15 Mar 18 - Chile: Hummingbirds In The Desert

It was a dawn start as I had another day where I wanted to cover a lot of ground & I knew it would get hot quickly. The first site to cover was San Miguel de Azapa. This is an extended village in the Southern of the two valleys which run down to the coastline around Arica. The valley is less than a mile across with steep arid sides. The riverbed itself was bone dry, but there must be a lot of water extracted from the underground water table to irrigate the valley. It was very reminiscent of the contrast between an irrigated kibbutz & the surrounding desert in Israel. Chile was also similar to Israeli Birding in there were a limited number of potential Ticks in the country, albeit more than on my first Israel trip. This morning around San Miguel de Azapa, there were six potential Ticks & this was one of the best totals for any site. In the end I managed to find four of the six species, but I due a blank on Peruvian Thick-knee & Chilean Woodstar. Chilean Woodstars are a rapidly declining endemic & are limited to a few areas of natural woodland in the valleys in the extreme North of Chile. Peruvian Thick-knee is on the edge of its range in the Arica valleys, but it occurs further North as far as SW Ecuador. I tried driving along the valley & stopping to check out every orchard, as other Birders have bumped into the Peruvian Thick-knees roosting up under the trees. After a couple of hours, this tactic was clearly not working & I had checked all the accessible orchards as far as possible. Still it should be easier to see on a trip to Peru in the future.

American Kestrel: This is the cinnamominus subspecies which occurs in SE Peru, Chile & Argentina

There are also three species of Hummingbirds in the valley & all would be new: Peruvian Sheartail, Chilean Woodstar & Oasis Hummingbird. Peruvian Sheartail is a relatively recent new species to Chile, with the first record being seen in 1971. It is thought to be one of the reasons the Chilean Woodstars are declining, as the Peruvian Sheartails are able to outcompete them. Habitat loss & increased use of pesticides are probably also significant factors. After an hour of looking I had seen my first Peruvian Sheartail & adult males are easy to identify. But I didn't see any other Hummingbirds.

Peruvian Sheartail: Adult male. Their overall length is around seven inches, but the body length is under three inches

Having run out of orchards to look for Peruvian Thick-knees & struggled with most of the other local goodies, it was time for Plan B: to visit the Hummingbird Garden or El Santuario del Picaflor. The gardens don't open until 09:00 & aren't well signposted. I found it easier to look for the Hydraulics Institute & then spotted the small sign to the gardens on the track boarding the Institute. There was a small entrance fee to pay to walk around.

The Hummingbird gardens: There are no feeders, just lots of flowers

The Hummingbird gardens: Plus, a number of places to sit & look at yester year technology

The Hummingbird gardens: The only disadvantage is the amount of watering has allowed Mozzies to survive

The Hummingbird gardens: Another seating area in the gardens

The Hummingbird gardens

The Hummingbird gardens: The neighbouring monoculture. Unfortunately, most of the valley looks like this

It didn't take long to locate the first of several Oasis Hummingbirds.

Oasis Hummingbird: They are the largest of the three Hummingbirds by body size & have a longer, slightly decurved bill

Oasis Hummingbird: The rusty coloured rump is another feature as the other two species have green rumps

Oasis Hummingbird: Although, it isn't possible to see the bill, the rusty edges to the rump indicates this is another Oasis Hummingbird

Oasis Hummingbird

Oasis Hummingbird: One of the staff pointed out this Oasis Hummingbird nest

Peruvian Sheartail: This Hummingbird was a lot trickier to figure out than the adult male seen earlier in the morning. The smaller size & green rump indicates it isn't an Oasis Hummingbird. The tail tips are fairly long & have prominent white tips suggesting Peruvian Sheartail, rather than a Chilean Woodstar which would have a short tail with less obvious white in the tail

Peruvian Sheartail: Chilean Woodstars should have buffier flanks & a cleaner white throat

South American White-winged Dove

I had also drawn a blank when I was looking around the valley for the two new members of the Tanager family: Cinereous Conebill & Slender-billed Finch. However, my backup site was the Hummingbird garden & I had seen both species within ten or fifteen minutes of arriving.

Cinereous Conebill: This is the littorale subspecies which occurs in the West slope of the West Andes in Peru & North Chile. Other subspecies occur as far North as Southern Colombia

Cinereous Conebill: They are clearly helping the farmers remove insects from the crops

Slender-billed Finch: They occur from coastal West Peru to North Chile

Slender-billed Finch: The family that run the Hummingbird Garden had a small cafe serving natural fruit juices & hot drinks. I discovered the better strategy was to sit in the cafe & wait for this individual to reappear as it kept coming into the cafe to look around the picked fruit

Slender-billed Finch: Finally, a better place to perch

Slender-billed Finch: Immature. The posture & jizz help to identify this immature individual

Slender-billed Finch: Immature

It was getting on & I had seen all I thought was going to see, so it was time to get on the road to my next location of Putre. I was leaving the coastal area & going up to 3500 metres for my next night. Putre was the starting point for a drive up to Lauca National Park at 4500 metres.

It turns to desert as soon as you leave the valley bottom: The start of the road to Putra

Looking back on the valley from 50 metres above it

After driving for over an hour towards Putre, I tried an ad-hoc roadside stop at 2700 metres where there was a steep, but shallow, dry riverbed to the right of the road. This was before the small town of Zapahuira. One of the Birdquest tours had found Greyish Miners around the head of the valley near Zapahuira, but I had no better directions. Fortunately, I was within the general habitat as after thirty minutes of walking I had found a Greyish Miner: another Tick.

Greyish Miner: A record shot with the SX60. The more I use my SX60, the less I like it as a camera, as the colour balance is far too saturated & the image quality, unless really close to the subject, isn't great

Lizard sp.: Unidentified Lizard in the Greyish Miner riverbed

14 Mar 18 - Chile: Desert Geoglyphs & Tamarugo Conebills

When I was planning the Chile trip, one of my main targets was Horned Coot which meant visiting San Pedro de Atacama. This was 450 miles from Arica, which is the main hub for Northern Chile Birding. There was little of interest in between these two areas as it was mainly the Atacama Desert. But there was one near endemic, Tamarugo Conebill, along this route. This occurs in areas of Tamarugo trees in the Northern half of the route. Therefore, it made sense to try finding somewhere to break the journey and then travel the Northern half in the daytime. A quick look at the map suggested the town of Pica might be the best option to break the journey. It was twenty five miles off the Pan American Highway & near the Pampa del Tamarugal National Reserve, which is an area where new plantations of Tamarugo trees were being planted in the Atacama. Normally, planning trees in a desert would sound like a recipe for failure, but Tamarugo trees are are well-suited to the harsh, dry conditions. They are also the preferred habitat for Tamarugo Conebills. Pica was looking like the perfect place to spent the night, especially as it had a few touristy sites nearby. Looking further there was also a site with many geoglyphs next to the turn off from the Pan American Highway. Geoglyphs are markings on the ground or in this case, on the hillside. These geoglyphs date back to the first inhabitants of the region & they are thought to be around 1500 years old. They are similar to the Nazca lines in Peru. My hotel, the Hotel Rucaru, turned out as a clean & convenient B&B for the night, with a nearby cafe for food on the previous evening. Soon after first light I was leaving the hotel, but I hadn't got out of town before I had to stop at one of the local parks. There was no entrance charge, although I thought I would help one of the local booths & buy an ice cream. This celebrates one of the other things that makes Pica a tourist destination: dinosaurs have been found at several local sites.

Piatnitzkysaurus

Triceratops

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Giganotosaurus

Stegosaurus

Croaking Ground-dove: There were a couple skulking around the Dinosaur Park

Just before the main road, there was a large plantation of Tamarugo trees. There was a rough track across the bare desert & it looked drivable: fortunately, it was as I would have struggled had the car got stuck. The trees looked mature, but the big question was where the Tamarugo Conebills had found this plantation. After an extensive search, the answer seemed to be no & the plantation had very few avian residents. With two hundred miles before I reached Arica, there should be more opportunities before the end of my journey. The next stop was the geoglyphs. When I reached the Pan American Highway, I carried straight across onto a dirt road for a mile or two. The geoglyphs, called the Geoglifos de Pintados, were clearly marked out along a four km length of the dry sandy hillsides. There was a small visitor centre there, but unfortunately, it was closed. The dirt road runs alongside the base of the hills & provides a good viewpoint of the geoglyphs. But there is nothing to stop me looking around. It was well worth a look.

Geoglyphs: The hillsides are covered in the carvings

Geoglyphs

Geoglyphs

Geoglyphs

Geoglyph: Some designs were fairly obvious like this Llama or Vicuna design. They have been made by exposing the pale sandy hillside by moving all the covering rocks. So a similar principle to the many chalk hill carvings in the UK like the Fovant badges

Geoglyph: This hillside was a mass of mainly abstract geoglyphs

Geoglyph: More abstract geoglyphs

Geoglyph: A few more recognisable geoglyphs

Geoglyph: This looks like a Fish, Cetacean or Seal with a big mouth

Geoglyph: An early self-portrait?

Geoglyph: The earliest known 'Where's Wally'

Geoglyph: Wally with poncho & Mrs Wally to his left

After an hour, it was time to move on. I still had a couple of hundred miles to Arica.

The Atacama Desert at its most tedious: There were many miles that looked like this

I didn't know how many stands of Tamarugo trees I would be checking. Every now & then, I did see Tamarugo trees. I stopped at two or three areas where I could get the car off the road. But I had no success. But I did see this cracking Red-backed Hawk along one side track.

Red-backed Hawk: Taxonomically, for many years this widespread South American species was split from the High Andes Puna Hawk, but now they are more regarded as a single species & Clements doesn't even recognise Puna Hawk as a subspecies. After being lumped, the species was renamed as Variable Hawk, but I've stuck to the name I initially learnt

Finally, another roadside stop on the Pan American Highway worked out & I saw a couple of Tamarugo Conebills. Despite the Tamarugo trees being fairly open, they were remarkable good at getting branches in the way.

Tamarugo Conebill

Tamarugo trees

Tamarugo trees: The spines are worth avoiding

I could now press on at a faster pace towards Arica, without having to stop at other stands of Tamarugo trees. There were more geoglyphs on the hillsides, albeit there weren't as impressive as the ones near Pica.

Geoglyph: This roadside geoglyph seems to show a Bird of Prey sitting in the sun

A final geoglyph

About 75 miles I started to descend into the Camarones Valley. This descent took several miles before I finally reached the valley bottom & the checkpoint between the Tarapaca and Arica y Parinacota states. Just after the checkpoint was a rough track up the valley.

The start of the decent into the Camerones Valley: It would be hard to miss given it was several miles to the bottom

When I was planning the trip, I found the Camarones Valley was a site for Tamarugo Conebill. More interesting, there were a lot of very recent sightings over the previous year or two of Raimondi's Yellow-finch. This had only been confirmed as a new arrival to Chile from Southern Peru. One sighting I came across had a flock of 75. This was clearly worth a break from driving.

Camarones Valley: I drove through this farmland field for a couple of miles, but no sign of any Raimondi Yellow-finches. However, previous reports suggested I needed to go several miles further along the track

Camarones Valley: Well my hire car wasn't going to get through this. Guess I will have to hope to see a Raimondi Yellow-finch on a future Peru trip. I did see a couple more Tamarugo Conebills before I had to abandon the search

Looking down on the Camerones Valley from the Arica side

There was this interesting sculpture about fifteen miles South of Arica. Apparently, it recognises the first occupants in the Atacama Desert.

The Origin of Life sculptures near Arica

It was time to carry onto Arica.

Arica is only 20 km from the Peruvian border

I finally arrived at Arica with a couple of hours of light left. It took half an hour to figure my way across town & to find the Isla Alacran. This is a peninsula sticking out at the Southern end of the town to a rocky island. I had hoped to be able to drive out to the end, but found the road was blocked off after a hundred metres. However, it was a convenient place to scan one of the harbours. The main fishing port harbour is further North & I wasn't aware I could have taken the car in there & looked at that harbour. That would have been a better place to spent the rest of the late afternoon. But I did get to check it out later in my trip. There were large numbers of Grey Gulls & Franklin's Gulls, as well as, a few Neotropic Cormorants & Peruvian Pelicans. Close to dusk, I headed off to find my B&B for the night.

Isla Alacran: This was mentioned as worth a look in Pearman's old site guide to the Birds of Chile. It should be better if you can get out to the far end of the peninsula, but I didn't try to see if that was possible to do on foot. I had a pelagic booked for 17 Mar & therefore hoped to see the local Seabirds on that. However, I was looking for roosting Cormorants as I still needed Red-legged Cormorant & Pelagic Cormorant at this point in the trip. I wasn't aware that I would stand a better chance looking for them from the fishing harbour, where the pelagic started (see the pelagic post)

South American White-winged Dove: Clements now calls this West Peruvian Dove, after a split a few years ago from the White-winged Dove that occurs in the Southern states of the US as far South as Panama, as well as, the Caribbean. As it occurs from Southern Ecuador to Northern Chile, then West Peruvian Dove isn't a particularly good name in my opinion. This is a fairly common species in the Arica area, but a good-looking Dove