Have you taken the time to listen to the calls of birds where you live? It is something I always like to take notice of, even with the most common bird! You can find so many little joys if you take the time to really get to know your local birds. In Chile, I have continued this thought with all the birds I have seen here! Songbirds are some of my favorite things to observe. From common to rare, you can always find something incredibly interesting, or at least surprisingly similar to birds in the United States!
There is a bird here that has particularly caught my attention when I see it around, and that is the tenca! In English, they are known as the Chilean mockingbird. I love mockingbirds, and I specifically remember waking up early in the morning at my childhood home and being able to listen to the northern mockingbird wherever I went. However, it amazed me to find out they were both similar and different in many different ways!
The tenca is a bird roughly the size of a standard water bottle in length. They are commonly brown-grey in color with a distinct white coloration on the top of their eye that almost looks like an eyebrow. On their chest, they have a light grey belly with speckled black markings. Their coloration helps them to blend in with the semi-arid shadows they can be found in!
