Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 19.50.
Week two started slow today. A couple of meetings and a non-starter quest for a functioning laptop meant that I spent the day working on my books, which was a lovely way to spend the day productively – as well as a reminder to myself that I am technically on holiday – albeit perhaps not as exchange-heavy as it could have been. I have bigger events coming up this week, though, and I suspect it will be the last week of my exchange when it really feels like I have a fully functioning timetable.
There are always so many birds around campus. The nest boxes the students have put up all over the school site for their CAS project obviously help, but it’s not just the charming little rufous-crowned sparrows that make the place feel so friendly. The mockingbirds are always perched somewhere, every time I look up I see a caracara of some description hanging in the air, and just before break this morning I know I saw the faraway silhouette of a condor circling the heights of Manquehue.
It’s the meadowlarks that are currently lending some extra charm to the place, if I had to choose a standout. I first got to know these characterful creatures in snowy Patagonia, but it turns out they’re just as common up here around Santiago, hopping about in the car park and sitting quite fearlessly on the school fence, singing their hearts out as the Year 7s play some kind of tag game just feet away.
My BIRDA app tells me my total count of species I’ve seen so far is up to 818 after this weekend’s exploits. Even I have to admit that’s getting to be a dizzying figure, and well over three hundred of that total are birds I have seen in the last five months. I’m not a professional lister like many seasoned birdwatchers, chasing a particular total on my life, year or patch list, but it’s fun having an app where you can log it all, and in so doing learn something about the sheer diversity of species you have found – and, consequently, discovering what is still left out there to see.
I probably could have seen more species if I’d paid through the nose for that Abra Málaga trip, but I wasn’t really after that kind of number-obsessive behaviour. One albatross would have been magical enough on yesterday’s boat trip, and I was blessed with four different kinds. It does not pay to go out into the wild with great expectations. Nature provides on its own terms.
Not too much to report for now, but keeping my writer’s block at bay with regular note taking. And it does seem to be working! BB x
The Book of Barnabas 