February 22, 2016
There were a couple of good bits to today so it’s a two part dual post! Part one by yours truly and part two by Garrett!
Part one: Spectacled Duck
Today was a clean up day. Hitting some smaller bays again and getting the last data for them. Not too much going on on the godwit front.
We were scanning at Astillero, I was in the middle of a focal when Garrett started saying, “Oh” over and over. I finally asked what was going on and he elaborated - “I found a Specatacled Duck!”
Let me pause for a moment and give you some background. Spectacled Ducks are listed as near
threatened and range in Chile and Argentina. The world population is estimated at 10,000 individuals but little is really known about them or if the population is really stable. They are usually found in fast-flowing rivers in forested areas. Interestingly, they are the sole representative of their genus and are an old lineage of ducks that split off from other dabbling ducks (like Mallards). One of their closest living relatives are the Steamer-Ducks.
We saw two last year, so while we wanted to see them again for many reasons, it hasn’t been super high on our “to see” list. Nevertheless G is always looking because they’re such a cool bird and rare to uncommon. Last we year we saw two at Compu - one of the bays in the south. Distant looks but we were very happy. This year G had his hopes high we would see them there again and made multiple stops to check - during our scans there and on travel days when we would drive past Compu. No Spectacled Ducks. He was disappointed.
I finished my focal and darted over to G’s scope - and he showed me the duck. “Oh, wow! It’s close!” Somehow I had been expecting another distant look - G always seems to find the good birds when he scans the distant horizon - but this bird was right at the tide line. I had literally scanned right over it before my focal and not noticed since I was concentrated on godwit legs and swan collars.
But there it was a beautiful individual alternating between tucking its bill and sleeping and foraging on some kelp. The gorgeous green/pink speculum (the iridescent patch on duck wings). The white crescent on the head. The looks were stellar. It started to drizzle, but G stayed outside with it for twenty minutes - he was very happy to get beautiful photos and a recording of it calling! Talk about a great bird sighting!
Part two: Black Skimmer Update
About a month ago, while on a relatively unproductive scan of Bahía Aucar (only 20 godwits), my eyes and scope began searching for other things to look at, and I noticed that one of the Black Skimmers roosting on a mud bar close by had a metal band on its leg. It was immediately apparent that the metal bands did not originate in the US based on their number/letter scheme, which was very exciting for me. A closer scan of the flock yielded at least four banded birds, three with metal bands and one with a green leg flag. Just a few days prior, I had just read a paper documenting the first Trans-Andean migration of any bird species breeding in the Amazon, featuring skimmers breeding in Manu National Park in the Amazon of SE Peru wintering along the central coast of Chile. Could these birds have similar migration histories, I wondered?
Having taken the data we needed to with the godwits, Rose and I moved away from each other and spaced ourselves so we formed a triangle: Rose, me, and one of the skimmers. The bird with the green flag was relatively easy to get a resight on because its flag combination was short, but the metal bands, with a combination of small letters and numbers about 8 digits long were more challenging. After repositioning ourselves several times after the bird changed positions slightly, we had what we were pretty sure was a full read on one of the birds. Most exciting to me was a partial read of the letters BRA above the combination…this must be a Brazilian bird!
It took some searching to find out how to properly report the resight, and some help with the Portuguese website via Google Translate, but we submitted the report. Then, yesterday, I received an email from the Brazilian agency, very happy with the news of the bird’s presence in southern Chile. Turns out this bird was banded over three years ago a few hours west along a river from Manaus, Brazil - right in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon. A journey of over 2500 miles, straight line, between there and here. Perhaps the Trans-Andean route isn’t such a novel route for Amazonian breeding birds!
There were a couple of good bits to today so it’s a two part dual post! Part one by yours truly and part two by Garrett!
Part one: Spectacled Duck
Today was a clean up day. Hitting some smaller bays again and getting the last data for them. Not too much going on on the godwit front.
We were scanning at Astillero, I was in the middle of a focal when Garrett started saying, “Oh” over and over. I finally asked what was going on and he elaborated - “I found a Specatacled Duck!”
Let me pause for a moment and give you some background. Spectacled Ducks are listed as near
threatened and range in Chile and Argentina. The world population is estimated at 10,000 individuals but little is really known about them or if the population is really stable. They are usually found in fast-flowing rivers in forested areas. Interestingly, they are the sole representative of their genus and are an old lineage of ducks that split off from other dabbling ducks (like Mallards). One of their closest living relatives are the Steamer-Ducks.
We saw two last year, so while we wanted to see them again for many reasons, it hasn’t been super high on our “to see” list. Nevertheless G is always looking because they’re such a cool bird and rare to uncommon. Last we year we saw two at Compu - one of the bays in the south. Distant looks but we were very happy. This year G had his hopes high we would see them there again and made multiple stops to check - during our scans there and on travel days when we would drive past Compu. No Spectacled Ducks. He was disappointed.
I finished my focal and darted over to G’s scope - and he showed me the duck. “Oh, wow! It’s close!” Somehow I had been expecting another distant look - G always seems to find the good birds when he scans the distant horizon - but this bird was right at the tide line. I had literally scanned right over it before my focal and not noticed since I was concentrated on godwit legs and swan collars.
But there it was a beautiful individual alternating between tucking its bill and sleeping and foraging on some kelp. The gorgeous green/pink speculum (the iridescent patch on duck wings). The white crescent on the head. The looks were stellar. It started to drizzle, but G stayed outside with it for twenty minutes - he was very happy to get beautiful photos and a recording of it calling! Talk about a great bird sighting!
Part two: Black Skimmer Update
About a month ago, while on a relatively unproductive scan of Bahía Aucar (only 20 godwits), my eyes and scope began searching for other things to look at, and I noticed that one of the Black Skimmers roosting on a mud bar close by had a metal band on its leg. It was immediately apparent that the metal bands did not originate in the US based on their number/letter scheme, which was very exciting for me. A closer scan of the flock yielded at least four banded birds, three with metal bands and one with a green leg flag. Just a few days prior, I had just read a paper documenting the first Trans-Andean migration of any bird species breeding in the Amazon, featuring skimmers breeding in Manu National Park in the Amazon of SE Peru wintering along the central coast of Chile. Could these birds have similar migration histories, I wondered?
Having taken the data we needed to with the godwits, Rose and I moved away from each other and spaced ourselves so we formed a triangle: Rose, me, and one of the skimmers. The bird with the green flag was relatively easy to get a resight on because its flag combination was short, but the metal bands, with a combination of small letters and numbers about 8 digits long were more challenging. After repositioning ourselves several times after the bird changed positions slightly, we had what we were pretty sure was a full read on one of the birds. Most exciting to me was a partial read of the letters BRA above the combination…this must be a Brazilian bird!
It took some searching to find out how to properly report the resight, and some help with the Portuguese website via Google Translate, but we submitted the report. Then, yesterday, I received an email from the Brazilian agency, very happy with the news of the bird’s presence in southern Chile. Turns out this bird was banded over three years ago a few hours west along a river from Manaus, Brazil - right in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon. A journey of over 2500 miles, straight line, between there and here. Perhaps the Trans-Andean route isn’t such a novel route for Amazonian breeding birds!