DAY 3 OF TOUR EXTENSION
Last evening we met the 16th birder of the cruise tour, who would go this day on his own private excursion. Last night we also had the briefing meeting for the cruise.
At 6:00 am our bags were packed and loaded in a van ready to follow us to the ship. At the same time we were in the bus ready to go birding for the morning. We drove east toward the coast.
First we drove to a beach north of Santo Domingo and south of San Antonio. As we walked along the foggy beach we saw flocks of species of gulls James and I had never seen before, as well as some familiar shorebirds (and a few joggers). Kelp gulls would become very familiar to us, as we would see them everywhere. We walked along the beach to the Maipo River Estuary. We birded the beach and estuary from 8:00 to 10:30. I wished for more time to carefully sort out the ducks, coots, gulls, and shorebirds. Though we saw 5 Many-colored Rush Tyrants well and at close range, l would have liked to observe those lovely birds longer too. The estuary could be on my list of wonderful places to live near and bird often at all times of the year. But, this time we were not independent travelers and had to meet the schedule of the tour, so, reluctantly, we left to go on to the next stop.
The next stop, La Peral Marsh, was usually, according to Fernando and Fabrice, a very productive wetlands, but had suffered from a long drought. We skipped the wet areas and birded the woods a little. We were a very disciplined group, not moving and being very attentive, as Fabrice played a tape to call the Dusky Tapaculo. It did come very close but failed to be anything but a small dark shape skulking in the trees. We had already seen his cousin the Magellanic Tapaculo well on the first day, but it would have been nice to see the Dusky.
We went on to Puesta del Sol Restaurant at Las Cruces for lunch. A nice feature was the deck that overlooked the beach and rocky shore area. A Chilean Seaside Cincloides, one of our target birds for the area, was conveniently hopping around on the rocks just off the deck. We also observed animals (fish? amphibian?) that clung to the rocks below us in the surf zone on the ocean side of the deck.
At about 1:30 we went on our way to Valparaiso arriving there at about 3:30 and said good-bye to Fernando, ending Day 3 of the Extension Tour and beginning Day 1 of the Cruise.
DAY 1 OF CRUISE — BOARDING
Boarding a cruise ship is much like boarding an airplane except that everyone is smiling and cheery. Right away, we could tell that there was a great deal of concern about infectious diseases. The first thing we had to do after giving up our luggage was to fill out a form saying that we had not been sick and had not been around sick people or in certain countries in the last few months. After we got to the counter, we gave up our passports in exchange for our cruise cards, our sole form of ID for the next two weeks. Before boarding the ship we got our photos taken at least twice, once for the record (our cruise card barcode would bring up that photo for Security). The other was one of many photos that were taken every time we went off the boat, always with a smiling and costumed couple. After boarding we found our berth. Our luggage came without much delay; we were expecting to wait longer. At 5:30 we took the life vests in our rooms to a half hour safety drill.
DAY 1 OF CRUISE - BIRDING
Right after our safety drill, we met at the 8th level front deck to wait for the boat to leave the port. It took a while to take off, but we watched and heard the vacationers in Valparaiso party on the dock.
We ran to the back of the boat when someone observed that there were Inca Terns perched on the ropes back there.
The boat left the dock about 7:00 pm. We would only have this evening to see the birds that inhabit the waters close to the coast in this part of Chile so we birded until about 8:30 pm before going in and meeting for our regular listing ritual and then dinner.
Day 3 of Extension Bird List
Coscoroba Swan
Chiloe Wigeon
Yellow-billed (Speckled) Teal
Yellow-billed Pintail
Silver Teal
Red Shoveler
California Quail
Great Grebe
Neotropic Cormorant
Peruvian Pelican
Cocoi Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Turkey Vulture
Black Vulture
White-tailed Kite
Peregrine Falcon
Southern Lapwing
American Oystercatcher
Black-necked Stilt
Hudsonian Godwit
Whimbrel
Surfbird
Baird’s Sandpiper
Brown-hooded Gull
Franklin’s Gull
Kelp Gull
Black Skimme
Picui Ground-Dove
Seaside Cincloides
Plain-mantled Tit-Spinetail
Tufted Tit-Tyrant
Many-colored Rush-Tyrant
Austral Negrito
Blue-and-white Swallow
Chilean Swallow
Austral Thrush
Rufous-collared Sparrow
Austral Blackbird
Others saw: Lake Duck, Cattle Egret, Red-gartered Coot, Red-fronted Coot, White-winged Coot, South American Snipe, Lesser Yellowlegs, Parasitic Jaeger, Eared Dove, Wren-like Rushbird, Thorn-tailed Rayadito, Spectacled Tyrant, House Wren, Chilean Mockingbird, Correndera Pipit, Yellow-winged Blackbird, Long-tailed Meadowlark, House Sparrow
Day 1 of Cruise Bird List
Buller’s Albatross
Juan Fernandez Petrel
Sooty Shearwater
Pink-footed Shearwater
Peruvian Booby
Red-legged Cormorant
Guanay Cormorant
Peruvian Pelican
Franklin’s Gull
Kelp Gull
Inca Tern
Others saw: Humboldt Penguin, White-Chinned Petrel, Wilson’s Storm Petrel, Peruvian Diving-Petrel, Red Phalarope, Chilean Skua, Parasitic Jaeger, Cayenne Tern
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