Buenos Aires, Day Dos

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kim and Kenn write: Our friend Delores Cole (web guru for Black Swamp Bird Observatory and Ohio Young Birders Club) came in this morning, and walked out with us for another round at the Costanera Sur Nature Reserve. As indicated by the sign above, the reserve is internationally recognized as an Important Bird Area.



A major Important Bird of this Area is the outlandish Guira Cuckoo. It looks weird enough standing still, but check out this video that Kim took of the bird calling and showing off (with authentic Latino music in the background):

A bird that we found foraging in the high traffic area along the edge of the reserve was the totally gorgeous Red-crested Cardinal. But, unlike most good-looking humans I've encountered, these doggone birds did NOT want to have their picture taken. I chased them up and down the sidewalk, generating ZERO good photos, but lots of laughs from Kenn & Delores, and the locals who delighted in watching the bird come in right next to me...until I raised the camera.

Eventually I got bored with the game and started people watching. That's how I spotted and photographed the much more cooperative Red-crested human, which looked remarkably like the bird that refused to have its picture taken! Here she is doing some foraging of her own:

Of course, as soon as I gave up and settled for a photo of a look-alike, the real thing came along and posed for me. Check out this stunner:

The Beautiful (and fussy!) Red-crested Cardinal

The most common hummingbird here was the Glittering-bellied Emerald (another name invented by museum ornithologists, trying to come up with something distinctive about yet another species of Chlorostilbon that looks pretty much like all the others). We often saw it feeding at the flowers of tree-tobacco (Nicotiana glauca). This is a great hummingbird plant in the southern USA and Mexico as well, but here in South America it's more likely to be a local native.

The trails through the park are filled with local people who come here to exercise. They certainly seem to enjoy the sun; Kenn was practically the only man there who was wearing a shirt. Some apparently come to exercise their bodies. Others appeared to be exorcizing any variety of demons.

Kenn had an interesting conversation with one of the locals who seemed to be doing a bit of both. A nice fella, who knew a bit about the birds, he, um, well, he didn't have much on in terms of clothing. But he sure knew a lot about Rufous Horneros! When he saw our binoculars, he stopped running, came straight over and pointed excitedly to a large nest above our heads. Kenn was too nice to tell him that we knew exactly what it was, and that we'd been standing there admiring it for several minutes. We're always thrilled when the locals seem to be aware and appreciative of their bird neighbors, and we didn't want to dampen his enthusiasm.

The conversation Kenn had with the guy was totally in Spanish, so I was pretty much out of the loop. After he jogged off, Kenn explained the conversation, referring to the guy as "The Naked Naturalist" which had me giggling like an idiot the rest of the day.

In case you don't remember the Rufous Hornero.....Here it is again.

And, here's its way cool nest.

See, it looks like an old oven, doesn't it?!

The Naked Naturalist moves on after giving us the lo-down on the

Rufous Hornero and its nest.

A few birds from Buenos Aires

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kenn writes: We were walking for hours and for miles in the huge Costanera Sur reserve right in the city today, developing a good January sunburn in the process. Buenos Aires is a city of around ten million people, and it's amazing to have this superb nature reserve within walking distance of the downtown hotels. A recurrent drought has dried up the ponds that usually have hordes of waterbirds, but we did see a great variety of landbirds. It's after midnight here in Argentina and we're too wasted to write anything, but here are a few pictures, anyway.

Looking at a small part of the skyline of Buenos Aires, Argentina, from across the Costanera Sur Nature Reserve

Picazuro Pigeon -- this native pigeon is abundant in the reserve

Bay-winged Cowbird -- the most attractive of the three local species of cowbirds (this one is not a brood parasite, but its nests are parasitized by another species, the Screaming Cowbird)

Green-barred Woodpecker, lurking in deep shade -- as you might guess by looking, this bird is related to the flickers in North America

This young White-rumped Swallow was waiting to be fed by its parents. Early January is mid-summer here, and we saw recently fledged young birds of several species.

Don´t Cry For Me (we're in) Argentina

From Buenos Aires, Kim and Kenn write: (Couldn´t resist the musical reference in the title.) Before we left home we weren´t sure we´d be able to post to the blog from here. But if you´re reading this, then evidently we can! That might change once we´re on the ship, but for now, woo hoo! (can you tell that Kim typed that part?!)

So, yes, we´re here. We´re sleep-deprived and jet-lagged. But thanks to our dear friends Lois and Vic, we made it to the airport safe and sound, and made the long overnight flight so that we could be in Argentina today. Kim had a life bird (the very cool Chimango Caracara!!) before we even got off the plane! It was perched on a light pole and several Blue-and-white Swallows were harrassing it, giving away its location.

The big nature reserve of Costanera Sur was closed today for New Years, but the beautiful cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires is full of small parks that have their own attractions. In a park off Tucuman Avenue, we photographed this impressive old tree, which obviously had been here for a while:






A bird that´s common in the city is the Rufous Hornero. ¨Hornero¨ in Spanish is a reference to ¨one who works with ovens,¨ and the whole tropical family of Ovenbirds (Furnariidae) (unrelated to the North American bird called the Ovenbird, which is a warbler) gets its name from this Rufous Hornero (scientific name Furnarius rufus), which builds a nest shaped like an old oven.

We saw these horneros in several parks and gardens today, marching about on the ground with a self-important air.

Monk Parakeet is a bird that you can see in parks in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and many other U.S. cities, but those are all descended from escaped cagebirds. The ones we saw in Buenos Aires today were wild birds on their native range.

Monk Parakeet in B.A., just as noisy here as it is anywhere.

Take a casual look at any of these small Buenos Aires parks and you´d swear you were seeing American Robins running around. Take a closer look and you realize the bird doesn´t look quite the same. This is a related bird, the Rufous-bellied Thrush. Similar thrushes wind up being common city birds in many parts of the world.

Rufous-bellied Thrush, the local robin substitute in Buenos Aires.



Okay, it´s almost 10:30 at night here, we´re tired, dirty, hungry, and ready to call it a night. Happy New Year to all (and to all a good night).

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