During February we crossed the Atlantic on a two-month trip, taking in Antarctica and some of the wonderful contrasting wildlife-rich habitats of Argentina. Here is the second of a series of blogs about our travels.
Out with Raphael on a ‘bird drive’ one morning in the lagoon-dotted landscape near Colonia Carlos Pellegrini in the province of Correntes in NE Argentina, he brought his car to a halt and with some excitement said, ‘Look. Look! There on the fencepost! See it? There! A yellow cardinal.’
My attention had been caught by something different: a hornero. This is the national bird of Argentina and appears on the 1000 pesos bank note. It is a common, rather dull brown species albeit with a ruddy tail, but the male builds impressive nests out of mud that look like pizza ovens. You can see them all over Argentina on top of telegraph poles, pylons, fence posts and in trees. I’d spotted a bird actually working on a new nest and was determined to photograph it. Raphael saw where my camera was pointing and said, ‘Forget the hornero. Take the yellow cardinal! You must take the picture! Tell any of your birder friends in England and they will be so impressed. This bird is on the edge of extinction. Very rare. Take the picture!!’ I took several shots of the little yellow bird with a fine quiff then asked why they were so rare when their argumentative red-crested cousins were so common.
‘They have a beautiful song.’ He replied. ‘People catch them to keep them in cages.’ I took another couple of snaps of the cardinal and focused back on photographing the hornero in his half-made nest as Raphael chatted on about local birds. He radiated ornithological enthusiasm. His chat was fascinating although it was difficult to move him onto other topics. He casually pointed out a cute little agouti and hardly paused for long enough for me to take a portrait saying, ‘This is just a rat.’ Even seeing a substantial yellow anaconda slip across the road ahead of the vehicle didn’t distract him for long and he was back on his favourite topic of birds.
‘You know, Jane, these hornero – oven birds some people call them – they like to build a new home every year. A new home and a new wife! Or maybe more than one wife.’ He laughed. ‘They have a nice lifestyle. Screamers, they are very different,’ he continued. ‘They are monogamous and if one of the pair dies the other is also dead within a few weeks.’
‘That’s sad,’ I said.
Raphael laughed again, ‘Maybe they die because they are happy at last!’

We’d first arrived at Raphael’s hotel after battling to get on an internal flight and then touched down in Posadas. Then we took a car on what turned out to be a fairly hair-raising three-hour drive. We passed up invitations on big signs saying HARAS POLICIA FEDERAL ARGENTINA – that seemed unnecessarily harsh. I sat back, not envying the driver having to negotiate a route that was mostly dirt or gravel roads across the dry flat pampas dotted with palms and grazed by horses and cattle. We were heading for the Iberá wetlands, an area of where some impressive conservation work and a huge programme of reintroductions was going on. The guide book said that zoologically the region was only bettered the marshes of the Pantanal of Brazil. We arrived, dusty and flat of bum, to be revived by a vision of the hotel’s idyllic garden and were soon exploring, strolled down to the waterfront towards various wobbly jetties that stretched out into a vast lagoon. A couple of days later a wild river otter came galumphing across the lawn, plopped into the hotel swimming poll, did a few circuits and wandered on. We knew already that the weather had been exceptionally hot. The lagoons of Iberá were entirely rain-fed – no streams entered or left them. They were extensive but mostly only a couple of metres deep and there had been very little rain lately so lagoon levels were low. Close to the water’s edge, the dried mud was uneven and pockmarked by the feet of many animals but there were still plenty of reeds and patches of floating vegetation. As I stumbled forward my eyes were first drawn to piles of acorn-shaped dung and then to the unmistakable profile of a caiman at the shoreline. It was more than half a metre long, had huge eyes, and looked as if it was smiling. Not wanting to frighten it but keen to get a closer look, I approached slowly. A loud threatening hissing came from my left. A much larger caiman didn’t want me here. It was gaping, displaying an alarming array of teeth honed for ripping flesh. I backed off, reckoning it would be faster running over the uneven mud than I would, and a bite from those teeth would definitely become septic.
Having put a respectful distance between us, I then noticed other signs of life in the shallow lagoon. Reeds and floating vegetation were moving. There was another breathy sound – from a different kind of animal. I made out tiny eyes and closable nostrils set in a big square head covered in course brown fur. South America is an evolutionary hot-spot for short-tailed or tailless rodents and they’ve evolved to fill many niches. This was the largest: a capybara, a chunky species that can weigh up to 90kg. These were responsible for the acorn-like dung. This one and smaller friends were happily cruising around, noses just above the surface of the water, browsing on water weed and quite indifferent to us. Even so it felt like it was time to return to the hotel dining area and research their range of beers. As we strolled back, I spotted hummingbirds sipping from a huge yellow-flowered tree, some kind of woodpecker let out a mocking laugh and red faced vultures circled over as if checking out whether we were ripe for their dinner.
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caiman are flesh-eaters, and sometimes even eat smaller members of their own species |
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capybaras are the word's largest rodents and always look totally chilled |
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a wild river otter came for a quick swim in the hotel pool |
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agouti, another South American special |
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there are no crows in much of Argentina so their roles are fullfilled by caracara |
This is the second blog I've wriiten about our recent travels in Argentina. For the first click
My Prey