CHILE DAY 3: Mirador Del Toro and Spectacled Ducklings

On our third day we visited Mirador Del Toro as our first expedition. Before we went on the expedition I watched the lake and surrounds for birds, and saw two upland geese, a great grebe and some eared doves flying around. During breakfast a brown-hooded gull flew past our hotel.
As we walked along the track we quickly arrived at a marshy area where many plumbeous rails were feeding. The calls of distant southern lapwings could be heard as well.

Roughly 4 of these plumbeous rails were feeding in the marsh

Continuing onward, many birds were calling from the rocks to our right: a single chilean flicker, Patagonian sierra finches, many house wrens and a few rufous-collared sparrows. The trees to our left also held a few birds: eared doves, Austral thrushes and one extremely quick tufted tit-tyrant.

Despite its name, the Chilean flicker is not endemic to Chile

We started to ascend a hill, where Austral negritos started appearing and Patagonian sierra-finches were much commoner. The view from the top of the hill was amazing, showing the Paine River flowing into the large Toro Lake. The descent was not really noteworthy, apart from many close sierra-finches showing up.

The Patagonian sierra-finches on this track were rather tame

A view of the Toro Lake

In the afternoon we went horseriding, but saw not much else of note, apart from a large flock of upland geese and two spectacled ducks with ducklings on the way back.

These adorable spectacled ducks with ducklings were quite unbothered by us