Uruguay

February 2019: Sometimes You Just Get the Urge to Visit a New Country

I tell anyone that will listen (and some who don't) that the eBird map has totally transformed the way I bird.  At the county level it inspired me to finish visiting each of New York State's 62 counties and at the global level it has me staring from the windows of airports hoping to create lists for new cities that fill in white spaces on the map.  It also sits open on my computer a lot and triggers frequent day-dreaming about seeing some of the places I've not yet been, indeed one thing that struck me last year was that, even though I have travelled a lot over the course of the last 30 years, I tend to go back to the same 10 countries an awful lot.  A lot of my travel was, by necessity, to global business hubs, so I have been to the UK 50+ times since moving to New York, and made dozens of visits to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.  Even with my 'pure' birding trips though I seem to go back to the same places .... 10 trips to Brazil for example.  This year I thought I'd try to add a few new countries so planned to branch out and visit Ghana, Cambodia, Taiwan and, for no good reason other than curiosity, Uruguay.

Greater Rhea

Friday, February 22 - Montevideo to Punta del Este

I spent a pleasant Thursday night being a tourist in Montevideo before an early meeting with expatriate Frenchman and local natural history expert Thierry Rabau for a couple of days of birding.  There were not a lot of potential life birds on offer for me and Thierry quickly and expertly managed my expectations down on the few things that I though we might get.  Still, I was here to see a new country, not rack up a big list of life birds so I resolved just to go birding and 'see what we saw'.

First stop was Cerro Pan de Azucar where I added Gilded Hummingbird before spending much of the morning at the very birdy Laguna del Diario.  At this large marsh on the coast, we saw about fifty species and, while none were particularly rare or new for me, it was very high quality birding in a new area.

Southern Screamer and Giant Wood-Rail

The birds kept coming in the afternoon too as we birded several wetland sites in the Punta del Este area, filling out our species list and getting us positioned for the next day of birding in the NorthEast of the country.  There were terns and shorebirds, quite a few wading birds, including a few Maguari Storks, and just a nice selection of birds that kept us busy through the afternoon.  That evening I wandered down to the docks and ate an amazing seafood meal, accompanied by good Uruguayan red wine (Tannat), sitting feet from the sea and surrounded by the sounds of the waves .... it's not a tough life sometimes.

Punta del Este

Saturday, February 23 - Rocha Province

Today we spent all day birding in the grasslands and marshes of the more remote Rocha Province.  There was a lot of space here, and large areas of ranch land with decent patches of original habitat still left.  With no pressure to hit specific life birds, we just went birding but did manage to add five new birds to my list nevertheless.  The grasslands had Greater Rheas and Lesser Yellow-headed Vultures but also some really colorful grassland birds like Scarlet-headed Blackbird and my old friend the Saffron-cowled Blackbird.

Saffron-cowled Blackbird

Scarlet-headed Blackbird

Amongst the new things for me, the Variable Oriole was common (a recent split), as was the Brown-and-yellow Marshbird, but we had to work a lot harder for Curve-billed Reedhaunter and Sulphur-throated Spinetail.  Finally we managed to find a Glaucous-blue Grosbeak, which despite being disappointingly small and brown (a female), created a neat sense of accomplishment.

Curve-billed Reedhaunter ... my second, and final reedhaunter.

Perhaps the best part of the day though was just the relaxed birding and the sense of seeing new country.  We birded up as far as the land border with Brazil (identified with stone markers but no fence that I could see) and I enjoyed just seeing a new place and new environments.  The habitats and birds were in many ways quite similar to the ones I'd seen in Brazil earlier in the week, although with more water birds, being closer to the coast.  When all was said and done we'd tallied 155 species in two days, not a bad set of birds.

Coscoroba Swans

Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture

All too soon it was time to wend South again and, after a another relaxed seafood dinner in Punta de Este, make my way back to Montevideo and hence back to São Paulo then New York.  Not the most productive birding yield from a listing perspective, but it was exactly what I wanted for this trip so thanks to Thierry for working so hard to make it a great experience for me ... some great birding in a new country.  I'm still looking at that map, who knows, maybe Paraguay next year ...

Paella in Punta del Este