Buenos Aires - Day 2 - Birding before Breakfast

I had establised via eBird that a good number of ticks were available at a park back out towards the airport, Reservio Lago Soldati. I got up early and took an Uber out there for a couple of hours. The park consists of a lake on one side, and then a shallow marshy area on the other, along with some low trees and scrub. It's very urban, surrounded on all sides by houses, a sports complex and some kind of water-works. The taxi dropped me at what looked like a building site, but I was a able to wiggle through from the blue dot in the photo below.

This is the marshy area

In short it was fantastic, Ducks everywhere. White-faced Whistling-Duck, Ringed Teal, Red Shoveler, Lake Duck, Black-headed Duck and Red-fronted Coot were all new birds for me but these were merely appetisers for the main course. The real target was much much smaller, and much much more mega. What is astonishly beautiful, tiny, and lives in reedbeds in South America? One of the best birds I've seen anywhere is what. Many-coloured Rush-Tyrant. There are no words to describe how fabulous this little bird is, and I didn't have a camera. But rather than leave you empty-handed here's a screenprint of the eBird page, with a photo by Pio Marshall, whoever that is.

I had a brilliant couple of hours wandering around the site - the blue line above is my exact track as it happens, anout two miles and recording 61 species. I started with the main lake, but the best birds were in the marshy bit, including the Rush-Tyrant and all of the waders - Black-necked Stilt, Southern Lapwing, 2 Wilson's Phalarope and a handful of Lesser Yellowlegs. The full list is here. Other than a water plant worker I had the entire place to myself for the duration of my visit, quite astonishing.

I returned to the hotel in time for the end of breakfast and rejoined Mrs L, promising that all birding was now finished. I love breakfast on holiday. Rather than the rushed affair at home, often stood up as you multitask around the house, on holiday you can sit and have a second cup of coffee, another little pastry. One of the great pleasures. And best of all the day had barely started yet I had two hours of birding under my belt and 10 lifers under my belt.

A lot of interesting reading here!

As we had explored San Telmo the day before, today we caught a bus from right outside the hotel which took us further north into the city. Another day of wandering beckoned, and we visited a famous bookshop based in an old theatre, and then had a guided tour of the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires' famour Opera House. Early evening we found a funky cocktail bar called the Floreria Atlantico, which bizarelly enough but true to its name is situated underneath a florists. You have to knock on the window of the flower shop and then they let you in and you go downstairs to a long curved bar. I would describe the drinks as interesting but a long way from the classics. Lots of strange ingredients. 

For the classics we went to the Trade Sky Bar later on, and sat at the bar for some truly lovely drinks. And as we were enjoying it so much and did want to leave, also had some small plates as the sun set. 

I think it was about this point in our trip that we had discovered a bizarre quirk of how the exchange rates worked. Or rather, don't work. There is an official rate and an actual rate, and if you pay by credit card you are charged at the official rate which is about 40% poorer than the actual rate. However a few days later your credit card company will refund you the difference back to your card. At the start of our trip this was the great unknown, would we get these refunds or not? Sure enough, they began to drip through which was really much more fun that just paying the original lower amount. And as everything was already pretty cheap, even better.