick up if I'm lucky. And yeah, I think that's going to be it for this episode from this From the Field episode. I'll be home soon and getting back to the sort of normal episodes, but yeah, this is, I've done this a few times now and I will continue to do it when I'm able to on my longer travels. Thank you so much for listening for vicariously traveling through Patagonia with me today and I will see you and talk to you in the next episode.

Cheers. Thank you.