Argentina had been great – beautiful places, great birds, amazing food and awesome wine. We had one more full day and then a part day before flying from Mendoza back to Santiago for our last two days in Chile to end our tour. Still some target birds to find.

February 13, Day 10:

We departed very early and got a little delayed when the only convenience store where we could get something that would pass as breakfast did not open until 7:00 a.m. It did open and we improvised breakfast before spending the rest of the morning in fairly familiar in mostly scrub habitat and found lots of new birds in three hours of birding along Ruta 142 still in the Mendoza area. Although we missed a hoped for photo of a Campo Flicker, we had a very brief look as we drove by. I had seen it before but no photo. Two other woodpeckers were more cooperative – lifer White-fronted and Checkered Woodpeckers.

It apparently was a good morning for species with “wood” in their names and they came in pairs as after the woodpeckers, I had a pair of lifer “woodcreepers” – Narrow and Scimitar-billed Woodcreepers. As is often the case with woodcreepers, we waited for them to come mostly into the open on the trunks or snags of the trees. Great theory but they just did not perform their assigned roles and the photos were less than desired.

Even less cooperative was the lifer Tufted Tit-spinetail. I had glimpses as it flitted about buried in the foliage, but never a great look and definitely no photo. Why couldn’t it behave like the Straneck’s Tyrannulet, Black-crowned Monjita and Swainson’s Flycatcher all of which came into the open enough for recognizable photos.

There would be one more lifer for the morning – a Many-colored Chaco Finch and some other good photos of birds seen before – Crowned Slaty-flycatcher and Short-billed Canastero. All in all a truly exceptional morning with the NINE lifers!! And oh yeah we had a quick view of a Southern Gray Fox!

I have not been able to locate notes for what we did at lunch after the great morning, but I know well that we spent a long and very successful afternoon birding the Piletones de El Paramillo, extensive sewage treatment ponds outside Mendoza that were full of waterbirds. Although some of the birds had been seen earlier on the trip, this was the first time I could get photos – lots of photo ops.

Life birds were Black-headed Duck, White-tufted Grebe, South American Painted Snipe and Brown-hooded Gull. Additional life photos included White-cheeked Pintail, Lake Duck, Red Shoveler, Great Grebe, White-winged Coot and Cattle Tyrant. There were lots of other photos too!

Those were the lifers – species and/or photos, but as I said there were lots of birds and lots of photo ops. Some species would be distant at first but then we would drive by another pond and have them closer, or maybe in poor light at one place and then better light as we continued to drive around the multiple ponds. And on the way out we had another Burrowing Owl and our first Diuca Finch in Argentina.

Especially this late in the trip, the 13 new lifers was awesome – now at 89 for he trip so maybe 100 would be possible. And I also added 30 new species for Argentina. It was a very good day indeed.

February 14, Day 11:

Happy Valentine’s Day – well at least for us Americans. And that is a good segue for a comment about wife Cindy. When we first met – now almost 5 years ago, a deal had to be struck pretty early on: I would learn about dogs and especially her, now our, Black Labrador – Chica. And she would have to learn about birds and birding. Neither of us probably had a real grasp on what each of those undertakings would entail, but I think we have done pretty well. I have become Chica’s “Alpha” in our pack and Cindy, while I can’t say has become a birder, she has come a long way and has enjoyed most of our birding trips with the distinct caveat that there are too many “little brown birds” and that was definitely true on this trip. No specific Valentine’s Day celebration but we did make that toast over yet another great meal with great wine on this day of transition from Argentina back to Chile.

The agenda today was to have breakfast, pack and load everything onto our van, bird in the morning at the impressive General San Martin park in Mendoza, sneak in a little shopping, have lunch at Espacio Trapiche a 4 star Michelin restaurant in Mendoza at the famous Trapiche winery, head to the airport, fly to Santiago passing next to Mt. Aconcagua, load up in Santiago and drive to Vina del Mar on the Pacific Coast where we would be for the next two nights.

There would be no new life birds on this day, but there were lots of pictures, birds, food, wine and mountains. Two of the bird photos were especially appreciated as I was able to get life photos of two hummingbird species seen earlier but not photographed: Glittering-bellied Emerald and Red-tailed Comet. I also added three species to my Argentina life list: Harris’s Hawk, Rufous-bellied Thrush and Red-crested Cardinal.

Since this was the last day in Argentina I am including some other photos from the park, quite the birdy place.

Before lunch we visited a shopping area in Mendoza City where we hoped to find something to bring home as a memory. The shop was somewhere between a trinket filed tourist shop and a high end boutique. We found some fabric goods, a new hat for me.

In writing these blogs and looking at the web pages for the various wineries, its seems like there is an endless source of awards and ratings where each one is rated the “Best” something at sometime or another. Our last winery and lunch visit in Argentina was at the Trapiche Winery which was declared the “Best Winery in the New World for its 2019 Edition” by the Wine Star Rewards. I don’t know what Wine Star Rewards is or what it is says about them that there is a “New World” category, but our visit was fun with yet again excellent food and wines. The pictures tell the story.

It was then off to the airport for our trip back to Santiago. With his normal attention to detail, Marcelo had arranged for us to have seats on the right side of the plane (looking up to the cockpit at the front). This was so we would have the best views of the mountains and especially Aconcagua – fitting as our first birding in Argentina had been in the shadows of the mountain. The plane passed quite close to the mountain and we indeed had great views – a last memory of Argentina.

We had spent the better part of 7.5 days in Argentina. I did not keep track of the number of wines tried or wineries visited, but with the help of Ebird, I have a precise count of our birding. I had submitted 40 Ebird reports covering 153 species and bringing my Argentina life list to 173 species. Of the birds seen, 62 were new lifers and I had photos of 119 of the species seen (and there were others, like House Sparrow, Great and Western Cattle Egrets, and Rock Pigeon among others where I did not even bother). All of these photos were new for Argentina and more than half were new world photos. We would have a long drive to the Chilean coast after landing in Santiago, but that is a story for another blog post – my last for this trip.