Steve Howell reports from our Chile tour

Fabrice Schmitt and Steve Howell report from the mid-point of the Chile tour, following some great birding in windswept Patagonia and the towering temperate rainforests of the Lake District, where we successfully sought all of the notoriously skulking tapaculos,

even an Ochre-flanked Tapaculo, which eventually hopped into the open.

The growing King Penguin colony on Tierra del Fuego included big ‘wooly’ youngsters for the first time,

and was celebrated by endemic Patagonian beer.

Other highlights have included the stunning White-bridled (née Black-throated) Finch,

a beautiful female Magellanic Woodpecker that flew in right above us,

point-blank Austral Parakeets feeding outside the bus window,

the understated and highly endangered Ruddy-headed Goose,

and the endearing little White-throated Treerunner.

Now in central Chile and getting ready for our Humboldt Current pelagic.