Scytalopus magellanicus
Silhouette: Ferran Sayol · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~30%
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 |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Magellanic Tapaculo sighting in Torres del Paine National Park on a given day, based on 104 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 67th most-seen of the 106 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 30%, if each day is a fresh chance.
April, September and December–January
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Magellanic Tapaculo in Torres del Paine National Park on a given day, against under 5% in February–March, May–August and October–November, 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.
3rd of 3
Of the 3 parks where we can rate Magellanic Tapaculo sightings, Torres del Paine National Park ranks 3rd at about 10%. The best odds are in Vicente Pérez Rosales National Park (Chile, about 30%) and Nahuel Huapi National Park (Argentina, about 20%).
Same order: Passeriformes
The closest relatives of the Magellanic Tapaculo that you can see in Torres del Paine National Park (order Passeriformes, Perching Birds) are Rufous-collared Sparrow (about 90%), Austral Thrush (about 70%) and Southern House Wren (about 60%), 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 Torres del Paine National Park (104 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.
