After several hours in a truck along the maltrecha track that runs through the breeding plateau (Santa Cruz, Argentina), and six kilometers carrying a inflatable ship and an incubator, the team of five people reaches the shore of the lagoon. Finally, Gabriela Gabarain and Patrick Buchanan, veterinarian and coordinator of the Patagonia program of the NGOs Argentinas, respectively, can enter the lagoon and approach the valuable objective of this expedition: three Eggs of Macá Tobian.
You have to collect them as soon as possible. This bird does not nest in another place of the world outside these remote highlands, in extremely scarce numbers, and each egg means, for the species, an opportunity to survive. According to the latest census, only 743 adult individuals remain, but reproduction events are very rare. In recent years, there have been several in which no couple has managed to reproduce successfully, something very worrying for the future of one of the most threatened birds on the planet. Until this year, the Aves Argentinas organization has achieved, for the first time, to raise in captivity and free its habitat three tobal maca pigeons (Podiceps Gallardoi), endemic to the area and critical danger.
Although in the collective imaginary the most emblematic animals of Patagonia are whales, penguins and pumas, perhaps the species that would deserve this recognition most is the Tobian maca. This aquatic bird is very striking for its elegant free, in which red eyes stand out, and also for their vocalizations and the behavior not fled towards man. Its spectacular and complex bridal stop remembers a tango.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hol93Tekrm
The fact that it was discovered only in 1974 says a lot about how remote its habitat, the volcanic plateaus of the province of Santa Cruz, perhaps the most inhospitable area of Argentine Patagonia. Despite its reduced distribution area, for years the species was considered risk free. Their nesting places are so difficult to achieve for humans as for their potential threats, such as pollution and habitat alteration. But, from the beginning of the new millennium, a change began to be noticed, to the point that new censuses carried out by Argentine birds revealed that the population had decreased around 80%.
The reasons? Mainly, invasive species such as the American mink, which can completely eliminate a colony in a single visit, or trout, introduced for the purposes of sport fishing, which alter the ecological conditions of the largest lagoons where the macaes nest and fed, forcing them to frequent smaller and more vulnerable gaps.
According to the biologist Ignacio ‘Kini’ Roesler, researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET – Bariloche Foundation) and coordinator of the species conservation program, these threats would not be so problematic if it were not for climate change, its main enemy for survival. “The alteration of precipitation patterns in this region means that, in some years, the most suitable lagoons dry completely, and in others there are so much water that the vineagrilla, the floating plant on which the macaes build their nests, does not reach the surface at the right time,” he explains.
“And even in the years in which some macaes manage to build their colonies on floating vegetation, extreme winding – of more than 100 kilometers per hour, which were not so frequent before – they can cancel all their efforts,” adds the biologist. While the threats due to invasive species, and the cook seagull (a native species in great expansion, facilitated by man), are now under control thanks to the work of the biologists of the Patagonia program, much cannot be done to stop the extreme effects of climate change, except to try to maximize the reproductive success of the Macaes.
The first successful breeding attempts in captivity
For 10 years, Gabriela Gabarain tries to raise Macá’s eggs in captivity that adult specimens leave in the nest after the birth of the first chicken, or the risk at the risk of getting lost due to the vulnerability of the nests to the wind gusts. After several failed, but very valuable attempts to refine the technique, finally in 2025 the team has made the three chickens, or pigeons, as they are called here, they survive, until they are ready to join the other macaes in the estuary of the Santa Cruz River, where the species is concentrated during the southern winter.
“The secret has been to raise the pigeons in a way as close as possible to the conditions experienced in nature, for example, letting them move in the aquatic environment and a few minutes after the hatching of the egg, thus facilitating the activation of its digestive system,” says the Gabarain veterinarian. “It has been a long learning process, since there were no other similar experiences in the world from which to capture knowledge,” he adds.
The pigeons stayed at the Juan Mazar Barnett biological station for two and a half months, first in batters inside and, fulfilled the month, in exterior pools, also fed with lively amphipode crustaceans, to learn to hunt their prey by diving. On May 4, 2025, the Macaes were transported by vehicle to the Atlantic coast, where they were released, the next morning, in the same waters already reached by the other individuals who have migrated on their own. Now we just have to wait for winter to survive and that next southern spring repeat the same trip they made by car in reverse, this time flying. And hopefully they find lagoons with wide vineagrilla spots where to place their nests.
There they will wait for them the ´guardianes of Colonia´ of the Patagonia program, biologists and volunteers who care and study the macaes camping for weeks in these plateaus swept by the wind.
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