This One is for the Birds

Here it is, the post you've all been waiting for...  Birding in Buenos Aires!

Sienna, Colby, and I (Bryan) have been keeping track of the new birds we've seen.  And pretty much everything is new -- even the robin-like birds are not robins, but rufous-bellied thrushes.  So without further ado, here are some of our sitings:

Monk Parakeets and Shiny Cowbirds.  There are lots of parakeets in the city -- especially monk parakeets -- but we've also seen some black hooded parakeets (below) and yellow-chevroned parakeets.

Black Hooded Parakeets

Two Southern Crested Caracaras:  These large birds look like a cross between an eagle and a chicken, yet they scavenge around like vultures. These ones are walking through a park in downtown.

Rufous Hornero -- the national bird of Argentina. They build little circular houses with clay.

 Chimango Caracara.  Outside of the city, these small hawk-like birds are everywhere.

White faced whistling duck.  Ducks don't excite me too much, but these were pretty neat -- they made a lot of noise and flew around in herds of 20 or so. We saw lots of other ducks, particularly Muscovy Ducks (which are so annoying that they don't deserve a picture), but a lot of them look like ducks you'd see in a park in the US, so we didn't try to identify them.

Here is a Neotropic Cormorant sitting on a boat rope.

Southern lapwings.  These are quite common once you get outside the city.  We also saw some black-necked stilts which are about the same size and look somewhat similar, but are just white and black and have longer legs and a longer beak.

Coscoroba Swan. This is in a park -- we don't count clearly tame birds (like the peacocks at the zoo) or birds in exhibits (like the toucan at the zoo that defecated on Colby or the parrot that climbed onto Kristen's head), but this swan is free to go wherever it wants and is native to the region, so we counted it.

 

 

Rufous Collared Sparrow.  Not the most exciting, but hey, they don't live in Tennessee.

Neither do Cattle Tyrants.

Green Barred Woodpecker.  Ashley -- our birder in training -- spotted this one.

Chalk Browed Mockingbird.

Great Kiskadee.  These birds are pretty cool, with bright yellow breasts, and a black stripe on their faces.

 One of our best finds was this Blue-and-Yellow Tanager.  Too bad our camera isn't better.

 Snowy Egret that Sienna and Colby saw in a park and photographed without me. We all saw a cattle egret -- looks similar but smaller -- at a ranch outside of the city.

We've seen a lot of pigeons (rock doves) -- nothing exciting about that, as they're also everywhere in the US.  But the Picazuro Pigeon, below, isn't something we see at home.  Instead of mourning doves, they have Eared Doves (one whoo-whoo-whoos every morning outside our apartment), and there are lots of small doves called Picui Ground Doves (pictured below).

Picui Ground Doves.

And last, but definitely not least, is the Guira Cuckoo.

 

We also identified, but didn't take or post a photo of saffron finches and a bare-faced ibis. Sienna and Ashley also saw a barn owl at the ranch.

 

Yes, I admit, birding is a little geeky.  Kristen rolls her eyes as we take photo-after-photo of little sparrows. But it's been a fun thing to do with the kids, and it definitely makes us more aware of our surroundings.  I've been to Buenos Aires twice before -- before I became a birder -- and never noticed that there were parakeets everywhere in the city. 

So in case you're counting, that's 29 new birds (30 for Sienna and Colby) and puts all of us over 100 for our lifetime birding list!