Birdwatching can take you to some unexpected places. I come from a family of birdwatchers and we’ve travelled the world with it, from the cloudforests of Costa Rica and the Australian Outback to the green hills of Sri Lanka. My most recent birdwatching experience was on an Antarctic expedition cruise, where icebergs offered a beautiful backdrop for an endless parade of penguins and petrels. I decided to put a full stop on that trip by spending a day birding in and around Tierra del Fuego National Park, close to the polar cruising port of Ushuaia – but even I was a little taken aback when my guide Estaban pulled our vehicle up at the municipal dump and told me to grab my binoculars.
Birding in Ushuaia
During my time in Ushuaia I stayed at the Arakur Hotel, an imposing beast of a hotel that holds a commanding hilltop position overlooking the whole town. It’s great for getting a sense of place: you can loll in the heated outdoor spa pool and look down on the port and watch the cruise ships come and go along the Beagle Channel.
For a birdwatcher, it’s also one of the best places to stay in Ushuaia as the hotel sits in its own nature reserve. You can walk straight out from breakfast and straight onto a network of trails that wind through open pine forest. You didn’t have to walk far to find a pleasant spot to sit and wait to see what birds might appear. Sometimes it was the mossy yellow of a black-chinned siskin and at other times it was just an austral thrush bobbing along: not the most dramatic birds perhaps, but I’ve always found a great charm in the everyday birds in other parts of the world – little reminders that sometimes the most enjoyable birdwatching is the most casual.
But I was here to see more than just songbirds, and just after seven in the morning, Esteban arrived in a 4WD to take us to Tierra del Fuego National Park, whose boundaries lie less than eight miles (12 km) west of Ushuaia.
Tierra del Fuego National Park
The national park is heavily wooded, with thick pine and gnarled southern beech trees. It was also Argentina’s first coastal national park, running along the Beagle Channel, so for birdwatchers it promises a good mix of forest and coastal species.
Ironically, the species that is most evident in the national park has four legs instead of wings. Just after the Second World War, the authorities thought that this under-developed region was the perfect place to create a local fur industry. The plan was an abject failure, but the beavers who escaped from their cages found a brilliant new home among the waterways and forests here, and have thrived in the absence of predators. In some parts of the park, you could easily see where they were slowly reengineering the land by damming the waterways.
I didn’t see any actual beavers, who are far too canny to show themselves off to people, but before we had even parked, we got our first bird. It was a good one too – a white-throated caracara flying above us. Esteban said it was a good omen: they tend to be found higher up in the mountains, so now we were sure to have a profitable day.
Our first birding spot was at Lago Roca. It’s a spectacular sight, with grand views of the dark mountains above us, and the crystal clear water of the lake, fringed with forest. We were greeted by a handsome pair of upland geese grazing on the grass at the edge of the water. They’re very striking birds: the male with his white head and black-barred plumage, and the gorgeous russet head of the female. It was hard not to get the impression that they knew it as well: we saw more throughout the day and they always seemed to have a particular knack for finding the most scenic spots to appear in for our cameras. These were geese with a clear eye for landscape photography.
Forest and bay
After time on the shore of the lake, we walked into the forest, lured by the knocking sound of a Magellanic woodpecker. This is one species that’s top of the list for many birders coming to Tierra del Fuego, and who can blame them? They’re phenomenally striking birds: one of the world’s largest woodpeckers, with striking glossy black plumage. Males have completely scarlet heads, but the individual that Esteban led me to was a female with scarlet around the bill and a bright orange eye, set off by a wonderful curly crest of feathers. I was overjoyed to have seen her.
As we stopped to listen and scan the forest, we also heard and then saw thorn-tailed rayaditos and a tufted tit tyrant: a tiny bird with a mighty name, and another characterful crest of black feathers.
It was a fruitful few hours in this sector of the park. I was glad that we’d started so early: by the time we made it back to the car park, the tourist coaches were starting to arrive, with their noise and diesel fumes. Sensibly, Esteban suggested we relocate, so we drove 10 minutes down the road to the visitor centre at Lapataia Bay to grab some refreshments.
Lapataia Bay itself has a couple of trails to follow, but it didn’t seem like many people were venturing further than the raised platform viewpoint that looked across the Beagle Channel to the mountains of Chilean Tierra del Fuego. This is all to the good for the birdwatcher: following the trail down to the water offered up flightless steamer ducks and some fantastic black-faced ibis poking about in the mud. I was even surprised (and delighted) to see a black-browed albatross from afar. I’d seen them when crossing the Drake Passage between Ushuaia and Antarctica, where they would dynamically soar on the big waves, so I was surprised to learn that there was a colony in Tierra del Fuego, who preferred to raise their chicks by foraging in the shallow sounds and channels, before heading out for a life on the ocean.
Shoreline birding
After a picnic lunch (punctuated by a sighting of a distant Andean condor), we turned back for Ushuaia. Esteban parked up on the outskirts of town at the Tolkeyen Hotel. This beautiful but incredibly windy spot on the coast was where we would start adding seabirds to the day’s count. Despite the wind, we managed to keep the scope’s tripod up long enough to clock kelp and dolphin gulls (the latter with fabulously dressy vermillion bills and feet), along with more geese and ducks.
We took a spell at the mouth of the Río Olivia, where we found turkey vultures and Chilean skua among the cormorants and gulls. From here, Esteban offered up our final birding spot: the Ushuaia municipal dump. Compared with the national park, it could hardly have felt less promising, and anyone less ornithologically inclined would surely have baulked at the prospect. A cheerless chainlink fence topped with barbed wire marked its limits, but sometimes the most unappealing locations can be the busiest. Any dump is good for scavengers, but this one offered up an amazing raptor show.
First to arrive were the black-chested buzzard eagles, both immature and adults, each equally spectacular. Then there were the caracaras: white-throated, crested and chimango. Only the striated caracara was absent (they’re rarely spotted in this part of Tierra del Fuego), but it was churlish to complain when they put on such a show for us, fighting over lunch with great flaps and high-pitched whistles. It was a great end to the day.
In total I saw 41 species over the course of the day. I’d planned the day as an add-on to my Antarctic cruise but Tierra del Fuego had shown itself to be a fantastic birding destination in its own right. We’d been blessed by perfect spring weather, and Esteban had been the ideal guide, with amazing knowledge of local hotspots. Without his expertise I wouldn’t have seen most of the birds on my list, or been able to identify them with so much confidence. And I certainly wouldn’t have the best sightings of caracaras that I’ve ever had – and in such an unlikely location.
Species list
Chilean Swallow
Thorn-tailed rayadito
Austral thrush
Black chinned siskin
Rufous-collared sparrow
House sparrow
Austral blackbird
Patagonian sierra finch
Tufted tit tyrant
Fire-eyed diucon
House wren
Austral negrito
Magellanic woodpecker
Ashy-headed goose
Upland goose
Kelp goose
Flying steamer duck
Flightless steamer duck
Crested duck
Yellow-billed pintail
Great grebe
Southern lapwing
Black-faced ibis
Magellanic oystercatcher
Blackish oystercatcher
Neotropical cormorant
Magellanic cormorant
Imperial shag
Dolphin gull
Kelp gull
Southern fulmar
Southern giant petrel
Chilean skua
Black-browed albatross
American kestrel
Chimango caracara
White-throated caracara
Crested caracara
Andean condor
Turkey vulture
Black-chested buzzard-eagle
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