Today was our last day working on Isla Chiloé. Tomorrow we head to the mainland and then we start slowly making our way north to the good ole USA.
We had a lot of changes of plans today that left us a little frustrated and sad about not being able to work and bird a new point. To make the most of the work day we ended up deciding to go back to Quetalmahue - a site we surveyed when we first got here.
Quetalmahue is a pretty big bay that can be a bit of a challenge to work because the birds are very prone to being spooked, and flying from one end to the other which is several kilometers away. We have two access points to the mudflats here to try to combat that.
We stopped at the first site and there wasn’t a godwit to be seen. Not a good sign. So, we drove to the second access point and hoped there would be godwits there today.
As we were driving up to the second access, at the first view of the mud I breathed a sigh of relief - godwits. We quickly got our gear and did a quick estimate of at least 1,000 HUGOs. This a pretty important here since they’ll often flush from the one side of the bay very quickly. Once we had that, we started work on looking for banded birds and getting an accurate count. And today was a good day.
The godwits were very cooperative and never flushed entirely from the west bay where we were working (which meant we didn’t have to drive back and forth between access points). That makes it far easier to get good counts and actually look at most of the birds for bands.
I found a green flagged bird relatively quickly and got a good ID relatively easily. This was a new bird for us at a site where we hadn’t seen a green flag before. Hooray! While I was happily gloating in the number 6 (our 6th green flag in Chile) and starting my focal observations, Garrett kept surveying the flock.
Side note: it’s actually a really cool ID. This bird was banded in 2009 by Nathan as a chick at a nest. Juvenile survival is basically unknown in the species, so it’s always cool to find birds that were banded as chicks as it helps us to calculate survival rates. Regardless, it’s cool to know that this bird is still alive 5.5 years later!
I settled into my focal observations on the green flagged bird and Garrett (who had finished the count) was scanning for the flock for more banded birds. Then he said, “uh, I think I got something”. I’m going ‘awesome another green flag. Why didn’t he just say green flag. Keep watching your bird Rose. Why isn’t he saying he found another green flag’. All this of course while Garrett was silently staring through his scope. Mind you I was doing a timed focal follow (where I’m watching behavior during a five minute period without looking away or losing my focal green flagged bird), so I couldn’t really look up to ask him what was going on or hold much of a conversation.
That’s when he finally spoke back up. “Uh, I got a Bar-tailed.”
A BAR-TAILED GODWIT.
This was epic. Which I knew instantly of course, but I was in the middle of my very important focal follow on my bird. But the rare bird could flush at any second. Shoot.
I stole a glance at my watch. 36 seconds left.
The longest 36 seconds of observations ever.
Beep beep beep.
Phew. I was done. Garrett stepped aside and I peeked through his scope. And there it was. A Bar-tailed Godwit.
Okay, I’ll back up since most of you wont understand the rarity of this find. Bar-tailed Godwits are THE extreme long distance migrant. While my Hudsonians fly an impressive 15,000 miles a year with a 6,000 mile nonstop leg, their cousin, the Bar-tailed Godwit, tops the charts with a 16,000 mile a year migration with a nonstop leg from Alaska to New Zealand of 7,000 miles.
Bar-tailed Godwits breed on the Yukon-Kuskowim Delta in Alaska, but are considered rare anywhere in the lower 48. Garrett found one at our field site in Alaska this summer which was one of less than 5 records from interior Alaska (read rare). But here, in Chile? It’s more than rare; it’s epic.
There are none. I mean ZERO. Records of Bar-tailed Godwits in Chile. There are a couple of records in Brazil of the European race (not the Siberian/Alaskan breeders), but those are the only apparent records in ALL OF South America. ALL OF SOUTH AMERICA.
This is a potential FIRST COUNTRY RECORD. EPIC.
We’re checking into that of course, but it will take some time confirm.
Garrett and I have been saying all along that the likelihood of one of the three other godwit species should be relatively high. There are thousands of godwits on this island and really any of the three are all possible though all highly unlikely. It isn’t too hard to imagine though that if a Bar-tailed or Black-tailed would get off course enough to be found on the mudflats outside of my study plots in AK (which both were this past summer) that they could join up with a group of Hudosonians and fly all the way to Isla Chiloé. This has come up in our conversations multiple times, but I never dreamed we would actually find one!
Okay, back to the story.
So, I had to (of course) tear my eyes away from the epically rare Bar-tailed Godwit (which I’ve seen en masse on their normal non-breeding grounds in New Zealand and in Alaska this past summer) to re-find my green flagged bird. I needed to do more observations. Garrett decided he was done looking at Hudsonians as he needed to document (aka take pictures) of his epic find. I allowed it. ;) We each went on with our work. I continued to move down the bay after finishing my observations to look for more banded godwits (there were none) and recount them. I got some more good looks at the Bar-tailed Godwit as I did so. I also saw an intriguing tern I wanted to get a better look at. Garrett stayed to watch the Bar-tailed to get better photos and confirm the subspecies as the AK breeder rather than the European breeders. I walked and worked my way down the bay.
I walked maybe 300 yards away from Garrett, when I finally got a good look at that intriguing tern. It had a black mask, not cap, a black bill with a pale tip. It was a Snowy-crowned Tern. A species we’d been looking for since day one here, and one we thought we’d just lost our last decent chance at seeing when our plans had changed earlier today. It was a lifer for me (if I had identified it correctly) and for Garrett. But he was 300 yards away and watching his epic rarity. I went for it. I whistled. I waved. I hollered. In between I kept stealing glances at it in my scope. ‘Yup, still there. Yup, pale tip on bill.’
Garrett heard me holler ‘Snowy-crowned’, and decided to take a chance I had identified it correctly (I’ve been consistently mis-identifing the small gulls/terns here). He finally got over to me and peeked through my scope. “Yup, it’s a Snowy-crowned Tern.” Hooray! A lifer we we hadn’t been expecting on top of a green flagged HUGO and a Bar-tailed!
We stayed there quite awhile after that counting and working and enjoying our epic finds. I happily spotted a Short-eared Owl as we were driving back to our hostel which was a new country bird for both of us. But that couldn’t top our finds on the mudflats. Today was our last day working on Isla Chiloé, and it turned out to be one of the best. We did some great work with the HUGOs at Quetalmahue and potentially documented a new species for the country. Can’t get much better!
Bar-tailed Godwit. Quetalmahue, Isla Chiloé, Chile. *Mega Rarity* Photo by Garrett MacDonald
The Bar-tailed is considerably bigger than Hudsonians, paler, pale underwing, barred upper tail coverts, and has kind of a scaley back.
If you’re interested in more photos and/or our complete bird list:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S21372813