Continuing on from yesterday’s post, below are some more birds we saw in Chile while on our recent Birds and Wines of Chile and Argentina trip.
We drove pretty far up into the Andes Mountains to a very arid location – an old river bed (perhaps it flows with water in the spring). We were on a dirt road, walking/birding when our guide Marcello spotted this Gray-breasted Seedsnipe foraging on the ground.
One day we left our hotel in Santiago and drove up into the Andes looking just for this bird. It took us over 5 hours to get to the destination (although we did stop to bird along the way). It didn’t take Marcello long to find our target – a Diademed Sandpiper-plover. What makes this bird so unique and worth the trip was that it is the only Plover to live at high elevations – all other plovers are found around bodies of water a sea-level or a little higher. Well worth the trip!
This Tufted Tit-tyrant popped up a couple of times during our time in Chile. I love the little feathers sticking up on its head!
Sometimes the word “giant” is an exaggeration, but in the case of the Giant Hummingbird it is apt. This hummingbird is the size of a small American Robin (9.1 inches long) and is the largest hummingbird in the world!
eBird says of this bird, “Often heard but rarely seen….” Did you ever love a picture of a bird just because it was so hard to get? This shot of a Dusky Tapaculo is one of those shots for me. Our guide spent at least 20 minutes trying to coax it out of some dense brush so we could get a good look at it – when it finally appeared for a few seconds I was able to get a good shot of it.
More pics from Chile to come, and many more from Argentina, too.
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