By Drew Corrigan, University of Vermont
As the wind blows smooth round clouds across the rock and ice in the sky, the condor soars, searching for something dead to eat. Its keen eyes drift across bleached sheep bones and wool scraps caught in neneo thorns, memories of past dinners. Now the land is almost bereft of sheep. There are still some near the ranch houses surrounded by poplars and some cattle and dogs and a few people and some fences and lots of hares, but mostly there are only sheep bones among the neneo and nardophyllum and bunchgrass and mallins and ponds with flamingoes and geese and ducks and swans and rock ridges with armadillos and foxes and caves with owls and pumas and skunks and the wind on the steppe ruffling the Nandu’s feathers and the guanaco’s wool like the ghost of glaciers in the Chacabuco valley as the condor glides silently overhead.
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Neneo macho flowers bloom in the springtime, spotting the steppe with patches of wildfire.
A Magellanic Horned Owl perches next to a neneo shrub.
Hayden Childs (UVM) roams across the rocky steppe.
Brandon Lawton (UVM) and Matt Hendrickson look out over the Argentine desert.
Team Ñandú overlooks a butte on the horizon.
Team Ñandú hikes back toward the Lucas Bridges mountain range, finished with the day’s survey.
A Barn Owl roosts on an exposed escarpment of an ancient lava flow.
Lucas Bridges Mountain.
A Black-necked Swan shares a steppe-oasis with Chilean Flamingoes and other birds.
Cerro Lapiz.
A horse returns to the barn after a long day of grazing in the wind.
An Upland Goose picks through the feast offered in a pond near the barn.
Sunset over Argentina.