Pearson - 1995 20 birds. Lots of tabanid flies. December 12- Sunny, warm. Drove up Cerro Otto to bamboo. Lots of tabanids. New shoots are coming up in the clump in the woods, but none out in the open at the other clump. The clump where I had cut off all the live canes at ground level last year now has five dead canes still standing, one 1.5m tall very leafy culm, and two pencil-thin new shoots 10 inches and 1 meter tall. These are skinnier than one would expect for this clump. We could see a burned area of many hectares down on the flats. Eileen and John came by. Their tucos are gettng hard to catch, wary. Juveniles starting to emerge are called back in by vocalizations from ?a parent? still down in the burrow. They love green thistle plants. John often sees a thistle disappear down a burrow. They have even caught one or more tucos by jamming their hand down behind a disappearing thistle. Eileen received a fax that one of her captves in Berkeley gave birth to triplets. The father had died earlier. 13 Decemeber.- Bariloche. Sunny warm. Went up to Piedra del Condor at Catedral on the Aerosilla. Lots of school kids in their snow suits, some snow drifts left. Saw condors and Rice Crispie droppngs of Euneomys chinchilloides under the fist rock I looked at near the top of the chair lift. A few more signs later. A few burrows and runways, but nothing that looked like good mordax habitat. Everything quite dry. Some lenga still emerging from the snow, lots of it very near the top. Saw a couple of lizards out near the top. Not cold, not windy. Reprints of the Key arrived from Ojeda. I should have insisted on reading proofs. 14 December.- Sunny warm. Visited Patrica Fierro and Jorge Vallerini. From her gardening experience in Bariloche Patrica says that the native plants are blooming about on schedule this year but that bulbs and introduced flowers are late. The winter was severe. She is just back from Torres de Paine etc. and says that down south they lost a half-millon sheep this past winter. 15 December.- Cloudy all day and very blustery in the late afternoon. Abel Basti came by to talk Hanta virus, then a