Our April e-mailing is posted! It includes our recent photos gallery with images from Field Guides tours to Thailand, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, and Arizona, a fresh slideshow from our March 2012 Costa Rica tour, upcoming guide events and cool bird news, and last spaces on trips from June through October. Also noted: links to recently posted itineraries and triplists. You can see it all by clicking on the link or image below—enjoy!

April 2012 E-mailing

If Mork from Ork descended to Earth in a spaceship, I’d put my money on him checking out Manu before he headed to Boulder, Colorado, to hook up with Mindy and have a hit 70s sitcom. Why Manu? Because there’s a whole lot of life there! I’m sure you’ve all read several times about how western Amazonia has some of the highest biodiversity of terrestrial organisms anywhere on earth. There are now several lodges where you can see this diversity up close and personal, and the Manu area of southeastern Peru hosts some of the best.

From the cloudforests of the Andean slopes to the lowland rainforest with intermittent patches of Guadua bamboo, Manu encapsulates the phenomenon of ‘ridiculous biodiversity,’ and we run two separate tours into the Manu area: one, Mountains of Manu, that concentrates on the cloudforests and foothill forests along the Manu Road, and the second in which we spend about a week at the comfortable Manu Wildlife Center and explore the many different habitats available in the rich lowlands along the Madre de Dios River.

Just a few of the birding delights from our past Mountains of Manu and Manu Wildlife Center tours: Scarlet-bellied Mountain-Tanager, Amazonian Umbrellabird, Hoatzins, Paradise Tanager, Plum-throated Cotinga, Semicollared Puffbird, and Rufous-crested Coquettes (Photos by guides Dan Lane and Richard Webster and participants David & Judy Smith)

Consider your chances to see incredibly attractive tanagers, cotingas, toucans, and barbets from canopy platforms; to see tens of species moving through the understory or canopy of rain- or cloudforest in mixed-species foraging flocks; to see hundreds of parrots (including macaws) squabbling for the best positions at a clay lick. For that matter, you could see quetzals lazily cranking their heads around as they wonder how in the world everything was so GREEN where they live! Or a troop of Wooly Monkeys watching us (and, probably checking us off on their mental checklists) as intently as we watch them.

Now, if these possibilities make you think “huh, yeah, I can see myself doing that!” then ask yourself “why not now?” What else are you doing this summer that offers you these possibilities? Would it help if I added that this will be our last offer of the Manu Wildlife Center tour for a while? Or that the accommodations on both our Manu tours are very comfortable, offer fine food, and that there’d be zero chance that your office can call you to ask you for a favor while you’re on vacation? Come on down to Peru and join me on a visit to this incredible area! You and Mork will have something in common to discuss…should you ever meet!

Tour dates are July 2-14 and October 13-25 for Manu Wildlife Center and July 21-August 5 for Mountains of Manu. Come check out the ‘ridiculous biodiversity’ — and some fantastic birding — for yourself!

Guide Dave Stejskal returned from our recent Thailand trip with a nice selection of images, so we thought we’d share a few here with you in a short visual tour. Dave heads back there early next year, January 13-February 2, 2013, and you can see Dave’s 2012 triplist here. Enjoy!

We had stunning views of the gaudy Yellow-cheeked Tit at Doi Inthanon. (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

Spot the Spotted Owlet! Thailand features some fun mixes of birding and culture... (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

Collared Kingfisher: The crab's having a rough day... (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

"Wow!" just about covers it: Red-bearded Bee-eater. (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

A lovely vista at Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand's largest and located southwest of Bangkok. (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

Great view of a confiding Chestnut-tailed Minla at Doi Inthanon. (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

No mistaking a broadbill's profile: Here's a Banded Broadbill, one of five species seen on the tour. (Photo by guide Dave Stejskal)

Our March e-mailing is posted! It includes recent photos from our tours to Australia, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Washington state, and Oaxaca, an added Trinidad departure in our schedule for 2012, last spaces on trips from April through September, and an interesting news piece about habitat restoration in northern Peru. Also noted: links to recently posted itineraries and triplists. You can see it all by clicking on the link or image below—enjoy!

March 2012 E-mailing

Is there a more iconic vacation spot in the world than Hawaii? With historic Pearl Harbor, beautiful beaches with great snorkeling, captivating volcanoes, and the excellent cuisine, there is no shortage of attractions. Often overlooked, even among North American birders, is the array of unique birds inhabiting the remote hot-spot archipelago. With real parallels to the Galapagos, Hawaii is yet more isolated, and it’s home to some fantastically strange and beautiful forest birds (including the endemic “honeycreepers”) and a number of elegant seabirds. We asked guide George Armistead to put together a few of his favorite pics ahead of his 10th visit to the state, April 1-10. Check them out below–each has a little story to tell. There are a few spots still open on the tour, so why not join George and bask in the tropical sun, sip some Kona coffee, and take in some great birding and some fabulous food!

Visit our Hawaii tour page for a full description. Our itinerary and past triplists are accessible in PDF format from the blue links in the page’s right sidebar.

Though the Nene (Hawaiian Goose) is the state bird of Hawaii, probably the 50th state's most iconic species is the I'iwi. Without question, the I'iwi (pronounced "ee ee vee") is one of the most fantastic birds in the entire world. It not only burns a hole in your retina, but it makes an incredible array of sounds to boot. (Photo by guide George Armistead)

Birding and hiking along the Alakai boardwalk is richly rewarding. The forest is utterly unique with many endemic plants, insects, and of course birds too. Charming Kauai Elepaios often usher us along as we search for other endemics. (Photo by guide Rose Ann Rowlett)

Sadly, like many of Kauai's native forest birds in the Alakai Swamp, the Akeke'e is undergoing a serious decline. Into the mid-1990s this species was considered stable with a population of over 20,000 birds. Today perhaps fewer than 4000 remain. (Photo by guide George Armistead)

Seabirding is generally pretty comfortable in Hawaii compared to many places. Here our group enjoys sightings from the beach on Oahu. (Photo by participant Linda J. Nuttall)

One could sit and watch Red-tailed Tropicbirds all day, especially when they are performing their odd back-pedaling, leap-frogging, display flights. (Photo by guide George Armistead)

Bristle-thighed Curlew is a regular feature of our Hawaii tour, and it is typically easier to see here than elsewhere. In Alaska they can be hard, requiring a pretty serious hike. Here one rests at a Japanese cemetery along the north shore of Oahu. (Photo by guide George Armistead)

The taro fields of Hanalei are not the home of Puff the Magic Dragon (so far as has been proven!), but they do provide breeding habitat for Hawaiian Stilts, Hawaiian Coots and Koloa (Hawaiian Ducks). Kauai has no introduced mongooses, and both the duck and the Nene prosper here as a result. (Photo by participant Linda J. Nuttall)

Some birds are less challenging to see... How many places can you drive up to an albatross? And how often do you see "albatross crossing" signs? Laysan Albatross is certainly an unusual bird to have nesting in your backyard. (Photo by guide Rose Ann Rowlett)

The incredible Waimea Canyon on Kauai. In the Hawaiian language, "wai" means water and "mea" means reddish or dirty. (Photo by participant Linda J. Nuttall)

Our February e-mailing is now posted! It includes recent photos from our tours to New Zealand, Oman & the UAE, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, and Brazil, five new tours on our schedule for 2013, and last spaces on trips from March through July. Also noted: links to recently posted itineraries and triplists. You can see it all by clicking on the link or image below—enjoy!

February 2012 E-mailing

Ever since the late nineties, when during the first three months of the year I began flying to the west out of LAX across the Pacific instead of to the south out of Miami and across the Caribbean to South America, I’ve grown to appreciate more and more the complex and stunning avifauna of southern Asia. Most of those flights across the Pacific were to lovely Thailand, but they were soon followed by regular visits to nearby Vietnam and Malaysia/Borneo, and then to the diverse archipelago of the Philippines.

Asia has a huge variety of birds to offer, so how do you choose where to go? Will it be Green-tailed Sunbird (Bhutan, India, Thailand, and Vietnam) or Banded Kingfisher (Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam)? Photos by guide Dave Stejskal.

For me, antbirds at that season were replaced by babblers, toucans by hornbills, motmots by bee-eaters.  It was quite a change, but one that I’ve thoroughly embraced and grown to love. I still get to show off those Neotropical lovelies to clients at other times of the year when I guide tours to Ecuador, Argentina, and other Neotropical destinations–I’ll never be able to give up my antbirds, toucans, and motmots entirely!

Elephant-back birding in Southern India. Photo by participant Margaret Hartman.

Since my first visit to Asia, Field Guides has offered more and more tours there, many of which I’ve been lucky enough to guide, and I’ve predictably started hearing an obvious question from clients: Where the heck do you start? A tough question indeed. The right answer really depends on what you want to get out of birding in Asia. If you want just to sample it once and never return, I’d have to recommend Thailand. A fun, comfortable tour with a particularly outstanding ground crew, a co-leader second to none, fantastic food, and loads of birds just about everywhere with representatives of nearly every Southeast Asian bird family that you could think of make this one, in my view, the obvious choice for the one-time Asia birding holiday.

But, if you take that one Thailand trip, you’re guaranteed to come back for more! Want the quintessential Himalayan experience? Jump on board for Bhutan. Got a hankering for Bengal Tiger, the incomparable Taj Mahal, a rich culture, and a boatload of birds and mammals, try Northern India. Are you looking for a trip that’s a bit more demanding physically but full of riveting endemics? Try the Philippines or our Borneo tour. And don’t forget Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Japan, Southern India, Cambodia–they’ve all got great birds, are a heck of a lot of fun, and are all culturally fascinating. Odds are that you’ll never be able to take just one and that you, like me, will fall in love with this incredible region of our diverse planet!

More choices. Ceylon Magpie (Sri Lanka) or Chestnut-tailed Minla (Bhutan, India, Thailand, and Vietnam). Photos by guides Mike Crewe and Richard Webster.

Our Field Guides Asia tours include:
Bhutan
Cambodia
Northern India: Tiger, Birds & the Taj Mahal
Southern India: Western Ghats Endemics
Winter Japan: Dancing Cranes & Spectacular Sea-Eagles
Borneo
Philippines
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Vietnam

You can also see guide Dave Stejskal‘s upcoming schedule on his guide page. 

I like canasteros. I like canasteros a lot. There are only five people in the world who like canasteros more than I do, and they ain’t admitting it. However, I have decided to break with the status quo (don’t voluntarily humiliate yourself in public) and admit my infatuation with these long wiry-tailed brown jobbies that live in brown places and probably eat brown things. Canasteros, to put it in terms my mom would understand, are neat. To put it in terms my brother would understand, canasteros are gettin’ jiggy with it.

Two canasteros, the more grassland Scribble-tailed (Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru) and the higher-elevation Streak-throated (Bolivia and Peru). Photos by guide George Armistead.

The Spanish word canastero means simply “basket-maker.” Canasteros make baskets, sort of. Their nests, which are made of fine grasses or small twigs, resemble baskets. Canasteros belong in the family Furnariidae, and are classed in one of two genera: Asthenes and Pseudasthenes. The genus Asthenes also includes Itatiaia Spinetail and 8 species of thistletail, which are, for all intents and purposes, also canasteros.

Junin Canastero, a species endemic to Peru which may be seen on Jesse Fagan's Machu Picchu & Abra Malaga, Peru tour. Photo by guide Dan Lane.

If you read a description of the habitat or location of canasteros, you will find a repetition of the words “arid” and  ”Andes.”  So, though technically many canasteros are found well within the New World tropics, you may be wearing a warm jacket when you see one; there could be snow on the ground and quite possibly no trees in sight.  If you read about their songs (if you can call what comes out of their syrinx a song), then you will find clarifying tidbits like “repetition,” “trill,” “descending,” “sometimes ascending,” or “strident.” These birds are loud vocalists, but their voices are not necessarily their endearing marks. Or, at least no one is describing them as accomplished songsters. Now then, what does one look for visually to distinguish them, that is, what are their field marks? Streaking (presence or absence; above or below). Chin patch (presence of ?). Any rufous on the tail? Any rufous on the wing? Oh boy, this sounds like a bit of a challenge. Hey, look at that Mountain Caracara! Wowwwwww.

Canasteros can be a bit of a mystery. While we were distracted by a flicker or that caracara, it has snuck in like a mouse, making its way through the bunchgrass, popping its little head up, sitting up to take a peek, moving closer, until just a few feet from our group its up on a rock, head held high, tail cocked, and singing. Okay, maybe just trilling, but it’s loud and we are still shocked. How did it get here so quietly and without our noticing?! Now, of course, this doesn’t happen every time. Sometimes it just pokes around in the grass or rocks, calls a few times, and we never see it. This frustrates us no end. It’s partly because in the field guide description on distribution it states many canasteros are “local and rare” or “local and uncommon” and always punctuated with “hard to see.” True, but that’s part of the allure.

A canastero quest will surely include a good deal of birding in high Andean habitat like this, as roughly 50% of these birds occur only above 8000 feet in elevation. Photo by guide Dan Lane.

Wish me luck. I am now on a Canastero Quest. You all are the first to know. Forget warblers, hummingbirds, and who needs those Tangara tanagers, anyway? I want brown, streaky, loudly trilling, local, and difficult to see. I want behavioral problems. I want color without the color.

Guide Jesse Fagan (a.k.a. theMotmot) still has a bunch of canasteros to see.  And where can you hope to see a canastero? Certainly on either of Jesse’s MACHU PICCHU & ABRA MALAGA, PERU tours, or on many of our Andean tours, a sampling of which includes:

Peru’s Magnetic North: Spatuletails, Owlet Lodge & More
Montane Ecuador: Cloudforests of the Andes
Ecuador: Rainforest & Andes
Chile
Bolivia’s Avian Riches
Northwestern Argentina: The Chaco, Cordoba & Northern Andes 

Yes, Field Guides offers an extraordinary tour across northern Peru that is no doubt already high on your shortlist of must-do-before-you-die tours. Yes, we have been offering our “Endemics Galore” tour annually since the last century, so we are no first-timers pleasurably leading you astray. Yes, and nobody does it with more experience, expertise, and enthusiasm than Richard Webster and Rose Ann Rowlett.

The once-mythical Long-whiskered Owlet photographed by guide Richard Webster.

Yes…, I could go on, but the long and the short of it is that for those of you with a detectable pulse who are wondering if you’ll live until you can find three weeks off your demanding schedules, rest assured that you can–without in any way preempting the longer possibility–make an enriching down payment, securing some third of those endemics outright, by taking our “Magnetic North” tour, a safe, working stiff’s 11-day-resolution to an anxiety dream.

Our abbreviated version of northern Peru is becoming better known as the “Long-whiskered Owlet/Marvelous Spatuletail Tour” because of the powerful attraction of these two marquee species–the long and the short of it–that are now possible since the construction of the fabulous “Owlet Lodge” at Abra Patricia and the development of the Huembo Spatuletail Reserve below the pass at Florida de Pomacochas.

It's hard not to marvel at a Marvelous Spatuletail. Photo by guide Richard Webster.

The miniscule owl with the long whiskers, a creature of mythic proportions that had not been observed outside a net when we began guiding tours to northern Peru, is the smallest owl in the world, no longer (if much bulkier) than an adult male Spatuletail, bereft of its marvelous, extravagantly long, spatula tail. The owlet is now being seen with regularity on the lodge property (our groups–both short and long–had sensational views of an adult perched a mere 15 feet away in 2011, as captured by Richard’s photo). And the Spatuletail—a hit-or-miss encounter when we began running the tour years ago–is now a virtual certainty, along with a dozen or so other hummers–at feeders regularly maintained at the reserve.

A couple of other hummers from the tour, a Many-spotted on a nest and a Collared Inca at Owlet Lodge. Photos by participants Dale Zimmerman and David Disher.

Yet our short sortie is also notable for another 15 or so possible endemics and specialties seldom seen away from the forest-clad knife-ridges that transect and make up the starkly beautiful east-slope habitat of the Abra Patricia area in the departments of Amazonas and San Martin. Our birding, some of the best to be had on the east slope of the Andes, begins and ends in Tarapoto, as the tour makes an electrifying short circuit from tropical lowlands of the Rio Huallaga, up the drainage of the Rio Mayo through Moyobamba and on upslope to the lodge at Abra Patricia, our base for six splendid nights of birding subtropical cloud forest and the drier Rio Chido drainage, before retracing our steps to Tarapoto for one last morning of birding in the upper tropical zone. In July of 2012 Field Guides will operate our seventh iteration of this short-and-sweet attraction, and each exciting year has led to greater logistical and pacing know-how and to a keener knowledge of the birds and their whereabouts.

Two of the many tanagers we could see, a White-capped and a Grass-green. Photos by guide John Rowlett and participant Johnny Powell.

So all you overworked dreamers, whether drawn more to the specialties or to the thrill of birding mixed-species flocks of tanagers, fruiteaters, quetzals, and barbets (did I mention the Grallaricula, Ochre-fronted Antpitta, or the Grallaria, Pale-billed Antpitta [one of several endemic species of antpittas to be seen], or the lovely Yellow-scarfed Tanager, Johnson’s Tody-Tyrant, Bar-winged Wood-Wren, or White-faced Nunbird?); whether drawn more to scoring scores of Oilbirds or to finally winning a prize look at that furtive Chestnut-crowned Gnateater or that elusive Lanceolated Monklet that has always just slipped your view, take it from me: you are ensured immeasurable benefits from the long-lasting dividends of going short.

Our next Peru’s Magnetic North: Spatuletails, Owlet Lodge & More tour is scheduled for June 30-July 10, 2012 with John Rowlett and Pepe Rojas.  Dates for the longer Northern Peru: Endemics Galore tour are  November 4-24, 2012 with Richard Webster and Mitch Lysinger.  For complete tour schedules for all our guides, visit our guide page.

When it comes to bird spectacles, the bustling breeding cliffs of Northern Hemisphere seabirds are in a class of their own. And my favorite such cliff is on the Pribilofs on Saint Paul Island–a tiny flyspeck of land in the middle of the vast Bering Sea. It’s one of the first places we visit on our Alaska tour, and the combination of frenetic activity and arm’s length birding makes for a truly unforgettable experience.

Black-legged Kittiwake carrying nesting material. Photo by guide Dave Stejskal.

The rocky headland of Ridge Wall juts out into the cold sea like the prow of a very tall ship. We leave the warmth of the bus and walk a narrow track toward the water, weaving through colorful patches of emerging Arctic wildflowers. Ahead of us, birds stream back and forth along the edge of the cliff, wings churning. As we reach the headland, the scene expands. All around us, birds flash like flakes in a giant snow globe. Hundreds more dot the surface of the water below. Even when they dive, we can still see them, “flying” through the clear green water in pursuit of prey. A cacophony of sound rises from the colony: the onomatopoeic “kittiwake” of Black-legged Kittiwakes, the high, excited trills of Least Auklets, the throaty, nasal laughter of murres, and the occasional sputtering roar of a distant Northern Fur Seal. The fishy smell of guano hangs heavy in the air. “Smells like birds,”someone quips

Below us, bunched on crowded ledges, Common and Thick-billed murres jostle for position, their beaks pointed skyward. Pairs of Parakeet Auklets squabble over turf. Crested Auklets preen and wag their crests at each other. Red-faced Cormorants add giant mouthfuls of damp vegetation to growing nests. Horned and Tufted puffins doze at burrow entrances, their bright beaks glowing against the dark volcanic rock. Pairs of Northern Fulmars gently nibble each other’s neck feathers. In every direction, birds are doing the things birds do–and our clifftop perch gives us the perfect location from which to watch and photograph.

Two cliff-nesters, Tufted Puffin and Parakeet Auklet, photographed on St. Paul Island by guide Dave Stejskal.

Once everyone’s gotten a good look at all possible lifers, we can settle down to learning more: about how the various species divvy up the cliff so that each gets its preferred nest site, about the courtship and nesting strategies of the cliff ’s inhabitants, of the subtle differences between Red legged and Black-legged kittiwakes in flight, the best ways to distinguish Common Murres from Thick-billed Murres at a distance, the key field marks for identifying auklets on the water. By the time we leave the island, we’ll have had multiple hours in which to practice and hone our skills.

And we’ll have had multiple hours of enjoying thousands of birds going about their busy lives–feeding, courting, preening, resting–within mere yards of where we stood. In the world of bird spectacles, that’s mighty hard to beat!

The fabulous Ridge Wall on St. Paul Island allows birders to get up close and personal with a great variety of nesting seabirds. Photo by guide Megan Crewe.

Check out our 2012 Alaska tour dates (two departures, each in two parts) by visiting our Alaska tour page. And if you can’t make it to Alaska in June? We have a few other tours that also feature breeding seabird cliffs. Try Scotland: Famous Grouse in the Land of Whisky in April, Ireland in Spring in May, Newfoundland & Nova Scotia in late June, or Spitsbergen & Svalbard Archipelago: A Cruise to the Norwegian Arctic in late June.