October 2018 emailing

Hello, birding friends! We hope fall is treating you well and the birding has been productive. Since our September emailing we’ve been busy with tours to Brazil, Cape May, Ecuador, South Africa, Peru, and Australia, and the reports have been exciting. We have a lot of news and updates for you in all the links below, including a fresh October Recent Photos Gallery with more than 80 great images from numerous recent departures (the dazzling Purple-breasted Cotinga below in Brazil by participant Roger Holmberg is a sample). Also linked below: a one-week Brazil getaway in late January or early March, a second Birds, Chateaux & Wine departure to France in June, open spaces on holiday tours, interesting bird news of various sorts, a last Antarctica cabin, videos from Brazil, a fresh batch of 14 recent triplists, and 12 updated itineraries for 2019 tours, as well as remaining spaces on our November-February tours. Enjoy, and we look forward to seeing you in the field!

A Week in Brazil: Join us in Southern Bahia…

Do you have limited time and would like a very targeted birding experience? Or are you going to be in Brazil on your own and would like to extend your stay? We have a very birdy extension to each of our two upcoming Nowhere but Northeast Brazil! departures that might fit the bill. In the description below, click the link to get the tour’s itinerary; then scroll down to the extension section for complete information. Contact our office if you are interested.

BRAZIL: Southern Bahia Extension — Jan 31-Feb 7 or Mar 7-14

We have two sets of dates for this short, late-winter getaway to birdy Bahia, Brazil, featuring several Atlantic Forest endemic and rarely seen birds difficult to see elsewhere. These include Hook-billed Hermit, White-winged Potoo, Banded Cotinga, Slender Antbird, Rio de Janeiro Antbird, Striated Softtail, Pink-legged Graveteiro, and Bahia Spinetail. The first departure (Jan 31) will be guided by Bret Whitney and Marcelo Barreiros (limit 12, 2 spaces currently open), then Marcelo will follow with our second departure (Mar 7, and all the birding intel gleaned from the first tour!) limited to 8 (1 space currently open). Check out more information in the itinerary.

Second France Birds & Wine added for 2019

Our Birds & Wine series has been very popular since we inaugurated it five years ago. In 2018 we launched France’s Loire Valley: Birds, Chateaux & Wine. Our original departure for next year (May 31-Jun 10, 2019) is down to one space open, so we’ve released dates for a second tour — Jun 12-22. This 11-day itinerary will also be guided by our great team of Megan Edwards Crewe and Marcelo Padua. We’ll bird our way through forests, grasslands, and wetlands along the Loire River with stops at the chateaux of Chambord, Chenonceau (at right), and Villandry, and of course we’ll sample great wines, wineries, and French food along the way! Contact our office …si ça vous intéresse!

Birding Escapes for the Holidays

If the type of holiday hubbub you prefer is of the birding sort, we still have space open on these short Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s trips to the New World tropics, all of which are confirmed departures:

Holiday at San Isidro, Ecuador, Nov 17-26 with Mitch Lysinger (4 spaces)
Holiday Costa Rica: Rancho Naturalista I, Dec 21-29 with Cory Gregory (1 space)
Holiday in Honduras, Dec 21-29 with Jesse Fagan (2 spaces)
Christmas in Oaxaca, Dec 22-29 with Tom Johnson & Dan Lane (1 space)
Trinidad & Tobago II, Dec 28-Jan 6 with Doug Gochfeld (3 spaces)
Panama’s Canopy Lodge, Dec 29-Jan 5 with Chris Benesh (2 spaces)
Holiday at Ecuador’s Wildsumaco Lodge, Dec 29-Jan 8 with Willy Perez (3 spaces)

Recent Bird News of Interest

There’s lots of interesting news related to birds and birding this month!

Participant Joyce Miller published a fun piece in the Glen Falls Chronicle about birding in Borneo on our 2018 summer tour guided by Megan Edwards Crewe.

If you’ve been wondering what the economic impact of birding is in the US, check out this piece from the All About Birds website.

Heading to the post office? Pick up some of these new USPS bird stamps with stylized depictions of some familiar species.

From Audubon: Chickadee brains swap out old brain cells for new ones to help them remember where they stashed all those seeds. Very cool!

Some amazing info about aerial bird traffic through North American airspace seasonally from All About Birds — we’re talking billions of birds northward and southward.

An interesting NYT article on saving hummingbirds in the Andes as part of an overall effort by the organization SavingSpecies to create birds-and-wildlife corridors through reforestation.

Would you like to improve your estimates of numbers in the field—and make your ebird entries better? Here’s your chance: Bird counting 101 from the ebird site.

“Every species is a set of solutions to a set of biological problems, and any one of those at any time can become transformative to the life sciences.” So says biologist Tom Lovejoy in this piece (focused on the Manaus area in Brazil) on the connection between climate change and biodiversity loss titled Camp Amazon: Inside the ‘lungs of the Earth’ from the Christian Science Monitor. Also featured prominently is our longtime friend and colleague Mario Cohn-Haft.

One Antarctica twin cabin open: Feb 14-Mar 8

We just heard from our cruise operator that there is one twin porthole cabin available if two of you would like to join guide Doug Gochfeld and our upcoming February group on this birding-and-wildlife trip of a lifetime. It will be a small group of just 12 (with you) and should be a lot of fun. See our Antarctica tour page for more info. Contact our office (ask for Karen Turner) soon if you are interested as the operator is looking for takers too.

New videos: Roraima & Manaus (Brazil)

Four new video clips from our recent Brazil tours to Roraima and the Manaus area in northern Brazil: below, from top, a compilation of some cool antbirds from guide Bret Whitney on the Roraima trip, including the fabulous Ferruginous-backed Antbird and the little-known Rio Branco Antbird; a lovely Crimson Fruitcrow, a birding prize of the Guiana Shield region of northern South America; a morning outing with our group, rubber boots required (!); and guide Micah Riegner’s clip of a Black-eared Fairy hummingbird building a nest. Click on the images to see the videos.

Triplists from 14 recent Field Guides tours

Click on any image or link below to see our annotated and illustrated online triplist. (And be sure also to see our October Recent Photos gallery for other great images.)

GALAPAGOS
with Willy Perez

BEYOND THE PORTS OF PORTUGAL
with Marcelo Padua

CLOUDFORESTS OF ECUADOR
with Willy Perez

RAINFORESTS OF TAMBOPATA (PERU)
with Jesse Fagan

ARIZONA’S SECOND SPRING II
with John Coons & Felipe Guerrero

PAPUA NEW GUINEA
with Jay VanderGaast & Doug Gochfeld

WILD KENYA: A TENTED CAMP SAFARI
with Terry Stevenson

OREGON I
with Cory Gregory

BRAZIL: RORAIMA ADVENTURE
with Bret Whitney & Micah Riegner

BRAZIL: JAGUAR SPOTTING I
with Marcelo Padua & John Coons

MOUNTAINS OF MANU, PERU
with Dan Lane

FRANCE: CAMARGUE & PYRENEES I
with Megan Edwards Crewe & Ned Brinkley

MOROCCO
with Jesse Fagan

CANARY ISLANDS (ext. to MOROCCO)
with Jesse Fagan & Godfried Schreur

Private tours for your group or organization

Private groups with FIELD GUIDES BIRDING TOURS

Want to organize your own tour with a group of special birding friends and one of our staff guides or for your local birding club? We regularly put together private departures for groups of 6 or more to many different destinations, and they are invariably a big hit. Here’s an example of a Namibia & Botswana tour’s illustrated triplist, with guide Terry Stevenson, and there is one more example from Portugal among the recent triplists above. Just contact our office to start planning your group’s next great birding trip.

A recent private-group Panama participant noted: “We were so pleased to do this tour with our friends and with John Coons as leader. Everything went smoothly. All we have to do now is decide where we all want to go next!”

Tour openings: November through February

The select tours from November through February listed below still have some space available. Included is our all-new New Mexico: Birding the Land of Enchantment itinerary for Jan 26-Feb 1 with Doug Gochfeld & Cory Gregory. And if those dates don’t work for you but you want to bird the States this January, check out Chris Benesh’s South Texas Rarities tour, Jan 12-18.

Colombia: The Llanos & More, Nov 11-21 with Jesse Fagan (2 spaces)
New Zealand, Nov 11-29 with Dan Lane & local guide (1 space)
Chile, Nov 11-Dec 1 with Willy Perez & local guide (2 spaces)
Holiday at San Isidro, Ecuador, Nov 17-26 with Mitch Lysinger (4 spaces)
Vietnam, Nov 24-Dec 14 with Dave Stejskal & Doug Gochfeld (1 space)
Holiday Costa Rica: Rancho Naturalista I, Dec 21-29 with Cory Gregory (1 space)
Holiday in Honduras, Dec 21-29 with Jesse Fagan (2 spaces)
Christmas in Oaxaca, Dec 22-29 with Tom Johnson & Dan Lane (1 space)
Trinidad & Tobago II, Dec 28-Jan 6 with Doug Gochfeld (3 spaces)
Panama’s Canopy Lodge, Dec 29-Jan 5 with Chris Benesh (2 spaces)
Holiday at Ecuador’s Wildsumaco Lodge, Dec 29-Jan 8 with Willy Perez (3 spaces)
Costa Rica: Birding the Edges (Part I), Jan 5-14 with Tom Johnson (3 spaces)
South Texas Rarities, Jan 12-18 with Chris Benesh (spaces open)
Costa Rica: Birding the Edges (Part II), Jan 13-22 with Tom Johnson (spaces open)
New Mexico: Birding the Land of Enchantment, Jan 26-Feb 1 with Doug Gochfeld & Cory Gregory (spaces open)
Guyana II, Jan 26-Feb 6 with Megan Edwards Crewe (2 spaces)
Panama’s Canopy Tower, Feb 3-9 with John Coons (1 space)
Guatemala: Shade-grown Birding, Feb 9-17 with Jesse Fagan (1 space)
Birds & Wines of Chile and Argentina, Feb 9-23 with Marcelo Padua & Tom Johnson (spaces open)
Cambodia: Angkor Temples & Vanishing Birds, Feb 9-24 with Phil Gregory (spaces open)
Owlberta: Alberta’s Owls & More, Feb 16-22 with Jay VanderGaast (1 space)
Colombia: Santa Marta Escape, Feb 18-26 with Cory Gregory (2 spaces)
Nowhere but Northeast Brazil II, Feb 19-Mar 8 with Marcelo Barreiros (1 space)
Namibia & Botswana I, Feb 19-Mar 10 with Joe Grosel (spaces open)
Borneo I, Feb 26-Mar 15 with Megan Edwards Crewe (4 spaces)