"As I only draw and paint outdoors my work only exists within my sketchbooks - I don't have the inclination to work pieces up in a studio (and I don't have a studio!). I draw during what available free time I have, during holidays and during working trips through my day job as a doctor.
Chile in the austral winter wouldn't ordinarily have been in my top ten holiday destinations. But with Santiago as the base for my daughter's gap year and eleven months of not having seen her, it was the only place to consider visiting. We wanted to spend time in Santiago so that we could see where she had been living and working and we also wanted to take the opportunity to see some of the country. Given the time of year this was always going to be the area around Santiago and north as the weather in southern Chile would be cold and wet. We had organised an initial ten days or so based in Santiago, with a range of day trips, and then a five or six day trip to the far north to visit the altiplano.
Full copies of the trip diary and species list (96 pages, 42 illustrations) are available for £15 (plus postage for outside UK). Email me at martin.eccles@ncl.ac.uk if you are interested."
From a car park north of the Rio Aconcagua I walked south down the beach towards the river mouth walking through an area of dunes and marshland. There were large numbers of Southern Lapwings which were easily the commonest wader there - they seemed to be the Chilean equivalent of Redshank on British marshes, always giving alarm calls and then, when you get too close, getting up and circling overhead. I also got really good views of
Austral Negrito (see above), Long-tailed Meadowlark, and Spot-flanked Gallinule.
From the trip reports that I'd read I'd expected
Seaside Cinclodes (a Chilean endemic) to be difficult. I spent quite a long time following the first one that I found. As it turned out I needn't have worried as an hour later I had three chasing each other round the beach in front of me.
Into the altiplano at 4000m, we drove into Parque Nacional Lauca flushing two or three groups of Ornate Tinamou from the roadside. After 40 minutes of seeing only White-winged Cinclodes our guide found an adult male Diademed Sandpiper Plover.
Feeding in a six to nine inch deep channel at the far side of a small wetland area, it moved slowly and didn't seem at all bothered by the family party of Vicuña that grazed their way slowly past. One of the most difficult to see shorebirds in the world by virtue of its chosen habitat, its secretive nature and low numbers - no-one seems to know what size the population is.
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