Palermo Lakes

You don’t have to leave the city to see herons, cormorants and coots: just head out early to the lakes of the Bosques de Palermo, the park officially called Parque Tres de Febrero. The largest is the Lago de Regatas, and it’s so full of life because it isn’t a closed pond: its water comes from the Maldonado stream, which runs piped underground beneath Avenida Juan B. Justo.

A park against Rosas

Juan Manuel de Rosas began buying up these low-lying, flood-prone lands around 1836. There he built his residence as governor of Buenos Aires, with canals and an artificial pond where a small steamboat went back and forth. On February 3, 1852, he was defeated at the Battle of Caseros, went into exile in England, and his lands became public property.

The park was born of an 1874 law championed by the congressman Vicente Fidel López and by President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, one of the fiercest enemies Rosas ever had. It was named Tres de Febrero, February Third, after the date of Caseros, and it was opened on November 11, 1875, by the next president, Nicolás Avellaneda. Between 1892 and 1913, the landscape architect Carlos Thays expanded it.

Rosas’s house stayed standing as a military academy and later as a naval school, until it was demolished in 1899. In its place, at the corner of Libertador and Sarmiento avenues, the monument to Sarmiento by Auguste Rodin went up in 1900.

Four lakes, one big one

The park has four artificial lakes: the Lago de Regatas, the Rose Garden lake, the Planetarium lake and the Lago Victoria Ocampo. The Lago de Regatas, between Avenida Tornquist and Avenida Andrés Bello, next to the golf course, covers about ten hectares, twice the size of the Rose Garden lake, and averages less than a meter and a half deep.

What sets it apart is the water. It connects to the Maldonado stream and, indirectly, to the Río de la Plata. A survey by researchers from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), published in 2012, counted seventeen species of fish there, including trahiras, sábalos and catfish. Where there are fish, there’s someone fishing for them.

Which birds you’ll see

On the water, the first thing you’ll notice is the coots, black and round, swimming among the ducks. There are two species. The Neotropic cormorants, black and long-necked, dive under and come up several meters away. With patience you’ll find grebes, diving birds that suddenly vanish beneath the surface.

The herons fish along the shore: the great egret, the smaller snowy egret, and the black-crowned night heron, gray and motionless. In that survey, several species turned up only at Regatas: the great egret, the great grebe, the rosy-billed pochard, a duck typical of the lagoons of the Pampas, the limpkin and a kingfisher.

Up in the trees is the noisy part. Monk parakeets travel in flocks and build huge shared nests in the trees out of twigs they snip with their beaks: they’re the only parrot in the world that builds this way. Birds of prey like the crested caracara and the chimango caracara, common all over the city, patrol the park. Among the flowers, with luck, a hummingbird will show up. And a pair of great horned owls, ñacurutú in Spanish, settled in the tall eucalyptus trees around Regatas and raised young there in 2015. The Palermo birdwatchers’ club has recorded some 180 species in the park, quite a few more than were counted in the late 1990s.

When to go and where to stand

Birds are most active at dawn and dusk, and early in the day the park is less crowded. Try to keep the sun at your back so you’re not looking into the light: in the morning, that means facing west. Approach slowly and in a zigzag, not in a straight line, and if a bird flies off, don’t follow it.

The shore of the Lago de Regatas. It’s the lake with the most species. Walk its whole length and check the plant-lined edges: that’s where the herons wait. And look out at its two islands, thick with trees and shrubs: they’re where the birds take refuge.
The tall trees along the path. Listen before you look: you can hear the parakeets from far off.
The Planetarium lake. It’s small, under a hectare, and in the survey it was the only one where the striated heron appeared.
The Rose Garden lake. Its banks are straight concrete, and it turned up the fewest species. You go there for the ducks, the swans and the garden.

Planning your visit

Allow one to two hours for Regatas, and one more if you continue on to the Planetarium and the Rose Garden.
Bring binoculars and wear muted colors: bright colors give you away.
Don’t throw bread to the ducks or the fish.
On weekends the park fills up with runners, cyclists and families. If you go at dusk, stay in areas that are well lit and where there are people around.
What there is to do in the park is on the City’s tourism website, and other places to see birds are on its birdwatching page.
The Planetarium and the Rose Garden are half an hour’s walk away along the lakes, and Chinatown is about fifteen blocks off. If you’re still keen for more, the Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve is the city’s other great spot for birdwatching.

Last checked October 2026.