Post by Alfredo Fernandez
Alfredo Fernandez is a Peruvian biologist based in Lima and a National Geographic Explorer (2017). Over the past few years he has compiled bird lists for forty sites across Peru, and a surprising share of what turns up on them breeds within an hour of Calgary or passes through our grasslands on migration. Alfredo offered to share some information and photos of sites in Peru where some of our well-known birds can winter. See his checklists from the forty sites here – Bob Lefebvre
In January 2013, Dan Arndt posted “Postcards from Mexico” on this blog — Calgary birds photographed where they spend the other half of the year. It is a good idea, and for some species, it stops one country short. For a lot of prairie migrants Mexico is a waypoint, not a destination. They keep going: past Central America, across the equator, down the Pacific coast of South America, to a strip of rainless desert and cold water where I live and guide.
I am a biologist based in Lima. Over the past few years I have compiled species lists for forty sites across Peru — coastal wetlands, the fog oases, the high puna above 4,000 m, and the eastern cloud forest. What follows is the Alberta half of those lists: seven birds you know from a Calgary summer, and where I find them in December.
The ones that breed with you
Franklin’s Gull — Leucophaeus pipixcan
Start with the obvious one. Frank Lake is among the great Franklin’s Gull colonies of the prairies, and in the austral summer very nearly the entire world population is on my coast. It is the North American breeder I record most often among gulls — sixteen of my forty sites. They are in the fishing harbours at Pucusana, on the breakwaters at La Punta, over the lagoons at Ventanilla and Pantanos de Villa, and well offshore on the pelagic route. The bird displaying over your cattails in June stands on a Peruvian jetty in December, hood gone, looking like a different animal.
Wilson’s Phalarope — Phalaropus tricolor
This is the most widespread of all your migrants in my data — twenty-one sites, more than any other North American breeder except the Peregrine. A prairie-pothole bird that spends its winter spinning on saltpans and coastal lagoons, and on brackish Andean lakes well inland. If you have watched them turning circles on a slough southeast of the city, you have watched a bird that will do exactly the same thing on a Peruvian salt lagoon four months later.
Bank Swallow — Riparia riparia
Thirteen sites, and a species whose Alberta colonies in river cutbanks are visible and countable in a way that its winter distribution is not. In Peru I get them over the coastal wetlands and up at Marcapomacocha in the high puna, usually mixed into swallow flocks that take some patience to sort.
Swainson’s Thrush — Catharus ustulatus
The interesting one, because it breaks the pattern. Every other bird on this list turns up on my coast. Swainson’s Thrush does not: all eleven of my records are in the Andes and the eastern cloud forest — the Ensifera hummingbird sanctuary, Ollantaytambo, Abra Málaga, the Machu Picchu gorge, Carpish. It crosses the whole continent to end up in wet mountain forest. Same bird, entirely different winter.
The ones that only pass through
Baird’s Sandpiper — Calidris bairdii
Not an Alberta breeder — it nests in the high Arctic and uses the prairies as a migration corridor, which for a bird of its size is a considerable piece of routing. Sixteen of my sites. What surprises visiting birders is the altitude: I get Baird’s on coastal mudflats and also on puna bogs above 4,000 m, feeding on the edge of ice.
American Golden-Plover — Pluvialis dominica
Thirteen sites, and one of them is Marcapomacocha at roughly 4,500 m. A tundra breeder that passes through your grasslands in autumn and can be found, months later, walking an Andean cushion bog in thin air. It is the single record on this list I would most want a Calgary birder to see in person.
Peregrine Falcon — Falco peregrinus
Twenty-seven of my forty sites — the most widely recorded North American breeder in my entire dataset, coast to puna to cloud forest. Some of these are resident Peruvian birds. Some are yours. [Note that some Peregrines do nest in Calgary and area – but more go much farther north.]
Why this is worth knowing
The point is not the list. It is that a bird you have counted on a Christmas Bird Count, or watched from a hide at Frank Lake, is spending half its life on a coast where the conservation pressures are entirely different — wetland infill around a city of ten million, and lagoons that survive because somebody argued for them. Pantanos de Villa is a Ramsar site inside Lima’s built-up area. Ventanilla is squeezed between a refinery and a housing sprawl. Those places are where a good share of Alberta’s shorebirds and gulls spend the northern winter, and they are not secure.
If it is useful to your readers, I keep free site checklists for all forty of these Peruvian locations — the rough equivalent of your Calgary Region checklist, one per site, derived from eBird data and downloadable as PDFs.
Alfredo Fernández is a Peruvian biologist and National Geographic Explorer (2017). He guides birding and photography trips on the Peruvian coast, in the Andes and in the Amazon with Wild Andes Tours, and publishes free bird checklists for forty Peruvian sites.