Argentina with Bird guides. 3. The High Andes

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Fra: Vader Willem Jan Marinus Sendt: sø 11/28/2010 12:03 Kopi: Ebn (ebn@birdlife.fi); birdchat; Sabirdnet (sabirdnet@lists.ukzn.ac.za) Emne: Argentina with Bird guides. 3. The High Andes

ARGENTINA WITH BIRD GUIDES. 3. THE HIGH ANDES

The last two nights of the Bird Guides trip to NW Argentina we stayed overnight in La Quiaca, at 3800m. This is a small town, where the locals clearly have tried hard to make the town a bit more attractive than most of the other villages and towns in the area; those all make a quite dour and uninviting impression at first sight. The day before we had driven the long way up from Jujuy (San Salvador de Jujuy, most of the Argentininian towns have long names, either named for a saint or a general), mostly slowly gaining height following a large river upstream, and then via the Quebrada de Humahuaca up to the puna.

I have to confess that I had imagined the High Andes completely different from what I actually found here, of course the result of insufficient preparation. As I knew that the Andes are a relatively young mountain chain, I had envisaged steep mountains and deep valleys; instead the puna here is a quite flat high plateau at about 4000m a.s.l. surrounded by bare rounded hills. Erosion has gauged out deep gullies, as soon as there is a little relief. But I have not seen ‘a real mountain’ at all during these two days, even though the pass at Abra Lizoite was at 4500m, with high rounded hills all around.

The puna makes at first sight a quite monotonous impression, with its scarce vegetation of small bushes (I do not know their names) and large grasses (Which they tell me is a Festuca, although they look quite different from the european festucas). Large flocks of llamas—white, brown, black and multicoloured—add some colour to the scene, and also some spice to the driving, as there are also many on the road. There are also here and there still flocks of sheep and cows, but the llamas absolutely predominate. Away from the main road, there are also regularly small flocks of their much more elegant wild relatives, the vicuñas.

On the way to La Quiaca we detour to a lagoon at Abra Pampa. It is heavily overgown with water plants, and turns out to also have a very rich mix of waterbirds. There are at least four species of coots, with the Andean Coot, at first sight quite similar to our European Coot, the most common. More spectacular are the two large species, the impressive Giant Coot, and the droll Horned Coot with its strange ‘horn’ above the bill. There are also Grebes, White-tufted and surprisingly both subspecies of Silvery Grebes, and there are many ducks, mostly Yellow-billed Pintail and Crested Ducks, but with also some Puna Teals, while Andean Geese and our first Puna Ibis graze on the waterside. The always busy Andean Negritos patrol the waterside, together with Bar-winged Cinclodes and, surprisingly, a Swainson’s Thrush.

The next day we drive along some 50 km of washboard roads to the famous Pozuelos lagoon, home of the three Andean flamingo species; they do not nest here, however. The water level here was quite low, but it is a large lagoon anyhow, and there must be many ten thousands of flamingos. The majority are Chilean Flamingos, but there are also plenty of Andean and Puna (or James’) Flamingos present. There were also an amazing number of Puna Ibises, normally a scarce species even here; but this time we saw at least 250. Many pairs of Andean Geese grazed on the flats, and there were also here many vicuñas. Ducks also galore, basically the same species we had seen at Abra Pampa the day before. The large mudflats around the lake seem ideal for shorebirds, but we did not actually see all that many, and had to work hard to ‘get’ the Puna Plover; there were also small flocks of Baird’s Sandpipers, a Greater Yellowlegs, and unexpectedly a Ruddy Turnstone, a rare bird here. Along the channel running into the lagoon there were many Andean Lapwings and several pairs of Andean Avocets (too short legs to be really as beautiful as the other avocets, I deemed). In the grassy areas surrounding the lagoon we came across our first miners, Common and Puna Miners, and at one place there was a flock of at least 500 Puna Yellow Finches. We stopped at some farm houses, and found a lot of finches there: Great Pampa Finch, , Mourning, Ash-breasted (common everywhere here), Black-hooded and Band-tailed Sierra Finches, as well as the Common Diuca Finch, here at the north end of its distribution area.Here there were again many Andean lapwings , as well as Spot-winged Pigeons, Black-winged and Golden-spotted Ground Doves and also Andean Flickers.

The last day in the High Andes we drove to the range east of La Quiaca, more hilly terrain wih rolling hills, but also steep erosion gulleys many places. We passed the village of Yavi, well-known as THE place to see Citron-headed Yellow Finches (We had already found the Bright-rumped Yellow Finch in La Quiaca itself, together with the Bare-faced Ground Dove), and we were not disappointed; on the vegetable fields outside the village we also found our first Rufous-sided Warbling Finches. The first part of the road was still through rather flat puna, and here we found quite many Rufous-naped Ground Tyrants, as well as regular pairs of Tawny-throated Dotterels. Soon after the terrain got more hilly, and the hillsides were strewn with smaller and larger stones and boulders. Here there were Mountain Parakeets, we found an Andean Hillstar (after a more unexpected Wedge-tailed Hillstar the day before) and d’Orbigny’s Chat Tyrant; in the vegetation along the dry river bed there were many Siskins, mostly Black, but also some Yellow-rumped. But mostly this is hole-nester country; we found Rufous-banded Miner, Plain-breasted Earthcreeper, and several species of ground tyrants and shrike tyrants. Few raptors, mostly caracaras and Variable Hawk, and a single Andean Condor (in fact, we found the condors cleqrly more common at lower altitudes, over woodland, than in the High Andes).

We walked up a small side valley close to the Abra Lizoite pass, also here with Bar-winged Cinclodes along the rivulet, and interesting cushion plants many places. Andean Swallows cruised overhead, there were Red-backed Sierra Finches among the ruins of a building, and a Grey-breasted Seedsnipe called from the hillside and gave me my fourth new bird family of this wonderfull trip.

An official and more authoritative trip report by Dave Steyskal will no doubt before long appear on the Bird Guides website, but I thought it may be of some interest to supplement with my own impressions. Many thanks again to Dave and Peter, and to the other participants, who made this such a good experience.

Wim Vader, Tromsø Museum

9037 Tromsø, Norway

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