We finally sailed into Ushuaia on the night of the 27th and did some unsatisfactory birding from the deck while docking.
They couldn't have picked a more beautiful place to put this city, nestled as it was at the foot of snow capped mountains on one side and the Beagle Channel on the other.
In the morning there was a mix of rain and sun with a cutting wind. Our itinerary for the morning was to be shuttled to a prison museum in town and then to a hotel where we had a day room set aside for waiting for our shuttle to the airport. It was all designed to limit interaction with the public which I get 100% but Matt and I just wanted to look for some birds.
Dolphin Gull at the dock.
This Southern Lapwing greeted us at the prison museum. To be honest I don't know much about the museum because we were just walking the limited grounds looking for birds. The museum did a good job making us feel like convicts because we were not allowed outside the fenced in area which was postage stamp sized.
In back of the buildings we found a Chimango Caracara feasting on some moths found in the grasses.
The next stop was the hotel, and we were told we could get fresh air outside if we wanted. So Matt and I birded a little courtyard next to the hotel.
A southern subspecies of House Wren. Maybe an arm-chair tick in the future.
Since we were allowed to get some air and the point of the "bubble" was to limit interactions with the public, we reasoned that a walk along the waterfront would be ok as long as we didn't talk to anyone. We had about an hour only but we made the most of it. We knew the ponds north of the anchorage downtown had some birds based on the long scope views we had earlier so we double-timed it down to that area.
A male Kelp Goose was the first to greet us at the waterfront.
A female Kelp Goose was not far away.
Dolphin Gulls foraged in the seaweed.
Brown-hooded Gull
Dolphin Gull
Imperial Shags / Cormorants
Juvenile Dolphin Gull
Rufous-chested Dotterel! They were right in the area that we thought we saw them in when we left the harbor at the beginning of the trip.
Crested Caracara
Flying Steamer-Ducks! Remember the species we had at the beginning of the trip were the Flightless ones, these are the smaller cousins that can fly.
They stayed fairly distant.
Kelp Geese
Southern Lapwing
Magellanic Cormorant or Rock Shag
Crested Duck!
Imperial Cormorant or Blue-eyed Shag
Dark-bellied Cinclodes - these are very similar to Gray-flanked but we were fairly confident in the ID based on the streaking and overall dark appearance.
Brown-hooded Gull
Crested Duck revealing the red velvet wing bars.
Not bad for a short walk along the Ushuaia waterfront! We made it back with a few minutes to spare and jumped back on the shuttle to the airport. We knew we had a couple more hours to our flight when we got to the airport, so instead of checking in Matt and I walked outside and went birding! Airports are usually great places to bird and this one was no exception.
One of our first birds was this Dark-faced Ground-Tyrant. Unfortunately we were not able to get closer before it flushed.
Long-tailed Meadowlark! We had a really red looking male with red in the face but it was not super cooperative.
Buff-winged Cinclodes
These Black-faced Ibis were absolutely stunning.
Buff-winged Cinclodes
Ok pardon the poor picture here but this was taken at long range on the other side of a chain-linked fence. We were looking at the two ducks in the middle but later in looking at my pics we noticed that we missed a lifer Red Shoveler on the far right side of the frame! Its the only bird with such a honking bill in the area.
The ones in the middle were all Yellow-billed Teal
The coy adult male Long-tailed Meadowlark
And the juvenile male.
We had covered a mile or two and needed to get back to check in for the long flight home which included a midnight stop in the Bahamas for some reason related to security checks.
What an amazing trip! Thanks to Matt for making it possible and extending the invite to me.
Next post will cover some cool birds from Florida as I had a day layover in Miami on the way home.
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