Saturday 5 March 2016

Antarctic Cruise part one

Twenty months after booking this Antarctic Cruise on the Celeberity Infinity with a 2 night stay in Buenos Aries, Argentina,  on February the 11th, Sue and I were at Heathrow Airport ready for the almost 14 hour flight to Pistarini Airport, Buenos Aires.  I almost always say in my blogs 'after an uneventful flight' - but not on this occasion!  We must have had, on and off, about 5 hours of turbulence, which at times was pretty bad - some people had even fainted during some of it! We landed on time at 9.05am, but did not get off the aircraft till nearly 10 o' clock, as a lady had fallen ill during the flight, and we had to wait for her to be stretchered off  by paramedics (hope she was ok!). We had no problems going through border control, and soon after, we had our luggage and was on our way to our hotel, which we got to about 11.30am
                                                 Common Gallinule/Moorhen
Not far from our hotel was a nature reserve called the Constanera Sur (it was given this status in June 1986, after years of land being reclaimed using materials from demolished buildings which they stopped in 1984) It covers approx 865 acres with footpaths meandering through it so, after a quick wash and brush-up, we headed for the Sur where we had a slow walk down the paved promenade. The pools are just the other side of a small wall which followed the promenade. Sue and I were pretty pleased  by how many bird were on the water; some more notable were White-tufted Grebe, Silver Teal, Spot-flanked Gallinule, Rosy-billed Pochard and the rather peculiar Southern Screamer. We spent approx 3 hours here, and decided to go back the following day, which we did - but we walked down a footpath on the other side of the pools which had lots more trees and shrubbery. Birds of note here were Green-barred Woodpecker, Picazuo Pigeon, Rufous Horneo, Golden-billed Saltator and Black Hooded Parakeet; what I did note was that there were not many herons - only a couple of Great White Egrets, one Snowy Egret and a Striated Heron, and the only wader was Southern Lapwing - but all the same, what a great few hours at a reserve so close to Buenos Aires town centre!  As you know, I'm not one for listing just lots of birds but we had 52 species here, and below are a few images of some of them.
                                                                   Bay-winged Cowbird
                                                                    Black hooded Parakeet
                                                              Chalk-browed Mockingbird
                                                             Chequered Woodpecker
                                                                    Coscoroba Swan
                                                             Fulvous-Whistling Duck
                                                             Green-barred Woodpecker
                                                               Grey-necked Wood-rail
                                                                     Guira Cuckoo
                                                                       Limpkin
                                                        Monk Parakeet with his lunch
                                                            Narrow-billed Woodcreeper
                                                                Red-crested Cardinal
                                                              Rosy-billed Pochard
                                                              Rufous-collared Sparrow
                                                                    Rufous Hornero
                                                                   Shiny Cowbird
                                                                      Silver Teal
                                                     Southern Screamer, bizzare creature
                                                                Spot-flanked Gallinule
                                                                Rufous-bellied Thrush
Yellow-browed Tyrant

This concludes the first part of our trip - the pre-cruise stay in Buenos Aires; I shall be posting part two when I sort my brain out - which hopefully won't be too long!
As always, thanks for stopping by and see you soon for part two!

6 comments:

  1. Wow wow wow, you have excelled yourself here mate with a splendid selection of a variety of species, all quality images too, with the Woodcreeper being my favorite!

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  2. Wow was what I was thinking before I saw Paul's comment. Can't wait for the next part.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Carl,part two hopefully this weekend.

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