TRECE/ Aves o Pájaros (Birds)

The river valley cut through rainforest burgeoning with ferny undergrowth, the silence punctuated by the musical prattle of the chucao, a smallish bird with a vertical tail, its trill part of the daily background noise.
—Sara Wheeler, Travels in a Thin Country

WARNING: If you are not an avid birdwatcher, you might want to skip to the link to special bird sounds in the last paragraph of the post.

We brought binoculars to Chile for the first time on this trip, along with Birds of Chile, by Alvaro Jaramillo, an excellent field guide. There’s nothing like starting from scratch, when even the most ordinary birds are new and exciting. We identified more than 45 bird species on the trip. Some highlights:

Black-crowned night-heron (huiaravo), in two locations, a group of juveniles asleep in a tree we happened to collapse under for a rest in the shade in the Jardín Botánico de la Universidad de Austral, right in Valdivia (they were so close, one shat and missed Michael’s face by inches), and an adult pair at dusk near the furthest western point of our travels into the Andes, toward Argentina, on the shore of Lago Maihue.

Endangered red-legged cormorant (lile), hundreds of them nesting on a series of haystack rocks just off the Pacific coast at Pilolcura, the end-of-the-dirt-road beach north of Niebla.

Black-necked swan (cisne de cuello negro), viewed from Lucy’s house on Río Valdivia, all along Río Cruces, and at the mouth of Lago Maihue. Their population dropped a few years ago due to pollution from a pulp plant up the river. Following a round of environmental protests, pulp production was restricted for a time, and the swans’ number have now increased dramatically. But we were told that the pulp mill has again been allowed to return to full production. In 2007, when Michelle Bachelet visited Valdivia and spoke near the Feria Fluvial, we saw protesters dressed in dramatic black swan costumes (reminiscent of Bjork’s swan dress at the Oscars), loudly advocating for more permanent protection for the swans, but it hasn’t happened yet. They are graceful and majestic birds, very beautiful to see along the rivers, so I hope they will have a chance to continue to thrive.

On the way back toward Niebla from Playa Pilolcura, we happened to stop in a grassy parking lot above another beach, Playa Misión, and within an hour saw: rufous-collared sparrow (chincol); long-tailed meadowlark (loica or lloica—the Mapuches tell a legend about this bird), a male-female pair, the male has a bright crimson breast; spectacled tyrant (run-run), a robin-sized black bird with white outer primaries, white eyes surrounded by startling, round, pale-lemon “spectacles” and a sharp yellow-white bill; and grassland yellow finch (chirihue), a large flock of them.

Where the mouth of the Río Calcurrupe spills out of Lago Maihue, we watched a long close-up of a ringed kingfisher (martín pescador), with startling orange breast; many black-necked swans; yellow-billed pintail (pato jergón grande); a snowy egret (garza chica); many more grassland finches; and—seen by Lucy and Eduardo—a flock of parakeets, either the austral (cachaña) or slender-billed (choroy).

There is only one common hummingbird in the Valdivia area, the green-backed firecrown (picaflor chico), and we did see one, feeding on slender, crimson four-o’clocks in a willow brake along the Río Cau Cau in the Botanical Garden. But unfortunately the mid-day light was so bright and blinding that I can only say we knew we had seen a hummingbird and what kind it must be, rather than that we “saw” it. I look forward to many better views.

Along the rivers of Valdivia, we saw the white-necked heron or cocoi (garza cuca—the largest of the Chilean herons, equivalent to our great blue heron but grayer), great egret (garza grande), snowy egret, white-winged coot (tagua chica), falcon or southern caracara (traro), black vulture (jote de cabeza negra), and great grebe (huala).

In towns and fields: Chilean mockingbird (tenca), roufous-tailed plant-cutter (rara), Patagonian sierra-finch (cometocino patagónico), black-chinned siskin (jilguero), rock dove (paloma—kernels of popcorn sold on the street are called palomitas), and Chilean pigeon (torcaza)—a beautiful purple dove.

On Pacific beaches: Peruvian pelican (pelícano), osprey (aguila de pescadora), dark-bellied cincloides (churrete), whimbrel (zarapita), blackish oystercatcher (pilpilén negro), South American tern (gaviotín sudamericano), and elegant tern (gaviotín elegante).

Jenny and Michael at Las Lanzas.

In Santiago: monk parakeet (cotorra), after meeting Eduardo’s mother Jenny and sister Carolina for coffee at Las Lanzas, a café in Plaza Ñuñoa. Jenny introduced us to the cortado, “striped” coffee, with a layer of espresso, a layer of heated milk, a layer of whipped cream—very tasty. We heard about Carolina’s cooking school classes and the family’s experience buying an apartment in Santiago for Sebastián, Carolina, and Alejandra. The conversation shifted from English to Spanish and back again.

Carolina at Las Lanzas.

When we walked back to Jenny’s new car, alongside the plaza, there was a luscious monk parakeet walking across the windshield wipers. As we exclaimed and wondered how to entice the bird off the car, a parking attendant strode up (they track parked cars and arrive for payment as you return), gently scooped up the bird in his hand, and offered us a close look before releasing it toward the trees. It was deep lime-green on the back, fading to warm yellow under the belly, with a bright yellow, curved beak—a richly tropical sight. We noticed, then, many parakeets chirping in the tall, sequoia-like alerce trees above. In Birds of Chile, Alvaro Jaramillo comments on the monk parakeet: “Cagebird escapee that is quickly colonizing Santiago. Builds large colonial stick nests, often in city parks.”

A bandurria.

Everywhere in and around Valdivia, including Lucy’s yard: the ever-present ibis (bandurria), southern lap-wing (queltehue o treile), chimango caracara (tiuque—a small, brown urban hawk that walks like a chicken), white-crested elaenia (fío-fío), southern house wren (chercán), austral thrush (zorzal), Chilean swallow (golondrina chilena), and tufted tit-tyrant (cachudito o torito).

We haven’t seen a condor (cóndor), but on this trip I did hear a story about them. Pedro, a friend of Lucy and Edo’s, described seeing condors for the first time, hiking at about 3,000 meters (about 10,000 feet) with his wife Evalina and father. They were unbelievably large, Pedro said, and were obviously drawn together to eat something dead on the mountainside. I asked how many. “Nineteen,” he said. “My father counted them. He is 70, grew up in Chile, and had never seen any condors before.”

At Parque Oncol: Michael and Lucy saw the beautiful black-throated huet-huet (hued-hued de sur). And we heard, all along our hike in the parque up to the viewpoint on Cerro Oncol, another haunting, mysterious bird sound in deep thickets of bamboo, without ever actually seeing the bird. We would wait and watch, over and over, but never saw it—very frustrating. And from that point on the trip, we continued to hear that mystery bird sound in virtually every other non-urban location. “There’s the mystery bird, again,” one of us would say, “damn.” You can hear this mystery bird sound yourself at the Parque Oncol website, as it’s one of the background sounds for the site: http://www.parqueoncol.cl/. Wait through the initial round of bird sound—chirps with a ticking sound behind—followed by the sound of running water … and then comes the mystery bird sound, a sharp whortle, repeated after a pause. We suspect this is the sound of the chucao tapaculo (chucao). Jaramillo describes the sound this way: “Unmistakeable, explosive song, accented at beginning, crr-CHU’Chu’ Chu’chu’chu, lasting nearly 1 s and repeated infrequently.” See what you think. The next bird song after the chucao is, I think, the sound of the black-throated huet-huet, which ends on a descending series. I hope to confirm these identifications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

—Jane