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January 23, 2000 |
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el condor pasa |
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Today's Bird Sightings: black-winged ground dove longtailed meadowlark common diuca finch southern lapwing Today's Reading: Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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Sooo tired. If I slept at all on the plane, I don't remember doing so. Took a nap for an hour in the hotel before boarding the bus for the birding trip to the Farallones ski area with a stop at the place where the folks on the Chile pre-trip had seen a pygmy owl. We walked up the hill from the alleged pygmy owl spot and saw the first Andean condor of the trip. It was probably a mile or more away - a black dot against the sky but definitely a condor.
Flocks of black-winged ground doves and diuca finches darted around among the trees and cactuses. The diuca finch reminded me a little of the lark sparrow with the white on the sides of the tail. We made a lunch stop at a grove of pines where we could eat our box lunches in the shade. There was a giant green Sprite can in the parking lot, which is evidently a refreshment kiosk during ski season. I sat on the concrete footing of the Sprite can - in the sun - and got sunburned pretty quickly. The sun burns you quicker at altitude. I was so hot and tired at the lunch spot that I sat on the steps of the bus in the shade to catch a breeze while I watched some Chilean mockingbirds and long tailed meadowlarks fly back and forth across the road. One Chilean mockingbird was getting pretty acrobatic chasing one of those cabbage-white-like butterflies without ever actually catching it. Most of the group went off further into the pine grove after "something else". The something else turned out to be a mustached turca, which I guess is a really good bird. Somehow I was too tired and hot to regret missing it. I got a second wind when we actually got to the ski area where we got really good looks at the Andean condors. They're huge and magnificent looking with a white ruff and white on the wings. They soar with their wings at kind of a dihedral angle - beautiful to watch. Whatever tiredness lingered from my not sleeping on the plane vanished at the up close sight of the condors. It would take a much better writer than I am to get across the awe I felt in their presence. Prose doesn't do it. It would have to be poetry. After the ski area, we stopped at a big rock with a kind of stone shelter built into the bottom and side of it. Three guys were standing on top of it. It looked dangerous. Someone had painted a sign on the stone shelter, which read "Motel". A female rufous-collared sparrow was tending three babies in a nest there between a medium sized rock and a low shrub. She perched right on top of the rock as if to check out any possible danger to the babies. Made for a good look at her. Also saw my first scale-throated earth creeper at the motel rock. I had missed the one some people spotted at the ski area. It looks kind of like a thrasher. I started to get pretty good at identifying rufous-banded miners and really really good at mountain caracaras in the time we spent there. I even spotted a mountain caracara perched on a rock as we were leaving - spotted it and identified it all on my own without a guide pointing it out. I was pleased with myself at that after staring so hard to see the ones being pointed out earlier at the ski area and other stops. We had a big fancy dinner in a function room at the hotel, which seemed really incongruous after spending the day birding on zero sleep. I remember nothing about the dinner other than that I did get a vegetarian choice and the only person more sunburned than me was Trent Miller. |
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I
caught my first glimpse of Santiago from the air, surrounded
on two sides by mountains. It sort of sneaked up on me over
the wing of the plane with the beautiful sunrise. Some
people were birding before they even got off the plane,
calling out "southern lapwing" or whatever as we were
landing.
There
were lots of butterflies around. They looked very much like
cabbage whites and various sulphurs but nobody on the trip
is a butterfly expert so I don't know whether these are the
same ones as at home or some separate southern species. It
was neat to see butterflies and flowers, and feel the summer
sun. It's summer here all right - flowers in bloom at the
airport and all over the city of Santiago as well as along
the road to Farallones.