Scytalopus magellanicus
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~50% in a week ~80%
The Magellanic tapaculo (Scytalopus magellanicus) is a small passerine bird in the tapaculo family Rhinocryptidae that is found in southern South America. The Magellanic tapaculo was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the wagtails in the genus Motacilla and coined the binomial name Motacilla magellanica. Gmelin based his description on the "Magellanic warbler" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a water-colour drawing of the bird by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The picture is dated 28 December 1774 at Tierra del Fuego. This picture is now the holotype for the species and is held by the Natural History Museum in London. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
The species was often known as the Andean tapaculo in the past and included a number of subspecies distributed along the Andes. These are now treated as species in their own right, leaving... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park | 🇨🇱 Chile | |
| 2 | Nahuel Huapi National Park | 🇦🇷 Argentina | |
| 3 | Torres del Paine National Park | 🇨🇱 Chile |
Possible
About 20% of wildlife watchers report a Magellanic Tapaculo sighting in Nahuel Huapi National Park on a given day, based on 216 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 36th most-seen of the 111 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 50%, and over a week to about 80%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Magellanic Tapaculo in Nahuel Huapi National Park on a given day, against about 10% in April, June and August–September, the lowest months.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Magellanic Tapaculo sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
2nd of 3
Of the 3 parks where we can rate Magellanic Tapaculo sightings, Nahuel Huapi National Park ranks 2nd at about 20%. The best odds are in Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park (Chile, about 30%).
Same family: Rhinocryptidae
The closest relatives of the Magellanic Tapaculo that you can see in Nahuel Huapi National Park (family Rhinocryptidae, Tapaculos) are Chucao Tapaculo (about 40%) and Black-throated Huet-huet (about 20%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Magellanic Tapaculo is recorded against all the birds logged in Nahuel Huapi National Park (216 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
