The Yeso Valley has to be the most incredible place I’ve
ever seen. On this late January
evening, the sun drew its last sharp rays across the peaks encircling us, and
Andean Condors made their last rounds before going to roost. At over 8,000 feet of elevation, our
campsite was on a flat, alpine meadow, nestled among several snow-covered
peaks, some of them reaching another 8,000 feet higher still. We were just a few hours’ drive east of Santiago, a dense, smoggy metropolis of over 7 million
people – but it felt a world away.
Because here, we were in the company of one of the world’s most
enigmatic and captivating shorebirds, the Diademed Sandpiper-plover (Phegornis mitchelli). Restricted to peat bogs and alluvium in
the high Andes, the Sandpiper-plover is considered near-threatened, due to its
small, declining global population and restricted range.
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| Our Yeso abode, frequently grazed by goats, horses, and cattle |
But our lack of knowledge about the basic ecology of this
species compounds their vulnerability – and that’s what had brought us here. We met up again with Jim Johnson and a crew of
Chilean biologists, this time to help out with and shadow their research on this amazing bird. Jim, an Alaskan shorebird biologist who’s been studying
migratory Whimbrel and Godwits on their Chilean wintering grounds, and Chilean
master’s student, Andrea Contreras, are working to better understand this
species’ life history and develop a proactive conservation plan.
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| Diademed Sandpiper-plover |
This study began last January during the austral summer,
when the upper reaches of the Yeso Valley are spared from constant snow and
wind. In this second field season,
Jim, Andrea and crew would continue work to find nests, band birds, and
evaluate breeding success, all the while hoping to glean something of the
refined taste Phegornis has for
Andean bogs – and exercising their own for Chilean wines. The particular habitat requirements of
the Sandpiper-plover are poorly understood, and the birds inexplicably shun many
bogs that appear suitable to the human observer; even their seasonal movements
and winter havens remain uncharted.
There is however, the suspicion that these birds overwinter in the
Valley, contrary to earlier hypotheses that they migrate north and join other
populations. This would be a
crucial discovery for the species’ conservation, as it would indicate very
small, isolated populations at even greater risk of local extinction.
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| White-browed Ground-tyrant |
Earlier that day, we awoke before dawn to traipse the
valley, recording and filming the bird life here: Ground-tyrants,
Earthcreepers, Hillstars, Cinclodes and Condors, a menagerie of high elevation
specialists. These former figments
of my imagination were now flitting before my lens, alive and breathing. And all this, contained within a most
stunning and humbling fishbowl between mountains: the Yeso Valley, a product of
many millions of years of geology, was towering over me in its apparent
permanence, reminding me that all I’ve ever known is contained within a mere
snapshot of time. But of course,
this snapshot I was living had another 12 hours of daylight, and we were here
to make the most of it.
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| White-sided Hillstar |
The crew had split into a few groups and dispersed
throughout the valley, revisiting productive sites from the 2011 season in
hopes of resighting banded birds and finding new nests. Luckily, one of the first pairs we
encountered was kind enough to lead us to the goal – two splotchy, olive eggs
nestled atop a small, grassy mound.
Spending some time with this pair, I was able to film an adult returning
to the nest to incubate, a sequence I had been visualizing over and over since
we began planning the expedition months prior.
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| Spreading out in search of a nest |
Throughout the remainder of our all too brief three days in
the Valley, we had many amazing opportunities to shadow this project, filming
and participating in the capture and banding of chicks and adults, and
searching for nests. We were able
to capture some of the first high-definition video of this species, a diverse
portrayal of their life histories: adults vocalizing and foraging, incubating
nests, brooding chicks, and accompanying fledglings. In the week following our departure for the Altiplano of
northern Chile, the team went on to find a staggering 18 nests. The Sandpiper-plover crew’s research is
just beginning, but already yielding invaluable information that will help
direct the conservation of this fascinating denizen of the high Andes.
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| The early days of Sandpiper-ploverhood |
