Overview
Chile is South America’s hidden gem, a place that few people have discovered but is a tourist and naturalist dream come true. Infrastructure is modern, with good roads, comfortable hotels and all the amenities one finds in North America and Europe. It is also a stunningly beautiful country, with crystal clear lakes, gorgeous conical volcanoes, dense temperate forests festooned with waterfalls, and dry Mediterranean countryside. This is an incredibly diverse nation, from the Atacama Desert in the north, the driest place on earth, to the Valdivian forest of the south, one of the wettest places in the world! We encounter windswept Nothofagus forests, landscapes of lakes and rivers, snow-capped peaks, with spectacular scenery as a wonderful backdrop for excellent birding. Put it all together and we have one wonderful destination to explore.
Our tour will sample Chile’s major bird habitats and we will see a large majority of the country’s birds. Our trip is scheduled to coincide with the Chilean spring, a time of activity and rebirth; remember that for the most part this is a temperate country. Get ready to see penguins, albatrosses, steamer ducks, rayaditos, firecrowns, miners, earthcreepers, tapaculos, huet-huets, and wiretails, and lots more with such unfamiliar names! Join us on this tour of Chile, a rather un-South American part of South America, it will remind you of New Zealand, California and the Sahara! A world of amazing discoveries awaits you!
Itinerary
Day 1
Transfer in.
Night in Santigo at the airport hotel
Day 2
Río Cipreses National Reserve & Altos de Lircay National Reserve
Birds of a transition zone between Matorral, Sclerophyllous Forest and Dry Deciduous Forest. Main targets: Burrowing Parrot, Chilean Hawk, Chilean Pigeon, the remarkable Magellanic Woodpecker, Austral Parakeet, White-throated Treerunner, Chucao Tapaculo, Magellanic Tapaculo and the endemic Chestnut-throated Huet-Huet, among others. Night in Vilches.
Day 3
Altos de Lircay National Reserve & Maipo Valley
Birds of a transition zone between Matorral, Sclerophyllous Forest and Dry Deciduous Forest. We spend the morning looking for species not yet located. Back to Santiago.
Night in Maipo Valley.
Day 4
Maipo Valley & Birding the Central Chilean Andes
From here we drive deep into the Andes, the largest mountain range in the world.
We spend the entire day birding the mountain range (at heights above 2.500 m /8.200 ft. and enjoy scenery with peaks reaching more than 6.000 m / 19.700 ft.) looking for Andean birds like the majestic Andean Condor, the “Spirit of the Andes”, as well as Torrent Duck, Variable Hawk, Mountain Caracara, White-browed, Black-fronted & Ochre-naped Ground- Tyrants, Rufous-banded & Creamy-rumped Miners, Black-winged Ground Doves, Scale- throated Earthcreeper, Buff-winged Cinclodes, Mourning Sierra Finch. Gray-hooded Sierra-Finch, Greater Yellow Finch, Yellow-rumped Siskin, White-sided Hillstar, the endemic Crag Chilia, and the extraordinary Diademed Sandpiper-Plover. Drive to the coast. Night Viña del Mar.
Day 5
Coastal Mountain Range
We start early and drive east into the heart of the Coastal Mountain Range, with peaks above 2.000 m (6.500 ft) and we search for endemics such as Chilean Tinamou, Chilean Mockingbird, Moustached Turca, White-throated Tapaculo and Dusky-tailed Canastero. We intend to visit La Campana National Park (Ocoa area), which was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. This park has a varied native flora composed of Mediterranean Forest. It is particularly rich in birds, including Variable Hawk, Black-chested Buzzard Eagle, American Kestrel, Harris’s Hawk, Chimango Caracara, California Quail, Chilean Flicker, Striped Woodpecker, Green-backed Firecrown, Giant Hummingbird, Patagonian Sierra- Finch, Grassland Yellow-Finch, Rufous-collared Sparrow, Long-tailed Meadowlark, Southern House Wren, Rufous-tailed Plantcutter.
Night Viña de Mar.
Day 6
Birding along the Pacific Coast.
Visit to a Humboldt Penguin Breeding Colony. Chance for Marine Otter. Then we head south to ponds and coastal marshes searching for the beautiful Many-colored Rush-Tyrant as well as many other species such as Great and White-tufted Grebes, Speckled Teal, Yellow-billed Pintail, Chiloe Wigeon, Lake Duck, Red Shoveler, Snowy Egret, Cinereous Harrier, Red-gartered Coot, Red-fronted Coot, White-winged Coot, Spot-flanked Gallinule, Plumbeous Rail, White-backed Stilt, American Oystercatcher, Burrowing Owl, Wren-like Rushbird, Spectacled Tyrant, Yellow-winged Blackbird and the endemic Dusky Tapaculo among others. Night Viña del Mar.
Day 7
Pelagic Trip off Quintero and winery.
We take a pelagic trip into the cold waters of the Humboldt Current, one of the world’s finest pelagic birding locations. Departing from Quintero, we head offshore to meet the current, and to look for species which are endemic to this system such as Humboldt Penguin, Inca Tern, Peruvian Booby, Guanay Cormorant, Peruvian Pelican, Grey Gull and Peruvian Diving-Petrel. We also could encounter Northern Royal Albatross, Black-browed Albatross, Salvin ́s Albatross, Southern and Hall’s Giant Petrels, Southern Fulmar, Cape Petrel, Pink-footed and Sooty Shearwaters, White-chinned Petrel and Wilson’s Storm- Petrel. With a little bit of luck we might find Chatham Albatross, Buller’s Albatross, Juan Fernandez Petrel, Masafuera Petrel, Westland Petrel and Chilean Skua.
We will visit the winery in the afternoon.
Night in Santiago.
Day 8
Santiago-Puerto Montt
Flight to Puerto Montt. Time permitting, we spend the morning looking for species in the temperate zone of Chile, its famous “lake district”. Night in Puerto Varas.
Day 9
Puerto Montt area & Alerce Andino National Park
Puerto Montt area: Today we look for Valdivian Rainforest specialties such as Black-faced Ibis, Chilean Pigeon, Austral and Slender-billed Parakeets, Austral Pygmy-Owl, Green- backed Firecrown, Magellanic Woodpecker, Des Murs’s Wiretail, Thorn-tailed Rayadito, White-throated Treerunner, Black-throated Huet-huet, Chucao Tapaculo, Ochre-flanked apaculo, Magellanic Tapaculo, White-crested Elaenia, Patagonian Tyrant, Patagonian Sierra-Finch and Black-chinned Siskin, among others. Night in Puerto Varas.
Day 10
Chiloe Island
From Puerto Montt we take the ferry to Chiloe Island, providing good chances to see coastal and pelagic seabirds such as Black-browed Albatross, Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters, Wilson ́s Storm-Petrel, Magellanic Diving-Petrel, and the recently discovered new species, the Puerto Montt Storm-Petrel. We should encounter Black-necked Swan, Chiloe Wigeon, Speckled Teal, Yellow-billed Pintail, Peruvian Pelican, Brown-hooded Gull, and South American Tern on the way. After the ferry we visit a Magellanic Penguin Breeding Colony, where there are also Rock, Imperial and Red-legged Cormorants, Kelp Goose, Flying Steamer-Duck and Austral Negrito. Later we drive to coastal wetlands where we may find Flightless Steamer-Duck, Hudsonian Godwit, Sanderling, South American Snipe, Kelp and Franklin ́s Gulls, Black Skimmer, Ringed Kingfisher, Dark-bellied Cinclodes, Ochre-flanked Tapaculo, Fire-eyed Diucon, Grassland Yellow-Finch and Common Diuca- Finch. Time permitting, we revisit Alerce Andino or Vicente Perez Rosales National Park in the late afternoon should we be missing target species. Night in Puerto Varas.
Day 11
Today, we will have a pelagic trip. Looking for. the. endemic Pincoya Storm-Petres and Dolphin .
Night puerto. Varas.
Day 12
Time permitting, we spend the morning looking for species not yet located. Flight back to Santiago. And cnonnect with your international flight or continue to Pumas extension flight to Punta Arenas.
