Missing Latvia

Well that's my 2023 write-ups done, only nine months out of date. I can't quite summon the enthusiasm to start on 2024 yet, so instead I am plotting 2025. This obviously requires a spreadsheet, the top part of which looks like this.

Those who know me well can spot the obvious problem I suspect. There is a discrepancy. I won't say eBird rules my life, that would be doing Mrs L a disservice, but.... The five that are missing  are Andorra, Monaco, Slovakia, Bahrain and Monaco. Until yesterday Malta and Qatar were missing as well, but I am a total pedant and I have retrieved an old hard drive and found photographs from both places that have birds in. Not photos of birds, but just a photo that happens to have a bird in it. So my Malta list is now an impressive three, with Blue Rock Thrush, Yellow-legged Gull, and Pigeon. Qatar is even better, a group of nine House Sparrows just about visible on a beach during a short layover.

The remaining five have nothing. Of these, Latvia is particulaly annoying as it was part of a birding trip, whereas the others were just non-birding visits, often on the way to other places. I think I had a few hours in Bahrain in 1999 or something, I recall wandering around between flights but no birds, and if I am honest I am not sure I should even count it, but I definitely had my feet on the soil even if it was in transit. But back to Latvia, here is my best photograph from my visit. I think you will spot the problem.

We drove through Latvia from Lithuania to get to Estonia in the middle of the night. On the way back to Lithuania from Estonia it was also the middle of the night. No birds were seen, although I do remember getting stopped by the Police because our headlights were stuck on full beam, and Bradders who was driving getting a good telling off, and possibly also a ticket which I think we just threw away. Anyway, the hot news is that I am going back to Latvia in late April. In daylight. 

Buenos Aires - Trip List

Here's the trip list, for more precise locations you can use eBird which show locations, dates, and individual site lists. 150 specise seen over seven days, with 24 world lifers. This was not the aim at all otherwise I would have seen more! Without the day out south of the city this list would only be 114 so clearly that was worthwhile even if it was not as good as it ought to have been.

If you only have a short amount of time then surely Costanera Sur is the go-to spot. However Lago Soldati, only a 20 minute taxi ride from the city centre was really good, and responsible for more waterfowl than any other location, plus it was the only place I saw the spectacular Many-coloured Rush Tyrant, a bucket-list bird if ever there was one. Great city, great birds.

Buenos Aires - Day 7 - La Boca

It was our final day, one last chance to have a look around. We didn't have long and so decided to make a pilgrimage to the Boca Junior's stadium, the Bombonera on behalf of number one child. Apparently there is a world tour of football stadiums that true fans undertake and this is on the list. I couldn't give the tiniest shit about football of any kind, but why not I suppose.

It is a big tourist destination, and it was also match day, with coaches of supporters being bussed in, and so even though we were early it was pretty busy. There is a colourful neighbourhood close by, La Boca itself, and this is as much a draw as the stadium by the looks of things. There were loads of stalls setting up to sell football gear, loads of bars starting to open, and the roads closest to the stadium itself were a sea of yellow and blue. There were caricatures of famous footballers everywhere, most notably Maradona, but also an old guy who I guess must have been the Manager. It was a pleasant stroll, and one which allowed for one last stupid photo...

And that was it for Buenos Aires, a short walk back to San Telmo and we had to get a taxi to the airport for our long journey home. It had been a fabulous break, well worth the two year wait. We had walked miles and miles, seen lots of the city, eaten well, drunk even better, and I'd of course seen 175 species of bird on a non-birding holiday which is good going even by my low standards.

Buenos Aires - Day 6 - More walking, more birds, more eating, more drinking

In order to get me to shut up about Costanera Sur Mrs L actually came with me to the reserve this morning. We had a lengthy breakfast and then caught the bus together before walking the entire stretch of Los Lagartos, me eagerly pointing out this bird and that bird. By way of comparison this netted 48 species in just over an hour with someone largely uninterested in birds and dragging me onwards by pretending to run away, whereas birding sessions three times that length in terms of time and distance covered increased the total species count by only 20. What would you rather do? All I am saying is that in the interests of matrimonial harmony you could do the shorter version a couple of times, perhaps even a couple of times as a couple, and come away having seen pretty much the same as if you had birded it much more intensively. 

Galerias Pacificos

We exited the reserve at the top of Los Lagartos and walked to the Galerias Pacificos as Mrs L wanted to visit a few clothes shops there, plus it's a rather grand old building. In the end she bought nothing, but I nearly came away with a very lovely dark green linen jacket that was just ever slightly too tight, some kind of construction defect no doubt. We vowed to look for similar fabric once back in Europe as Mrs L is skilled seamstress, but nearly a year later we still haven't found anything green with quite that same blueness to it. We had lunch there too - it was a salad day, but we added on calories with white wine and took lots of stupid selfies with which to embarrass the children. Most are unfortunately not suitable for publication, but here is one with me modelling the hat I bought at the street market a day or so after we arrived. Cheap and cheerful. And ridiculous, but most hats are that.

This is the food-court view. Bon appetit.

Clearly in tune with the colours of the season

After lunch I bade my beloved goodbye and dashed northwards to Costanera Norte, full name Reserva Ecologica Ciudad Universitaria. It's a fair old way on several buses and I did not arrive at the ideal time, but my research had been spot on and despite the heat of the day Rufous-sided Crake were indeed extremely easy here, scuttling about under the bridge that leads from the University into the reserve. You just lean over the edge and there they are. I heard more of them than I saw, but got great views of two birds together.  Would that I had not wasted half an hour on an invisible one at Costanera Sur which I could now retrospectively tick. I had a good few hours birding this much smaller reserve, tracing and retracing my steps in search of new birds for the trip, before heading back into town to meet Mrs L for drinks. Highlights included Bran-coloured Flycatcher, Sooty Tyrannulet, Sulphur-bearded Reedhaunter and Sooty-fronted Spinetail.

All buses seem required by law to have this territorial dispute clearly highlighted.

Back in town we headed for a new cocktail bar to whet our appetites. I'd booked a very nice restaurant in Recoleta called Oviedo on the basis of two facts. One, it had a very extensive wine list and two, we were now confident that the credit card refunds to take us to the much more advantageous FX rate would definitely come good, i.e. see item one. In short it was excellent and I ordered what in Peso terms was an outrageously expensive bottle of wine from Zapata. I have close to zero experience of Argentine white wine, and very little knowledge of red either, but this was excellent but unfortunately very over-priced in the UK. When in Argentina however.....

Buenos Aires - Day 5 - Walking to the Tango

This morning was a repeat of the previous morning. A leisurely breakfast with Mrs L in San Telmo before catching the bus to the southern end of Costanera Sur and birding the reserve for the better part of the rest of the morning. Rather than take the path alongside the Laguna de los Coipos I walked the southern loop to the Camino del Medio, took that back to Coipos, and then walked north up Lagartos to exit at the northern end. Once again it was highly productive. The full list is here, and whilst the species were largely the same I did this time have a list of targets and so spent some time specifically searching for these. This included a Rufous-sided Crake in the northern portion of los Lagartos that I could hear but was frustratingly unable to see despite giving it about half an hour, a Green Kingfisher at the southern end of Coipos, Swainson's Flycatcher, 4 Streaked Flycatchers, a Yellow-browed Tyrant, Green-winged Saltator (another lifer), and a Black-capped Warbling Finch. No photos exist that show any of these, I was in pure birding mode with no camera which I increasingly enjoy. Across the two visits I'd managed to see in excess of 80 species, it really is a fantastic place.

Next stop Choripan. This is a well-known Argentine fast food, a grilled sandwich based around a Chorizo sausage and bread, hence the name. There are countless hundreds of these joints  - Choripaneira - established around this simple formula in Buenos Aires, and we chose one simply called "Chori" in Palermo. It did what it said on the tin - a great sandwich, some kind of mango salad, and a nice cold beer. Just the ticket after a four mile slog around Costanera Sur. 

Didn't happen....

We enjoyed walking around Palermo looking at the graffiti and street art, or more often street art that had been graffiti'd. After walking off lunch in this manner we visited the small but pleasant botanical gardens, always on my list of things to do in any major city. It was hot and this also involved a bit of a rest on an inviting bench. Once so rested, we popped into the Metropolitan Cathedral and looked at the Mausoleum of José de San Martin, the liberator of Argentina (from the Spanish) and to this day a national hero. We had a closer look at the Pink Palace, enjoyed some mid-afternoon confectionary products, and walked miles and miles.

A collection of mature Cycads, always a highlight

We ended the day at a Tango show at La Ventana, quite close to our hotel as we were able to walk to it. An inevitable tourist trap - how can it not be - but nonetheless a highly enjoyable tourist trap. It was a dinner and show arrangement, with a set menu and quite dreadful wine that one sip was sufficient of. I think you can skip the dinner, but one advantage of also eating there is that you get a great seat for the Tango. No doubt they know this, and also note that tips were compulsory and they preferred foreign currency! In short the show was great, exactly what we wanted and were expecting. There are loads of them running in Buenos Aires, and each offers something a little different if the various guides are to be believed. I can't remember what made us choose this one, but I had booked it before we left the UK and we were in no way disappointed by it once we got ther. In fact it was positively rip-roaring, with pairs of dancers emerging for various numbers and then all coming on at the end, along with a few other assorted acts including altiplano panpipes and a guy with boleadoras - the intensity of his performance being quite extraordinary. There was a ring-master of sorts who along with his dancing partner had clearly been doing this their entire lives. They were the senior pair and got all the speaking lines, but it was the dancers that were around them that stole the show. Alongside the traditional music they also managed to fit in Evita by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, "Don't Cry for me Argentina" during which all the waiting staff abandoned the diners to take up large Argentinean flags and parade down the side of the theatre/dining room before reverting once again to more traditional fare. Cringe-worthy one level but just perfect on another. It has to be said that the dancers and musicians were superb, they do this show twice a night I think, so hats off for making it still feel pretty special. An excellent evening.

The three pairs of dancers, with the Maitre D and his partner either side.

Winter

Almost the first bird that greeted me on Wanstead Flats this morning was a Common Snipe. I've not seen a Snipe in Wanstead since December 2022, so this was both very welcome and a nice surprise as it rasped over near Long Wood. I think it had been put up from the brooms near the airfield by a dog walker, so pretty lucky as although the fencing is now down there is a lot of long grass that things can hide in. There are barely any paths remaining after a long period of no footfall so we are still a little restricted in the areas we can cover. The main north-south path is beginning to re-emerge as people start to cross the area, but it's a considerable feat of memory to be able to recall where all the others started and finished, and so at the moment I'm picking my way around rather tentatively. Once I did negiotiate my way through in a vaguely east-west direction I only managed to add around a dozen Meadow Pipits. There is plenty of time left in the autumn for stuff to drop in though.

The main path through the Skylark area is beginning to stand out again.

Heading back for breakfast, blog-writing and work I made a short detour via Jubilee. Score! My first Wigeon since October 2022 and the first on the patch since March 2023. Amazing! I didn't see Snipe or Wigeon last year at all, my first blank year for either of them, so to clean up both on the same morning feels rather peculiar. It must be winter. I don't carry a camera around these days, I simply can't be bothered, but maybe I should as my phone is totally inadequate in these situations. Still, a record shot is a record shot, and hopefully acts a spur for a local twitch. I've only seen Wigeon on the patch seven times this decade so it's definitely one of the rarer ducks locally, and if the most recent record is a year and a half ago then there could be a few people for whom it's a patch tick.