I’m a sucker for a Coyote on any kind of tree, standing or fallen.
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Dapper AF
A Diademed Sandpiper-Plover looking mighty fine as it feeds in a pond high up in the Andes.
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Posing
I had hoped to get a photo of a Puma posing dramatically on some rocks. That never quite came together, but she is standing in a rock on this photo, and I gotta say, she really pops against the Mata Negra.
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On the Ledge
The guy walked towards me, paused to glass, walked a bit more, paused again. I waved him in. He shuffled in a bit more, and stopped to glass again. I waved him in more urgently.
“This one is a bit skittish, so it’s better if we’re in the same spot to stress it less.”
“What … what are you looking at?“
Really, you walked out all this way without even seeing the animal?
“Look beside those cliffs. You see that light spot? That’s a Coyote. If we’re lucky, it might decide to walk across them.”
“Oh, ummm, that’s pretty far away. I couldn’t tell what you were watching. Thanks though.”
Sure enough, the Coyote eventually got up and picked its way across a tiny ledge on the cliff face, giving me one of my favorite images from the trip. I hope that guy found something more in line with his interests.
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Coyote at the Gate
This shot came together in the blink of an eye. A large dog was barking behind the gate. I have no idea what the Coyote was hoping to find when it approached. The dog’s person could be heard telling the dog it wasn’t dinnertime yet, unaware that the dog was displeased to have a competitor on the other side of the fence.
As I composed the shot, I realized I had stopped down and cranked up the shutter speed to capture a bit of earlier action. I didn’t have time to adjust and just went for the shot. Once I got the shot, I opened up and slowed down my shutter to drop the ISO from 10,000 to 800. But the moment had already passed, with the Coyote looking back away from the gate. Fortunately, the shot worked out pretty well even at 10,000 ISO!
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Morning Sparrow
I was searching for coyotes, but when this White-Crowned Sparrow hopped up on a railing with a glowing golden background, I had to pause to line up a shot.
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Puma Love
While Dania stole the show and our hearts for most of the trip, this was the most special Puma encounter we had. The darker Puma is a shy female who hasn’t been named. The lighter one is a male. In general the males never get as comfortable with humans as the females can. We first saw these two on a hillside from the main road. They briefly mated, and then the female took a nap while the male watched attentively.
When we returned after lunch, they had moved on, but we were able to track them down in the estancia (thanks to some incredible spotting by @ojosdelpaine). We carefully closed some of the distance, using moraines to cover our movements and then quietly easing up onto the ridges. Eventually, we were close enough to see the cats calling to each other as they continued their mating rituals. With a bit of luck, in a few months there will be some fuzzy new Pumas bounding around the hills of Patagonia.
The care our guides had for the pumas was evident throughout the encounter. With other pumas, we were able to move in more quickly, still stopping a respectable distance away and letting the Pumas decide if they wanted come our way. With these shyer pumas, we took a slow and cautious approach, stopping before the Pumas felt the need to tell us we were too close. For the whole week, the sharpest reaction we got from a Puma was a brief look, both from the habituated pumas and from the shyer ones.
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Juvenile Diademed Sandpiper-Plover
This juvenile Diademed Sandpiper-Plover is starting to fill out and develop a more adult plumage. The chicks start out as cotton balls on toothpicks like all plovers, just more mottled than North American plovers. The adolescents don’t sport the striking diadem the adults have, but do have a richer and more varied coloration on their back. If you look carefully you can see the diadem starting to come in faintly on the top of this adolescent’s head.
