How to Know the Birds

• What: Rufous Hornero, Furnarius rufus
• When: Monday, November 28, 2022
• Where: Ezeiza International Airport, Buenos Aires, Argentina

obert Louis Stevenson once reflected, “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

If there’s an REI store that doesn’t have that quote on the wall somewhere, I want to know about it. It’s a mantra for hikers and road trippers everywhere. It’s the entire point of Lord of the Rings.

But having recently endured “The Great Southwest Airlines Holiday Debacle of ’22,” I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t always work that way. The going part. The moving part. Stevenson died before they invented airport layovers.

Even when everything goes smoothly, airport layovers are an “exercise” in sedentariness. Which isn’t to say birdlessness. On the contrary, airport layovers sometimes result in life birds; that’s happened to me more than once. For those of us on eBird consecutive days streaks, airport layovers can be lifesavers. And even though it doesn’t involve a whole lot of going and moving, pretty much by definition, I’ve come to view the experience of the airport layover—at least if you’re a birder—as perfectly consonant with Stevenson’s theorem.

On a recent airport layover in Buenos Aires, I had 20+ hours to while away. Not gonna lie: I got in a bit of sleep, plus some Q. T. on the laptop. But I also spent much of the time on the grounds of an airport hotel along the busy Autopista Teniente General Pablo Riccheri. Did I say busy? Yeah:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

Okay, with our establishing shot out of the way, let’s step outside the hotel lobby for a bit of layover birding. The sliding doors haven’t even slid shut, and already we hear it:

That eruption of sound is one of the many calls of the rufous hornero, a bird wonderfully exotic yet familiar. Exotic: It’s a Furnariid, that exemplarily neotropical and outrageously speciose family without so much as a single accepted record for the ABA Area. Familiar: Spend any amount of time—any amount at all—in a big city in much of southern South America, and you will unquestionably make the acquaintance of one or a dozen horneros. Make that two dozen. They are legion.

Many Furnariids are disembodied voices in the jungle, heard far more often than they are seen. But not the rufous hornero. They are right out in the open in busy city centers:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

Note that the bird’s got something to say. If you’re going to be heard over that autopista, you’re going to have to speak up. Here’s a short video:

Did you catch the response by another bird? In addition to counter-vocalizing, as in that short video, horneros often just talk right over each other. What they do doesn’t qualify as antiphonal singing; indeed, I’m hard pressed to call it singing at all. But it sure is something! To wit:

This is what it looks like:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

Horneros are always doing something. Here’s one gathering up nesting material:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

It’s late spring in Buenos Aires in late November, so that checks out. Here’s one strutting about the base of a chain link fence:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

Here’s one watching from its earthen nest:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

Here’s one doing—well, I’m not sure what it’s doing:

Anyhow.

Horno means oven in Spanish, so a(n) hornero is a builder and tender of ovens. If there’s a bit of natural habitat around, the birds will build their hornos there:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

But just as suitable, it seems, is a substrate like this:

Photo by © Ted Floyd.

I mean, if you were a predator, would you bother shimmying or slithering all the way up there just to snag a hornero egg? Me neither.

I think I’ve gotten the point across, yeah? I really like horneros! My favorite birds are the common ones that allow careful study of their behavioral ecology. If I had my druthers, state and provincial and even national birds would be easily observed birds like the rufous hornero.

Guess what?

The hornero is the national bird of Argentina. I legit wasn’t aware of that fact when I was out there by the autopista… I just knew it was a worthy bird, an excellent bird, the sort of bird I might lose myself in the study of for an hour or more, the very best sort of bird.

Furnarius rufus, the rufous hornero, is the national bird of Argentina and, more to the point, a most excellent bird. Photo by © Ted Floyd.

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