Eyes on the Wild

The quiet bays and lagoons around Chiloé are the perfect habitat for waterfowl.

Some shore birds are famous for their long-distance migrations from the sub-Arctic to southern South America. Chiloé Island is where 21,000 Hudsonian Godwits, Limosa haemastica, go outside the Alaskan summer. They comprise 99% of those estimated to occur along the Pacific coast during the boreal winter (Andres et al 2009). And there they were, in Caulín Bay near Ancud on Chiloé island, hundreds of them stoically facing the wind and doing their best to catch forty winks.

They are not flamboyant birds, at least in their non-breeding plumage, except for that long slightly upcurved bill (look at the one on lower right):

Their wings are not huge, either, making their long migrations (including stretches of as much as 8000Km over five days without stopping) even more remarkable:

They like to sleep with one foot tucked into their feathers for warmth:

Until the 1940’s, they were considered extremely rare, and in danger of extinction, but it turned out that both their breeding grounds and their non-breeding hangouts are so remote (Alaska, Chiloé..) that we humans just hadn’t noticed them! This Birds of the World map has breeding grounds in pink, migration in yellow, and non-breeding in blue.

The world population is thought to be 50,000 to 70,000 birds, and stable. Nevertheless, in Chile their hunting or capture is, thankfully, forbidden. This website tracks their migration from Chiloé to Alaska and back: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1ebf7c221c654e6d8a06355501f40cb9

They are under pressure from increasing development in the area, but blessedly at present they seem to be stable enough. Nonetheless, one study found that even traditional artisan seaweed harvesting adversely affects the birds, (Navedo et al 2019), so there is some reason for concern that the high concentration in this one spot leaves them vulnerable in the future.

Close by to the godwits we saw these charming Chiloé Wigeon, Mareca sibilatrix, a duck found only in southern South America, with a flash of iridescent turquoise on its head. It is not endangered. Locally, it has two other splendid names: Pato Real (ie Royal) or Pato Picasso.

Finally, even more majestically, we saw a group of black-necked swans, Cygnus melancoryphus, including this family:

They have a huge red knob above their bill:

One had a very disconcerting neck-ring: our guide didn’t know if this was a proper scientific research-related ring, unlikely, or put there by a seriously misguided jokester.

This is the only swan that breeds in the Neotropics, and the worldwide population is thought to be less than 100,000, of which around 20,000 are in Chile. Around Chiloé the population is if anything increasing, and they are not considered endangered.

PS One of my previous posts is about a different godwit, and its migration:

Breaking all records: the Bar-Tailed Godwit

Just as I had thought all dolphins were the same, so had I all sea lions. Again, not so. The familiar California Sealion is Zalophus californianus. Males can grow up to 2.7 m (8.9 ft) long, while females are typically around 2.1 m (6.9 ft).

But in Chile, we saw the unrelated South American sea lion, Otaria flavescens, whose males are slightly bigger than the Californian ones, measuring up to 3 m (9.8 ft) in length with a weight of 350 kg (770 lb) while females are fractionally smaller, at 2 m (6 ft 7 in). So the size disparity is huge; this group are hanging out next to a salmon farm; look at the huge bull on the left:

Their more natural homes are rocky shorelines, often pretty steep:

The dominant male claims the highest spot, where any pups will be safest from predators (like orcas):

Their huge bulk makes getting down a rock face quite tricky:

This bull was heading for the water, but he got briefly waylaid by a group of females. Eventually, he made it, as the video below shows:

This was the start of the breeding season, and dominant males establish a harem of females. The group still had last year’s pups:

Not yet fully grown, but ready to forage. They waited for the big bull to go in, then followed:

There is lots of socializing in these groups:

The socializing extends to decisions to go for a swim, caught on video:

Pups are born 0.86 m (2 ft 10 in) long, and black. They lighten as they grow. They first enter the water at about four weeks old, and stay with the mother for a year. This one was not sure about going in, so its mother gently encouraged it:

then followed once she could see it was safely launched:

‘

They bob around, very curious about us:

A brief video gives you the flavor:

Back on shore, the sea lions share the rocks with turkey vultures, which may eat the seal poop, scavenge, and but also attack newborn pups, so they are watched closely by the sea lions:

To end, a few closeups:

And finally one emulating the performing sea lions at the New England Aquarium that my kids used to like, but this time a wild one on a float in a mussel farm:

I’m guessing that unless you grew up in a place where dolphins live (lucky you), a dolphin is a dolphin is a dolphin. But gradually over the years I have realized this is pure ignorance. There are 42 species of dolphin (not counting porpoises), orcas being the largest (up to 6,600Kg.) In the waters off southern Chile, we saw two of the smallest: Peale’s Dolphin, Lagenorhynchus australis, and the Chilean Dolphin, Cephalorhynchus eutropia.

The Chilean Dolphin is one of the world’s smallest; at around 63Kg. it is 1/100th the size of an orca, and it is found nowhere else in the world. It is a short, fat dolphin, called tonina in Chile.

Unlike many dolphins, it doesn’t always appear to enjoy being near boats, but these were pretty playful:

We saw a small group of three or four, which is typical, but they can form pods of up to 50. They have a distinctive short rounded dorsal fin, and a black stripe from blowhole to eyes to fins, just visible on the closest one here:

One of these has been hit by a boat, and injured its dorsal fin:

Their bellies are white, and for a while they swam loops under our boat, upside down, giving us a good look:

They favor shallow waters and estuaries, which makes them vulnerable to boat traffic and pollution. It is thought there are no more than 5000 left in the wild, and in Chile although they are now protected enforcement is difficult, and some fishermen still use their meat as crab bait.

As it happens, the day we were out on the Maullin River estuary watching these rare dolphins was Thanksgiving Day, and we were lucky enough to see a mother and baby, something very special to give thanks for:

On a different day, we also saw Peale’s dolphins, a little larger, and now thought to be related to the Chilean Dolphin. They are found all round the southern end if South America, in both oceans, and the population is probably more than 21,000 .

Their fin is much more pointed:

The two species are sometimes found together, but we saw them separately.

In 2010, on the shores of Bahía Inútil (Useless Bay!) on the Straits of Magellan in Tierra del Fuego, king penguins established a new colony, now numbering about 60 birds. (For comparison, many of the more established colonies, all on tiny islands, have 100,000 birds!)

This map shows all known King Penguin colonies, in red, and this new one, in yellow

It is a very unusual breeding colony because unlike most other colonies, whose residents travel long distances from tiny islands to forage, these birds forage only locally in the Magellan Strait. This second map shows where these penguins forage; the yellow star is their colony. It is the only colony in the world reachable by car.

The convenience of this local food shopping should help them feed their chicks more efficiently, but the chick mortality rate is quite high, perhaps due to either predators like gray foxes, or diseases like bird flu?

Here is the new community. The Straits are behind them, and they are sheltered by the intervening dunes:

An adult is up to 1m (39″) high, and weighs up to 18Kg (40lbs). That’s about 75% of the size of an emperor penguin. Look at the interacting pairs, stretching themselves tall.

They are most probably courting, since it is breeding season.

They are serially monogamous, keeping the same mate all year, but not necessarily the next. These two seem to have bonded:

Some are undecided:

He seems to have rejected both of them:

Some are apparently fending off competitors:

And some may sadly be destined for a solitary life:

But for those who succeed, one year later you become the proud parents of a teenager:

This is last year’s chick, and it will soon shed its down and head out to sea. Meanwhile, only its mother could love it.

PS: All maps are from argos.com, the high tech company that helped tag and track the penguins for a study by Pütz et al 2021.

A new king penguin colony in Magellan Strait?

After Chiloé and the lake district, we flew south to Punta Arenas, in southern Patagonia. First stop, Tierra del Fuego. My husband, who did not come on this trip, was impressed more than anything else by the fact that we crossed the Straits of Magellan to get there. Here is a map, showing where we crossed, at the narrowest point of the straits, 1.2 miles wide:

This 350 mile long passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1520, and, hinting at its fearsome reputation, it was pretty rough; we were ordered off the top deck!

The part of Tierra del Fuego we were in is a treeless and fairly flat area, though it does have guanaco!

The vegetation looked mostly unpromising, except for patches of color:

But once you got close, it was fascinating. Many were cushion plants, thriving below the fury of the relentless winds, mounds of tiny Alpine-like succulentish things, with other plants pushing up through the middle:

Here are a few of my favorites:

Some plants were a little larger:

We didn’t see many birds, but this flamboyant guy and his much subtler mate made up for it:

And nestled by the side of a road, very well camouflaged, a couple of Lesser Horned Owls.

Our end goal was the King Penguin colony, of which more in my next post.

This is an extra mini-post, that I had intended to be part of my last one. That last post was my 500th since I started in 2017, and in celebration I have a story to tell.

Last summer I bought a small folding aluminum stool, which I kept by my beaver pond. One day it disappeared. I searched the shore thoroughly, no sign of it. I was mystified: only the animals and I go there.

Two days before Christmas, the pond now thinly frozen except for the otter holes, about 8 feet out on the ice from where I’d last seen my stool, there it was:

The only explanation I can come up with is that the otters pulled it out of the pond onto the ice, either because the shiny blue metal looked like a fish, or just for fun.

As for how it got into the pond the first place…….

By turns magnificent and comic, the Peruvian Pelican, Pelecanus thagus, is one of three New World pelican species. It breeds along the coast of Peru and Chile. Chiloé is the extreme south of its non-breeding range, and populations there are increasing, though not yet breeding.

These are huge birds, with wingspans well over 2m (78in). They live only on the coasts, and eat mainly Peruvian Anchovies, often heading out to fish at night. But they can eat other things: well-grown chicks have been know to eat smaller (unrelated!) ones.  They seem to be sociable birds, usually in small groups, like these ones preening and drying their wings.

They mingle with other birds, such as gulls, Kelp Geese, Magellanic Penguins, steamer ducks (back left below), and cormorants.

These gulls are fighting over a fish, while the pelicans stand by, aloof and patrician.

The red bill and blue gular pouch are quite distinctive:*

This one was heading out to sea, taking a running jump:

For the photographer, they’re a gift. Even from a bobbing boat you can take their portraits.

PS They have been in this part of the world for a long time, and were represented in rock art in northern Chile between 1,700 BC and 1,000 AD. Overall populations have been adversely affected by El Niño fluctuations, and a reduction in food stocks, especially anchovies. The IUCN classifies it as Near Threatened.

* A favorite children’s book comes to mind, Roald Dahl’s The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me, in which the pelican’s gular pouch carries the water for the monkey’s window-washing business:

Chiloé is a large island off the coast of Chile, near the Lake Region. It has a climate rather like that of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State: its west coast and uplands get a torrential 120″ inches of rain a year. We walked in the mossy Valdivian temperate rain forests, stayed in lovely lodges in two of the national parks, and went out on rivers, estuaries, and the Pacific ocean.

We had hoped to see a variety of small rare mammals, but of course we didn’t. With one exception: we saw four Southern Pudu, the second smallest deer in the world (smaller than a muntjac, but beaten to bottom spot by the Northern Pudu!). They are only 14-18″ tall, and 14-30lbs. Here is a male:

His unforked antlers are no more than 3.5 in long and very delicate.

The first one we saw was a female, and, lucky us, she had a tiny spotted fawn:

The IUCN considers these deer Near Threatened overall, and the Chiloé population has been isolated from the mainland for over 200,000 years, and is a particularly vulnerable separate gene pool.

All that rain means rivers, and waterfalls,

amidst lush rainforest with giant ferns:

and Gunnera tinctoria, known as “nalca”, everywhere:*

The leaves can be 2.5m across:

And beneath them is a secretive lush world of spiny stalks

and 1m tall flower spikes.

The stalks are peeled and eaten just like we eat rhubarb.

In November it is early summer down in Chile, and the wildflowers are starting. This is a delicate vine called Luzuriaga polyphylla, endemic to Chile:

Fuchsias, like many of these plants familiar from our UK or US gardens, come from this part of the world. This is a wild Magellanic Fuchsia:

and so is this:

A ragged looking plant with orange flowers with scarlet centres called Loasa acerifolia:

and finally a Chilean Lantern Tree, Crinodendron hookerianum, found only in Chile; it is much loved by hornets, so we beat a hasty retreat:

Everywhere we saw Chilean Firebush, but I’ll let that wait for another day.

PS * Around the time of anti-goverment protests in 2019, a vegetable vendor in Puerto Montt dressed himself in nalca leaves. He went viral, and became a symbol of the protests, known as Nalcaman: