Backcountry Birding

This is another post without many words, mostly pictures. (Scroll down a bit to skip to the pictures of the glacier). I took the bus back from Ushuaia and checked back into the hotsel in El Calafate. Here’s the ferry the bus took across the Straight of Magellan:

The following day I met up with Cristóbal in the morning and we drove to a local spot called “La Hoya del Chingue,” a small desert valley in the sandstone hills above the town.

We saw quite a few good birds like Austral Canastero and Scale-throated Earthcreeper (eBird Checklist) but in typical grassland bird fashion they stayed too far for good photos. We did get good views of a Rhea back on the main route by sneaking up on it, staying behind some bushes.

We headed further west towards the mountains. In about 30 minutes we reached the border of the Andean Forest, where the Lenga (Nothophagus) started to dominate the landscape. After another 10 minutes we entered Parque Nacional Las Glaciares (Glacier National Park). We had completely missed the usual crowds which was very nice; we only saw a couple of other people on the elevated walkway out to the glacier viewpoints. From the walkway we saw quite a few Thorn-tailed Rayaditos and some Patagonian Sierra-Finches, but the main attraction was just around the corner.

The glacier has a similar effect to the Grand Canyon: your brain can barely process how large it is, so it gives up and says “this must be a flat image that you’re looking at.” It was pretty spectacular. Here are some other pictures I took of it:

The next day we headed to El Chalten, which will be covered in the next post…