The Alpaca Cocktail Bar...

The other day we headed to Crosthwaite to run some robotics at a primary school there where we were unexpectedly met by the local Alpacas. It was strange to see them up in the lakes, peering over a dry-stone wall and making little chunnering noises, but it struck me afterwards how much MORE strange it must be for them, looking out over the Cumbrian landscape at the Crows, Magpies, Buzzards and local Robins, instead of their Andean neighbours.

Now of course, I'm romanticizing here... these particular Alpacas are no doubt, as English as you or I, bred in captivity somewhere and now happily pottering around in the English countryside, unlike their native cousins 6000 miles away in the Andes... but it got me thinking...

...if not Crows, Magpies, Buzzards and Robins then what? What sights and sounds were our Anglicized friends in the north missing out on? Stick them on a flight to meet the relatives and what birds might they encounter in their home country?

Sadly, I have yet to hit the Bolivian Altiplano or its neighbouring environs where Alan the Alpaca may naturally hang out and so I've had to rely on the Interweb for gobbits of curious information. Apparently, 23  bird species have the prefix Andean, namely; avocet, condor, coot, crested duck, duck, emerald, flamingo, flicker, goose, guan, gull, hillstar, lapwing, motmot, potto, siskin, solitaire, swallow, swift, teal, tinamou and tit-spinetail...

Curiosity aroused! What on earth is a Tit-Spinetail?? Well, it's one of these... an Ovenbird. Handsome wee crittur! And in case you're wondering, they get their name from the resemblance their covered nests have to Dutch ovens...

... and what indeed is the difference between a Eurasian Siskin and an Andean one? Answer: this...

 

However, it was two particular Andean species that caught my eye - both sounded like they were on the menu of a Cocktail bar to me and I had no idea what either looked like... I give you the Andean Negrito and the Subtropical Doradito.

The first is made by mixing tiny amounts of Gin, Sweet Vermouth, Campari and Orange Juice and the second by toasting ground maize, vegetable oil and salt and shaping the mix into snack-sized flat triangle-shaped Tortilla crisps. The resultant birds are rather splendid, especially the wee Doradito, whose name in Spanish means 'Little Fried and Golden Thing'! More apt perhaps for its contracted cousin, the Dorito.

 

                              Andean Negrito                                         Subtropical Doradito

... and I leave you with perhaps the saddest and most non-descript birdy epithet from the region (presumably the equivalent of the British 'Little Brown Job') and a bird that looks like the love-child of a Bullfinch and Dunnock,  the ambivalently name Plain-colored Seedeater. Aw, bless...