CHILE:
WALKING
28 August – 11 September 2024
THE PATAGONIAN STEPPE GRASSLAND to the northeast of Punta Arenas stretches as far as the eye can see towards the Argentinian border. Fortunately dirt road conditions allowed me to explore several remote areas before my Puma tracking tour started and get very close to some of the special birds of this habitat. Top of my list was the beautiful Tawny-throated Dotterel, looking like a variant of our own Eurasian Dotterel but with a long needle-fine bill. Fab-u-lous! Other interesting spcies included the enigmatic Band-tailed Earthcreeper, found as I was watching a point-blank Humbolt’s Hog-nosed Skunk by the roadside! On another occasion a Patagonian Hairy Armadillo scuttled along a ditch, while I watched one of the ubiquitous Least Seedsnipes. Lesser Rheas were dotted here and there and on one of the many small roadside marshes, a pair of Magellanic Oystercatchers had set up territory in preparation for the coming spring. Post-tour I was able to make a short visit to the gorgeous Punta de Tralca on the Pacific Coast during a stopover in Santiago and fill in some more seabird gaps as well as some of Chile’s enigmatic passerines.
A magnificent male Andean Condor glides effortlessley past. Front Cover: Puma ‘Escarcha’ on day 1 of our Puma Tracking. Next page: Tawny-throated Dotterel & Pages 4–5: One of Petaka’s cubs (Mike Watson)
The first of the pair of Wild Images Chile: Walking With Pumas tours went very smoothly, clocking up an impressive 23+ Puma encounters in only 8 days in the Torres del Paine area, with a minimum of 17 different Pumas, many of which were well known individuals and some now internationally famous TV celebrities! The number of sightings afforded numerous photographic opportunities and we were able to shoot them in a very nice range of different scenarios: close portraits; in-thelandscape (even against the famous towers); at rest; walking; hunting; a mother with two cubs; eating at no fewer than four different Guanaco carcasses; interaction between male and female; in sunshine and shadow and most dramatically through a blizzard, twice. Probably the most satisfying aspect was the minimal walking involved, no Puma necessitated significantly more than 1km of hiking and very much of this was on relatively flat and easy terrain. I think we were lucky in this respect! Although the tour was focused primarily on Pumas and we took any cat action whenever we could, to enable the most varied portfolio, there were some other great wildlife experiences to be had in Patagonia. Other highlights this time included time spent close to the weird
little Magellanic Plover, the iconic bird of the Southern Cone, so strange it is even placed in its own bird family! The WHOOSH of the enormous wings of Andean Condors as they glided effortlessly past us on a remote escarpment in Patagonia’s fjordland, allowing the all-important upper wing view. Other birds ranged from the maniacal hooting of the tiny demon of the Nothofagus forests, Austral Pygmy Owl, almost within touching distance, to the enormous Magellanic Woodpecker, the largest extant woodpecker of the Americas and maybe also the tamest? Surfing Black-necked Swans along the rocky shore at Puerto Natales was probably not how most would expect to see these majestic birds, but it made for fine images! There was also a good array of other waterbirds and inhabitants of the wild Patagonian steppe.
We were also lucky to avoid the ongoing roadworks to upgrade the road through the park, no doubt to facilitate even more visitors! They had delayed the start until most of the way through our tour. We also avoided the worst of the weather; we did not lose much time to heavy rain or snow this time and being so early in the season there was only a handful of other
folks looking for Pumas during our stay. Add to this some nice accommodation, mountains of tasty food and delightfully friendly hosts and we had all the ingredients for a classic tour.
Mike Watson, Clitheroe, October 2024
THE TOUR BEGINS IN PUNTA ARENAS
Punta Arenas (‘Sandy Point’) is only a small city, with a population of 145,000 but is of great importance strategically, being the capital of Chile’s southernmost region Magallanes (and Antarctica, for which it serves as a gateway). It is not connected to the rest of Chile by road (one must fly, take a ferry or drive through Argentina to get there). This wild region ‘at the end of the world’ was mostly settled by European immigrants from Russia and particularly Croatia in the late 1800s and it is unusual in having its own time zone (UTC -3), using summertime all year round! Its inhabitants must endure strong winds (ropes have even been deployed between buildings downtown!) and harmful UV light owing to the thinning ozone layer. However, being in the rain shadow of the
Andes, the precipitation is quite low. The city’s early economic boom days were curtailed thanks to the Panama Canal but more recently it has become a centre for gas and oil and latterly a tourism hub for both Antarctica and access to Torres del Paine. Some of us enjoyed its wide boulevards in the period leading up to the start of the tour, full of interesting shops, bars and restaurants.
Unfortunately, some of that infrequent precipitation was falling on us as we met our very capable Puma Tracking guide Cristian. The rain continued to pour down all morning, so we started gently with a walk around a small wetland reserve on the edge of the city, which produced some close images of waterbirds, including Magellanic Snipe, Upland Goose, Crested Duck, Cinnamon Teal, Chiloe Wigeon, Red-gartered Coot, White-tufted Grebe and Southern Lapwing. Landbirds caught in the frame included Austral Thrush, Dark-bellied Cinclodes and the ubiquitous Rufous-collared Sparrow.
We only enjoyed one pink sunrise on the towers, it is not guaranreed (Mike Watson)
The rain had now eased enough for us to make our first foray into the wild open landscape of Southern Patagonia. As we headed north on empty roads, we passed by a group of Greater Rheas, the Americas’ ostrich relative and were able to wait until they formed photogenic lines etc.
We had an appointment with a very special little bird next. The Magellanic Plover is a unique shorebird, so weird it is the sole member of its own bird family. It even regurgitates food for its young! It has a dumpy body a bit like a plover but a bill that would not look out-ofplace on a warbler. We were fortunate to see a couple of pairs of them at a spot where they had been for a few days pre-tour and happily they allowed close approach. We could watch as they twirled around in wind-blown flotsam on the shore of a shallow lake, foraging for food. MAGIC! Also here were the smart Rufous-chested Plover and Two-banded Plover as well as Magellanic Oystercatcher and more Upland Geese, which quickly scared away a pair of our only Ashy-headed Geese of the tour. Higher up on the lakeshore a pair of Buff-winged Cinclodes also allowed close approach and our first Long-tailed Meadowlark was seen.
We continued northwest after lunch and reached our destination, the Olga Teresa Estancia, and its imposing condor cliff. The weather-beaten cliffs themselves are fairly low and hug a south facing escarpment. There were over 20 Andean Condors already perched along their length, on a day of no wind, when many would not have bothered to venture out in search of food - they depend heavily on wind to transport their massive bulk and vast wings. We detoured briefly for an old friend of Cristian’s, the demonic Austral Pygmy Owl. It has a bad attitude for a sparrow-sized predator and like all others of its genus it is despised by small landbirds. When it came to check us out, a couple of Thorn-tailed Rayaditos shot by on its tail! Eventually it settled on a dead snag only a few metres away calling its head off, oblivious to our presence! Great views were
Magellanic Plover, one of the world’s iunique shorebirds (Mike Watson)
had! Sadly, there was no Lesser Horned Owl today, so we settled for its pint-sized cousin instead. By now we could see some condor action above us, including a mating pair! It was time to head uphill.
Again, adverse weather rendered the jeep track to the top of the cliffs impassable, so, to enter the ‘Realm of the Condor’ proper and get eye-level with them, we had to hike up around 100m up a 45 degree slope to the shoulder of the escarpment and then traverse the cliff top to a spacious ledge that commanded a view of the condors’ flyway to and fro along the escarpment. A couple of sightings of Black-chested Buzzard Eagle were too early for our cameras but we were ready when the big ones started to drift past. The action was quite subdued compared to what can normally be expected here but at least we got some nice upper wings of an adult male complete with head comb at eye level and below, with
uncomplicated backgrounds. We also got to experience the WHOOSH of their 3m+ wings as they passed by at close range like light aircraft. Towards evening, the weather closed in again, the wind picked up and rainfall came in from the west bringing our session to a close. It had still been a very worthwhile day photographically despite the conditions and we had some good condor images!
RUTA CH-9
This morning, we headed north out of Punta Arenas on the famous Route 9, bound for Torres del Paine. The wind was back with a vengeance today, but it had brought the sunshine with it! The journey was punctuated by some roadside Chilean Flamingos and point-blank Black-chested Buzzard Eagles on a roadside hare corpse, a couple of condors was hanging around in the distance, waiting for a quiet moment in the one car every ten minutes traffic. We passed by another condor cliff, where nine Andean Condors were gathered, albeit out of range of the cameras. A small flock of Austral Parakeets whizzed by, we didn’t have any luck
with them this year but the bird-of-the-day was undoubtedly Black-necked Swan! Two pairs of these beauties were surfing waves along the rocky shore just north of Puerto Natales, allowing us down to water level to photograph them. FAB-U-LOUS! Our guide Cristian’s home is in Puerto Natales, originally established as a port for the wool industry, but it is now better known as the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park. We passed the Cueva del Milodón Natural Monument – a cave, which was inhabited by prehistoric tribes and was the site of the discovery in 1895 of the remains of a 3-4m long Giant Ground Sloth (Mylodon darwini). There is a life-size statue of Mylodon on one of the mini roundabouts in Puerto Natales!
Tucked in a faraway corner of Chile at 51 degrees South is the famous Torres del Paine National Park. Thanks to a quarter of a million visitors every year it now has some very strict rules, like you are not allowed to leave the roads through the park except on marked trails. This combined with a never-ending procession of other vehicles on your tail means that Puma watching inside the park can be very unsatisfactory as a crowd of noisy tourists quickly piles up whenever you stop anywhere.
There really is no substitute for the wilds of the Laguna Amarga Estancia! The national park encompasses 700 square miles of mountains, glaciers and lakes and the Paine Massif itself includes the famous Towers, three towering granite peaks reaching 2500m ASL, as well as the only slightly less impressive Cuernos del Paine (Horns of Paine) on its southwest flank. We entered the park via its southwest Rio Serrano entrance to make the most of some backlight light on the Cuernos, whose jagged peaks consist of Cretaceous sedimentary rocks with a Micoene granite intrusion. Admiring awesome mountain scenery, we made our way slowly across the park, via many potholes(!), past Puente (‘Bridge’) Weber, Mirador Nordenskjöld and Mirador Sarmiento, as we familiarised ourselves with the landscape that would become the focus of our attention in the coming days.
A drive through a charred landscape of dead beech trees followed, thanks to periodic fires mostly started by idiotic tourists, although apparently studies have shown that fires are not just a recent phenomenon! Between them were occasional intact stands of contorted Southern Beech trees, like something out of Lord of the Rings. This is not surprising as the trees are close relatives of those filmed in New Zealand in the epic based on Tolkien’s books. (Did I mention before that he went to school at Stonyhurst, within sight of the Wild Images office!) The Nothofagus genus of beech trees originated in Gondwana during the Cretaceous period, hence its presence on the now scattered fragments in Australia and New Zealand as well as the Southern Cone. The park lies in a strange zone of ‘temperate climate of cold rain without a dry season’, that sounds grim doesn’t it? Maybe a bit like Scotland minus, with cool summers and an average low of -3 degrees Celsius in winter.
Our base for the next week was a delightful hotel, situated in a small settlement established by Croatian immigrants, as most ranches are in this region. We met our head Puma tracker Jorge and learned the many protocols that we would need to observe while in Puma country. Like how close we were allowed to approach Pumas and what to do if they approached us etc. The area we search in is a sheep ranch outside the national park, although it is adjacent to it, has much the same habitat and the animals of the park come and go as they please. The main advantage being that park rules do not apply here; we can even drive off road, walk away from roads and we are not followed around by zillions of other tourists. The ranch or estancia does not have many sheep, and it is mostly left to the Guanacos, which in turn attract the big cats. The estancia is a rolling land of eroded hills and wild Patagonian steppe, heavily glaciated, evidenced by the conglomerate errratics dumped by glaciers here and there across the bleak grassland.
SEVEN PUMAS
Pumas #1-5. BOOM! Within a few minutes of entering the estancia on our first day of Puma tracking and Cristian found a female and her four (!) 10 months old cubs, the Morena family. However, she quickly led them away and out of sight, their progress through the undulating landscape marked by the hysterical screams of Southern Lapwings. Some of us fired off a few record shots. Cubs are not named at this age. The local trackers usually agree on a name, which reflects some character of the cat, like its adult colouration or behaviour. Puma #6. Ginger was making her way up a slope towards a group of Guanacos that were grazing quietly not far from a hillock, towards the upper part of the estancia just south of Lake Goic, which is named after the Croatian family who established the Laguna Amarga ranch. Her approach was painstakingly slow, as she avoided the sentinels, her sight
locked on a lone resting animal on the edge of the herd. She made it to around 15 metres from the camel and then she stopped. She was probably within range, but she dithered, hoping the Guanacos would come closer maybe but either way one of them eventually spotted her and sounded the alarm, a loud braying call. This caused the Guanacos to flee and then Ginger launched but it was already too late, and she could not close the gap once the Guanacos were in full flight. The price of dithering. She wandered off down into the valley and out of sight and the Guanacos regrouped and continued to graze. However, what a way to start our time Puma tracking with a chase on the first morning!
Puma #7. Escarcha! She was being followed by Jorge and she crossed the main ranch road right next to us, using a ditch to hide herself as much as possible but still offering some incredible portrait opportunities. She continued
slightly upslope through the Mata Negra, the widespread ‘black plant’ that covers much of the landscape, especially at lower elevations. As she walked, we walked and when she paused, so did we. We got some nice walking shots of her, maybe the most beautiful of all the female Pumas said Cristian, she is very grey, hence her name ‘Frost’ and she is thought to be the daughter of Dark, the dominant male of the estancia. Her mother is Petaka, star of the National Geographic documentary, which followed the progress of her and her two cubs. She grew up surrounded by Puma watchers and drones, so she did not pay us much attention and walked straight at us, passing very close by. What a thrilling moment. She did this again a little later before noticing a distant Guanaco, at which point her pace quickened to
a trot. However, she did not pursue her interest, and she simply sat down and enjoyed the warmth of the evening sun, which had dropped below the cloud base. She did look incredibly beautiful in the low angle light, and it was difficult to disagree with Cristian’s thoughts! The sun dipped further and into more clouds piled up over the towers behind us and it was time to leave. What a fantastic day this was, one Puma first timers would remember for as long as their memory lasts, and even longer actually as we have thousands of images to remind us! The cloud formations on the way back to our hotel were spectacular too, with numerous spaceship-shaped lenticular clouds and weird cloud shadows, as was the subsequent sunset. Wonderful stuff!
DARK DAY
Our second day started cloudy but at least dry. Jorge had located the big bad boss of the estancia, Dark! He is the least friendly and most feared puma. The dominant male and father of many of the young Pumas we saw. He was making his way down to Lago Sarmiento but was using as much of the terrain as he could to hide himself. He is known to lurk in the bushes of the Mata Negra, sometimes making a surprise encounter with him a little too close for comfort. Anyway, he gave us the slip, only adding further to his mystique. As the morning progressed, the wind picked up and it began to rain, there were even some flakes of snow in the air. We ate lunch and continued to search in the vicinity of the lake. Things were quiet but as we would discover they can change suddenly. In an instant Cristian picked up a faint heat source in the Mata Negra down by the
lake. He could see something interesting, but was it just a warm rock? The heat binos are not powerful enough to penetrate bushes so he would have to take a look, He circled the bushes trying to get an angle sufficient to tell what it was, you do not want to stomp up to a sleeping Puma and disturb it. He stopped and called us, contact! It is Dark! Wow! Dark loves bushes! Of all the Pumas of the ranch, he was the one we really wanted to see, a proper unit. We were able to approach to a safe distance and got some views of him through the Mata Negra as he raised his ugly head, evil eyes peering at us through the scratchy vegetation. There is nothing like having an apex predator looking at you with nothing between you and it, but thankfully the Pumas in TDP are much more friendly towards people than in other parts of their range. Eventually he got up and slunk off through the Mata Negra allowing us a good look at his massive bulk, he was probably sleeping off a meal making his profile
even bigger. We could not see where he went, even with the heat binos, so we let him be and moved off. Our first White-throated Caracara flew by along the lake shore but nothing much happened after our encounter with Dark.
THE CARCASS
A sunny morning session spent photographing roadside birds, mostly the entertaining Scale-throated Earthcreeper, was interrupted by news of a kill uphill. We were kindly invited to join one of the other guides on the ranch, who had located a Guanaco carcass with two Pumas in attendance. The poor animal was thought to have been killed by Blinka, the famous one-eyed female, a born survivor who has not only overcome the loss of use of an eye as well as a serious leg injury. During the recovery from the latter, she was helped by her male cub, who hunted for her when she was not able to. After a while sliding along muddy tracks, well not even tracks at times, with 4WD engaged, we finally reached the spot to find Blinka feeding on the carcass, her faced cov-
ered in blood. The light as well as the aspect were not conducive to worthwhile images, so we waited and had our picnic lunches. After some time, she scraped some grass onto the kill to cover it (essentially to hide it from avian scavengers, condors and caracaras) and then dug a small scrape nearby and pooped into it (we looked later, it was jet black and quite loose, that’s usually a sign of gastrointestinal bleeding in cats). She walked to a small runnel nearby and took a drink, in rather glary light unfortunately. The second cat, sleeping nearby was Cuevas, meaning ‘Caves’ (so called as he had hidden in a cave down by the lakeshore after he had been darted by the Panthera cat monitoring team). Blinka wandered over to look at him. He was sleeping off his Guanaco buffet lunch and Jorge thought after he had dislodged Blinka from her kill? Time passed and eventually Cuevas returned to the kill. He didn’t like our presence and sat partly in cover in the adjacent bush, a habit of male Pumas, keeping a watchful eye on us. Blinka had now retreated uphill. She must have been hungry again by late afternoon, as she carefully approached the kill but as quick as a flash Cuevas bolted from cover and charged her. Blinka immediately cowered in a submissive position under him and there was no physical contact. The charge and the following action were difficult to shoot as most weren’t ready for it – an exercise in maintaining concentration and to always have your camera set for action with a fast shutter speed as default. Let that be a lesson. As he withdrew, she retreated further uphill, and he returned to his bush. Cuevas remained quite nervous and eventually he stood up and wandered off in the other direction, to sleep off his meal in peace. He could always return to take over the kill again any time he liked I suppose. It was now early evening, and the sun was dipping into yet another bank of clouds behind the towers. No sunset-illuminated Pumas for us on this tour sadly, but we did manage some interesting against the light, back-lit silhouettes of her before the sun fell out of sight. Another exciting day in Torres del Paine!
PETAKA’S KILL
There were some mutterings this afternoon, ‘Where’s Jorge?’, ‘We haven’t heard from him, has he taken the afternoon off?’. Far from it, he had been quietly scouring the lakeshore in search of one of his favourite Pumas, Petaka and eventually he had found her, by a relatively fresh Guanaco kill. WOW! That meant we had subjects guaranteed for the next couple of days. There was not only lovely Petaka, but her two as-yet un-named cubs, a boy and a girl. We drove past sheep and horse pastures and then hiked through a sea of Mata Negra, perfect ambush terrain should a suicidal lone Guanaco decide to wander through here, as one obviously did! Tucked away in a small depression atop the bluffs that line Lake Sarmiento was Petaka’s kill, typically covered with grass and there she was too, a picture of tranquility with her two gorgeous cubs, around 8 months old. This was an extra special sighting as my colleague Gin Wilde and her group had seen the courtship that produced these cubs, their father was the big bad boss himself, Dark, who we had encountered a couple of days previously. This really was turning into a Puma Dynasty tour!
Our main man Cristian kept watch over the situation, but Petaka is well known as one of the calmest Pumas and the most habituated to people. The fact that she could rest assured in our presence with her two cubs like this was incredible to see. The little boy cub seemed to be the most adventurous of the pair, as you would expect, and he had the trademark grey coat of his father. Petaka is the mother of Escarcha (‘Frost’), who we had also seen earlier, another daughter of Dark and she is also the half-sister of Blinka. The prey density is so high here that the apple does not fall far from the tree! The cats repositioned in the morning affording a nice wider view with the towers in the background but otherwise they were mostly sitting and slumbering. In late afternoon they stirred and indulged in some playful wrestling, the boy cub seemed to have a special bond with his mother, she clearly showed more affection towards him with lots of licking each
other’s faces and there was a little more rough and tumble between them. Petaka is known to be one of the best Puma mums and takes a lot of interest in her cubs, constantly teaching them life skills. This is what the play fighting is all about. In late afternoon Petaka summoned the cubs to the kill, where they fed until we left at tea time. It was another dull evening so no reason to stay later. But again, what a day!
Thank you Jorge!
KILLERS
We were spoilt for choice today; Jorge had located Ginger (our hunting female Puma from day 1 in TDP) at a kill. Good news she had finally been successful! However, she was asleep around 50m away uphill from it, and not in a photogenic situation so we decided to try our luck with another Puma, the incredibnly beautiful Coirón, named after the ubiquitous tufted buff-white grass owing to her very pale coat. It is impossible to decide who is the fairest of them all! Coirón is the daughter of Rupestre, another famous Puma mother from the BBC’s dynasties series. She was around 1km away from Ginger, almost within sight and after the three orange parka-clad(!!!) other Puma watchers had departed for lunch we wandered over to take a look at her. What a beauty she is. She was now in a quite obliging sheltered spot, around 100m from her kill and we could manage some worthwhile portraits. The wind increased to typical Patagonian gale force at lunchtime although there were only a few drops of rain thankfully. Coirón moved a couple of times and revisited her kill as four condors passed overhead, ever watchful for the next post-Puma feast. She covered the kill
a little more with grass and bush twigs then returned to the shelter of a large erratic boulder, of which there are many. Some nice angles in sunshine were had, partially obscured by a ridge in front and backlight too. She wasn’t in the mood to move and we later discovered she had another kill nearby! Pumas will often whack any Guanaco that crosses their path, even while they are eating!
SNOW!
The wind howled and the rain hammered down on the roof of my hotel room overnight and I wondered what lay ahead of us. It was definitely advanced level 4WD today, so we packed into two vehicles as we headed out onto the ranch. We passed a few Black-faced Ibises and Blinka’s now finished kill, where there was a pair of White-throated Caracaras for the cameras. The first of our trio of Pumas today was beautiful Coirón, now sitting on a hillside far above her kill, why we wondered? It started to snow. Soon flakes filled the air, this is what we had been hoping for. We love snowflakes in our images! Coirón cautiously descended to her second kill, and started to eat, keeping a watchful eye to the east, maybe under the cov-
ENCORE
Well, they weren’t our final totals! After a visit to the world’s best souvenir shop (really!) at Ovejero, where we stocked up with presents to take home, and some slipping and sliding on the overnight ice… and a couple of roadside Chilean Flamingos with snowy mountains in the background, we entered the National Park again. This time the overnight snow had transformed it into a winter wonderland. How we wished we could have been on the ranch today with Pumas in snow again, but our time was up. Not far in Cristian pulled over to the side of the road, having just seen a mother Puma and two cubs! Then followed a lesson in why we do not spend any time in the park looking for Pumas. Almost immediately vehicles started to pile up behind us and a group of around 30 noisy would-be Puma watchers gathered. Although everyone stuck to the road, the crowd was such that the Puma family stayed within a group of dense bushes, only affording fleeting glimpses of the cubs and their mum, who kept them deep in cover. Still, a few images of Puma cubs in snow were very welcome.
Continuing past the various scenic lookouts over the towers and then the horns we traversed the park to Lago Grey. We came here in search of blue icebergs (distantly in the lake) and a very special bird. Magellanic Woodpecker is a very large and impressive woodpecker, of the same genus as the extinct Ivory-billed and inhabits mature Nothofagus (Southern Beech) forests, where they live in highly territorial pairs. We searched the forest on the lakeshore, where we could see lots of woodpecker damage. They had battered the hell out of the beech trees here! But the vandals were nowhere to be seen. We quickly scuttled back a couple of kilometres along the road to another spot, where we were stunned by gob-smackingly close views of this forest giant! The male sporting an attractive scarlet hood and playing ‘peek-a-boo’ around a massive tree trunk! It is a shame that a few of us chose lunch over the continued search and missed out but we were not such a birdy group this time, and they were also full, fit to burst of Pumas. Our southbound journey passed without incident on another breezy afternoon and our travels in Patagonia came to an end back in Punta Arenas. Thanks to our very enthusiastic group and particularly our excellent Puma trackers Jorge and Cristian for making this such an enjoyable and successful tour! We will be back again in Patagonia next year!
