Patagonia at Last!

 Oh boy we made it! After an overnight stop in Madrid and another in Buenos Aires we touched down in El Calafate in southern Argentina at 8am local time. I'm not going to dwell on sleeping through my alarm this morning and literally having 10 minutes to pack as the cab was waiting to take us to Jorge Newbery Airport. Think i've only ever done that once whilst overseas birding and certainly not done that leading a Zoothera Birding trip! So I slept the whole 3 hour flight this morning as the plane left at 5am and I was still reeling from oversleeping - but literally only had 2 hours sleep last night anyway. 

But isn't it funny, no matter how little or disrupted your sleep is, that when you're heading to a birding trip you find yourself full of beans and raring to go no matter what. And around 9.15am Pete and I were in the rental car and off towards the town. The road skirted the massive Lago Argentina and we pulled up to an overlook next to Reserva Laguna Numez. And there were birds. Lots of them. The sky was blue, temperature was a little cool and there wasn't any wind that Patagonia is so infamous for! 

Laguna Nimez Reserve is a fantastic place

A Cinereous Harrier gave ridiculously good views as it hunted right in front of us and I was mesmerised watching it, practically ignoring a male Spectacled Tyrant tarting itself beside our car. Out on the lagoon it was fun using my new Swarovski ATX 95 scope and getting eye-scorching looks at (yes Roberta that one is for you!) Red-fronted and White-winged Coots. Plenty of common wildfowl were around and it was kind of nice to familiarise myself with Red Shoveler, Yellow-billed Pintail, Yellow-billed Teal, Chiloe Wigeon, Lake Ducks, Upland Geese and some Coscoroba Swans. 

Spectacled Tyrant

Cinereous Harrier

A short distance along the road was the Visitor Centre and we duly paid our ten dollars and spent the next few hours doing a circuit of the reserve. At the back of my mind I had grand ideas of finding Austral Rail but the day warmed up very quickly and a surprising number of visitors were strolling along the trails, making it quite futile spending any time searching for anything remotely skulking. Saying that we did see 2 Plumbeous Rails and a Wren-like Rushbird. 

It's a great reserve with some superb scenery too

I love the goofy look on a Red Shoveler

Everything else was repeats of earlier but also included a flotilla of Black-necked Swans, Chimango Caracara, White-winged Coots, Black-chinned Siskin, Long-tailed Meadowlark and a couple Mourning Sierra-Finches. There were some other common species but i'm not going to bore you with them! I did like very close views of Chilean Swallows and certainly enjoyed being perturbed for a few minutes by those pesky female Spectacled Tyrants!

Looking back down the road towards Lago Argentina

So with cheese and ham bagels at the ready we set off to check a few rail spots. But that was a bust as the habitat didn't look right so ended up driving out of town some 15kms to Hoya del Chingue to see if there were any Cinnamon-bellied Ground-Tyrants around - a lifer for both of us. The road soon became a rocky sort of bumpy track and after 10kms we turned off for another 5kms and went uphill to the old ski resort. It was a tricky drive in our little Fiat but we made it and duly scored the ground-tyrant after numerous stops and false alarms. A family of Spot-billed Ground-Tyrants were nice and many Scale-throated Earthcreepers were around but apart from masses of Rufous-collared Sparrows not a lot else. I still want to get Austral Canastero, Short-billed Miner and Band-tailed Earthcreeper (all lifers) but they might have to wait as we are heading into the National Park tomorrow...

As we'd returned to the hotel around 5pm and with sunset not until 9.20pm we decided to have an hour off at the hotel and go out again in the evening. The wind had built up unfortunately and there was no sign of Magellanic Plover, but we did get White-tufted Grebe, 4 Lesser Yellowlegs and Magellanic Snipe in the glorious evening light. Then we returned to the hotel for a few beers (of course) and a great meal. And that was our day....