Tango in Patagonia
On remote windswept lakes near the tip of South America, the world’s rarest grebes have been given their own bodyguards.
Why an army of volunteer guardians is protecting Argentina’s hooded grebes
Their breasts pressed close, the dancers race and circle, never breaking eye contact through every switchback turn. Another couple dip, shimmy and plunge, spin away and rush back together. The sheer uninhibited exuberance of the dance captures the mood of the watchers, for whom being here today is a triumph of determination, endurance and hope.
Few birdwatchers have seen this spectacle, or ever will. Only discovered by science in 1974, hooded grebes breed on the remote, high-altitude, wind-torn plateaux of southern Patagonia. To reach the habitat requires hours of slow 4x4 driving over the most unforgiving terrain, and an hour or more hiking. The winds scour the plateaux, blowing hard day and night, rarely dropping below 50kph.
This might as well be a moonscape. There is no cover or shelter. Even in summer, snow may fall and temperatures dip below freezing. The hooded grebes nest in colonies on small glacial lakes, but there are hundreds of lakes… and each year the colonies move.
Wildlife film-makers Michael and Paula Webster were invited to film the hooded grebes by Aves Argentinas, the Argentine partner of BirdLife International. They began their search in October 2016, alongside researchers and volunteers who were ready to settle in for the breeding season. It would be a tough journey.
“Once you leave the tarmac road, the field station is another eight hours’ drive away,” says Michael. “We visited several dozen lakes over several long days before finding any grebes. We were searching lakes where the team had found breeding grebes before, but many had dried out.”
Falling in love
With reduced winter rain and snowfall, the lakes are shrinking. Climate change is the most intractable problem this Critically Endangered species faces, but not the only one.
Finally, the team found a larger, deeper lake, with a couple of dozen hooded grebes present, and the Websters fell under the spell of the little silvery-white birds, with their ginger topknots, dusky cheek-frills and coral-red eyes, their hyperactivity and constant shrill chatter.
“We immediately said, we’re staying here,” says Paula. “Thirty-six hours later, the first courtship displays began, and they continued for three days.”
The window for successful nesting here is brief: the grebes’ courtship is fast and furious, as male and female test each other’s fitness, vigour and commitment to the process through their exultant dances. Capturing footage in the ruthless conditions tested the Websters’ ingenuity. “We had tripods blown over, lenses hitting the ground and dust inside lenses. Recording sound was difficult too,” says Michael. The best solution was to pitch a low-profile, mountaineer’s tent on the shore and lie flat inside to film the birds.
Equality rules
Grebes of all kinds – there are 20 species alive today – are well-known for their courtship rituals. The sexes play equal roles in the care of the eggs and young, and this is reflected in their dances, with male and female both full and energetic participants. Face-to-face as they swim fast with their bodies pressed together, their elegant heads swaying in perfect synchrony, they recall a pair of tango dancers.
Tango in the Wind became the apt title for the Websters’ film about the hooded grebes, their remarkable way of life and the struggle to pull them back from the edge of extinction. The film, released in 2017 and available to watch online, set the dance to music performed by the Argentine Tango Orchestra. It helped the project by bringing the wonder and plight of the hooded grebe into mainstream conservation consciousness.
“The climate in Patagonia is changing fast,” says Kini Roesler, the senior scientist leading the Aves Argentinas struggle to save the hooded grebe. He acknowledges that tackling climate change is a monumental challenge, but there are more immediate problems facing grebes. “As there are few suitable lakes left, you need to be sure that the best of them have no invasive species.” Three species in particular have become a thorny issue. Each impacts upon the grebes in a different way.
As in Britain, North American mink reached Patagonia by accident, through furfarm escapees. They are versatile predators, taking both adult grebes and chicks, and one individual can eradicate an entire colony. Mink-control programmes are in effect across the main plateaux, but most vital of all to the effort are the ‘colony guardians’. These are volunteers who camp on the lake shores while the grebes are breeding – literally bodyguards for the birds. Living under canvas, subsisting on basic rations, it is not an easy task.
“It’s a challenge to find people crazy enough, yet responsible enough, to do this work,” says Kini. But the programme is popular and successful. The guardians conduct bird surveys, counting not just the hooded grebes but also the James’s flamingos, Magellanic plovers, black-necked swans and sandpipers that share the lakes, and the Andean condors and peregrines that