Northern Hawk Owl, photo by Chris Wood.

The past ten days have brought the first signs of what may shape up to be a good winter for northern owls. Snowy Owls have been found in Massachusetts, Maine, and Minnesota, with Northern Hawk Owl reports coming from Minnesota as well. In the past, such early reports of these species have often presaged strong flights later in the season.

Even more exciting are early indications of a major movement of Boreal Owls into Minnesota. As many as fourteen (!) were banded in a single late-October night in Duluth. Minnesota in Winter is probably the best place in North America to see this small owl, and it looks like 2009 could be the year to do it!

We’ll be following any invasions of these and other boreal species carefully all winter, and will keep WINGS clients up to date here at The Wingbeat.

Our wide assortment of birding destinations world-wide means that WINGS deals with a large number of ground agents and local leaders–and an equally broad array of world currencies. As most of you know, the past months have seen significant fluctuations in international exchange rates; happily for WINGS clients, the trend at the moment is towards a stronger and more stable dollar.

Please note that at invoicing we recalculate the prices of all of our international tours, notably including those organized by our British company, Sunbird. We use the exchange rate in effect on the date of invoicing, meaning that–if the current trend continues–our prices will actually be lower, in some cases signficantly lower, than the prices originally published in summer 2008.

For example, the WINGS website, relying on the exchange rate in effect in July, would show a price of about $8,000 for a tour costing GPB 4,000–but if we were to invoice that same tour today, using the current exchange rate, the actual invoiced cost to our clients would be more like $6,240.

Obviously, given the day-to-day variation in exchange rates, we cannot continuously post new tour prices on the WINGS website. But rest assured that any advantages of exchange rate will be passed along when your tour is invoiced.

Our annual autumn visits to the wonderful Haydn festival in Eisenstadt always offer an exciting range of birds to complement the magnificent music. In 2009, though, in addition to our regular September extravaganza, we’re offering a springtime week in this exciting venue.

To commemorate the bicentenary of Haydn’s death, a magnificent musical feast has been arranged, including Gottfried von der Goltz and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Paul Goodwin conducting the Acadamy of Ancient Music, and Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Philharmonic with the Vienna Chamber Choir. And plans are underway, too, for Adam Fischer to conduct the Farewell symphony at Prince Esterhazy’s summer palace at Fertod, the Hungarian Versailles, in the very room where Haydn first conducted it.

As for the birds, many species will be on breeding territory: Savi’s, Moustached, River, Marsh, Great Reed, Icterine, Bonelli’s, and Barred Warblers; Red-breasted and Collared Flycatchers; and Hoopoe, Roller, Golden Oriole, Lesser Gray Shrike, Nightingale, and Wryneck. There could also be Little Bittern, Pygmy Cormorant, Night Heron, Montagu’s Harrier, Red Kite, Red-footed Falcon, Lesser Kestrel, Honey Buzzard, Mediterranean Gull, Caspian and White-winged Terns, and Imperial, Spotted, and Lesser Spotted Eagles. The Great Bustards could be displaying. The Bluethroats will have blue throats. On top of the Schneeberg we’ll search for Alpine Accentor, Alpine Chough, and Water Pipit. And at the Hohenau banding station there could be some exciting surprises in the hand.

If you’ve already enjoyed the Haydn festival in September, this is a unique opportunity for the perfect complementary experience. And if you haven’t experienced Haydn at Eisenstadt, this spring week will provide wonderful music magnificently performed, one of the finest selections of birds in Europe, luxury accommodation in the best hotel in Eisenstadt, and the chance to discuss the music with the performers and other experts—all this will leave you with an afterglow that will stay with you all year. Join Bryan Bland and Amanda Holden for this once-in-a-lifetime experience!

October is the very best time of year to visit the migration wonderland of Veracruz, in southeast Mexico. For next year, WINGS is creating a series of exciting one-day field trips from our cool and convenient base in Xalapa for participants in the American Birding Association’s International Conference, October 4-10. We’ll be housed in Xalapa’s clean, comfortable, and modern Fiesta inn, with cloud-forest birding right out the door, and the Conference field trips will visit sites ranging from the “river of raptors” on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the pine forests of the Xalapa Highlands.

For a preview, watch Rick Wright’s b-log for brief reports on his recent scouting trip to Xalapa with the ABA’s Tamie Bulow and Robert Straub, author of the Site Guide to the Birds of Veracruz and the local trip coordinator for what promises to be one of the most exciting and birdiest ABA conferences ever.

Red Warbler, one of the prizes of the Xalapa Highlands. Photo: Chris Wood.

Senior Leader James Lidster plans a busy autumn:

Those of you who have traveled with me on WINGS tours know how fond I am of quoting the Dutch and their proactive attitude to splitting new species. For the past 15 years they’ve led the way in pushing the boundaries of the Physiological Species Concept (PSC), and slowly but surely many other European countries are following suit. Of course, it doesn’t mean that they’re always right, but they are, at least, making more birders more “taxon-aware.”

Well, with this in mind and the fact that my world list isn’t increasing that much, I decided to look into imaginative ways to increase my list. The simplest seemed to be to find a Dutch girlfriend and move to The Netherlands.

And so after 32 years in England (with a few of those years out of the country leading trips), I’m moving to Arnhem. Of course my girlfriend thinks it’s all for her, but my list really has shot up….

The Netherlands is a great place to live, close enough to the UK to nip back and see family and friends, with good infrastructure, great birding, and great apple cake–and with that in mind (the birding and the apple cake!) I’ll be setting up some new tours to my new home.

Early exploration of birding sites has already led me and Roy Slaterus to discover a White-rumped Sandpiper (Bonapartes Strandloper), about the 30th Dutch record. My new tours are sure to involve some winter birding for White-tailed Eagle, Smew, and thousands of geese; late summer/early autumn expeditions for an abundance of shorebirds; and early spring birding for woodpeckers, owls, and geese (cheating slightly by spending some time in Belgium).

The next few weeks will be taken up with the obligatory house maintenance and painting (there’s a reason I work as a bird guide and not a builder!), keeping an eye on the berry bushes outside to see if Bohemian Waxwing can make it onto the garden list.

Photo: Gary Rosenberg.

Of course I’ll be on the Isles of Scilly for a couple of weeks in October, a great place to enjoy some quality birding, meet up with old friends and tour participants, and maybe emulate last year’s success in finding England’s second Wilson’s Snipe (another one split by the Dutch but not by the English!) before a month in Ghana. The lengths some people will go to get out of working around the house!

We here in the WINGS office are still waiting for definitive word about some of our friends on the Texas coast. Once we know that everyone is all right, we’ll be able to start work on adjusting the itineraries for some of our tours whose routes and destinations have been affected by the storm.

At the moment, nothing that we know makes significant changes or cancellations necessary, but we’ll keep you up to date as we learn more about the damage inflicted on places like High Island and the Bolivar Peninsula.