Abra Málaga — Royal Cinclodes in the Polylepis

We were on the road out of the Sacred Valley before seven, and the first count was over almost before it started — seven minutes at Peñas, on the 28B, where the scrub beside the road gave White-tufted Sunbeam and Rusty-fronted Canastero within sight of the vehicle. Two endemics before the light had properly arrived is a good way to open an Abra Málaga day.

Higher up, a roadside stop at 13°08'S produced the cinclodes pair the pass is known for — Cream-winged and White-winged together — with Puna Tapaculo calling from the bunch grass and three sierra-finches in twenty-seven minutes.

The morning belonged to the Polylepis. Half an hour on the entrance trail at ACP Abra Málaga Thastayoc, the private conservation area named for the bird, and the Royal Cinclodes came in: one bird, Critically Endangered, in the gnarled woodland that is nearly all it has left. It came with the full cast of the grove — Tawny and White-browed Tit-Spinetails, Junín Canastero, three more canasteros, a Stripe-headed Antpitta and a party of Glacier Finches.

By late morning we had dropped to the lakes at Lagunillas, where twenty Puna Ibis fed alongside five Andean Ibis, and finished with a half-hour standing count in the ravine below the pass: Puna Thistletail, Citrine Warbler, Spectacled Redstart and White-browed Conebill in the shrubbery. Cloud sat on the peaks all day and never came down.