Chile – Santiago and Maria Pinto

Santiago, 12 Mar 2012

I arrived in Santiago late in the evening of Wednesday, 7^th March, having flown from Johannesburg via Buenos Aires. It will be 3 months before my first break. My work here will be largely office based, with periodic visits to several project sites in Chile and one in Peru. Being office based I have weekends free and also have use of a vehicle at weekends.

So, I have a great opportunity to see some New World birds. Santiago is a great base. Within 2 hours driving you can bird rocky shorelines, coastal lagoons, tidal mudflats, wetlands, low altitude grassland, the high Andes, and even go pelagic birding. Several of the Chilean endemics are quite common close to Santiago, such as the Chilean Mockingbird, Crag Chilia and Moustached Turca. Some of the most reliable sites for the much sought after Diademed Sandpiper-Plover are within easy reach of Santiago too.

I will be living in an 8th-floor apartment in the suburb of Las Condes, with a view of the Andes – well I can just about see them through a gap in the surrounding apartment blocks if the heat haze is not too bad. The office is an easy 15-minute walk away and every morning I get to see the Gran Torre, or more precisely, the Gran Torre Costanera, billed as the 2^nd highest building in the Southern Hemisphere. Not a bad engineering feat for a city with a history of major earthquakes.

Yesterday, I spent my first Sunday in Chile walking around a golf course (two of my new colleagues were playing) just outside the small town of Maria Pinto, about 60 km west of Santiago. Of course, I took camera and binoculars with me. Having already seen a Southern Lapwing in the street outside my apartment, I managed to get flight shots of another at Maria Pinto. Another 11 species, Chimango Caracara, Harris’s Hawk, Turkey Vulture, American Kestrel, Austral Blackbird, Chilean Swallow, Picui Ground Dove, Rufous-collared Sparrow, Chilean Mockingbird (a near-endemic – there is a small population in the neighbouring Neuquén Province of Argentina), Neotropic Cormorant and Yellow-billed Pintail, plus an old friend, a Western Cattle Egret, gave me a tally of 13 to start my Chile bird list.