Thanks to the vigilance of Paul Lehman, WINGS has been able to secure a full complement of rooms for our Spring 2009 tour to Gambell, Alaska. As a result, we are able to take a group of the normal size, letting us reduce the price for that tour some ten percent, to about $4,980.

Join us!

A Crested Auklet feeds just offshore at Gambell. Photo: Jon Dunn.

The Fall 2008 newsletter is now on line, with descriptions of new tours to China, Ukraine, Peru, and Colombia. There are also tempting trip reports from Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Sri Lanka, and some important Tour Updates including lower (yes, lower!) prices for Iceland and Alaska.

If you’re not already receiving paper copies of our print newsletters at home, drop us an e-mail or give us a call at 888-293-6443 and we’ll happily add you to the mailing list!

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!

Iceland, with its eerie landscapes, its ancient culture, and its dramatic birdlife, has long fired the imagination. This most captivating of birding destinations has also been among the most expensive–well worth it, of course, but still decidedly pricy.

Until now. Thanks to the efforts of our Icelandic friends and our hardworking colleagues at Sunbird, we’ve been able to reduce to about $4,460 the 2009 price of James Lidster’s ever-popular tour to the land of dark sagas, blue whales, and white Gyrfalcons.

This female Gyrfalcon was at Myvatn on our 2008 tour. Photo: James Lidster.

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.

Birding wonders never cease, and last Friday saw a doozy in Baja California Sur: Mexico’s first Little Bunting was beautifully photographed at San Jose de Castro.

Little Bunting, Baja California Sur, with kind permission of Kurt Radamaker.

Baja California, with its endemics and the odd startling vagrant, is full of astonishments at any time of year, but fall through spring offers opportunities  to enjoy multitudes of wintering passerines, seabirds, and shorebirds. And who knows, maybe a vagrant or two….

Turnabout is fair play, they say, and with a European Golden-Plover in Maine, it’s also been a big few days in Britain and Ireland, with a number of familiar North American vagrants to dazzle our trans-Atlantic friends.

James Lidster is now on Scilly, where two Red-eyed Vireos and a Blackpoll Warbler–all alive–have followed the discovery of the corpse of a Common Nighthawk. Bryan Bland will be joining James out there soon, and it’s extremely unlikely that anything, anything!, will get past ‘em.

Stuart Elsom was among the lucky crowds enjoying Britain’s first Alder Flycatcher, then took off for Ireland, where the big draws are a Little Blue Heron and a Scarlet Tanager. As Jill Williams observed, it’s a good thing that Stuart legitimately had the day off from work, as he was prominently filmed by the BBC at the scene of the twitch!

An adult European Golden-Plover, said to be the first ever for the continental US, is being seen at Maine’s Scarborough Marsh this afternoon. The bird, in company with southbound American Golden-Plovers, has been well photographed–and is drawing birders from all across the country.

The latest trivia question from our WINGS e-newsletter:

The three most exacting tasks in the life of a migratory bird are breeding, molting, and migration. Because each of these activities takes so much energy, migratory birds typically undertake only one at a time. Name one species that engages fully in all three activities simultaneously.

Common Murres–here photographed in Alaska by Brian Sullivan with Horned Puffins and Thick-billed Murres–lead what BNA Online delicately describes as “an energetically costly lifestyle.” With their dependent chicks still in tow, adult males begin their migration by swimming to traditional areas to molt, thus migrating, molting, and breeding all at once.

Watch for a new trivia question in our next newsletter!

Our question: Which predatory bird lures its avian prey with imitations of their vocalizations?

Northern Shrike in Alaska. Photo: Gary Rosenberg

Our answer: The winter song of Northern Shrike–a fearsome predator if ever there was one–frequently includes imitations that are attractive to the smaller birds that make up a significant part of the shrike’s winter diet. The Gray Butcherbird of Australia is also said to use a similar hunting technique.