From the Field
November 23: Dan Brown from his tour in Goa
A stunning male Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher in full scope view for 15 minutes at Bondla, a trio of Amur Falcons (below ) just above our heads on Divar Island, 1500 Small Pratincoles in soft evening light, and a plethora of wetland birds. What a place!
An adult Amur Falcon - James Lidster
November 18: Steve H0well and Jake Mohlmann on the last leg of their recently completed Chile tour
A dinner toast of "2 tinamous and 3 flamingoes" (in one day, and species, not individuals!) sums up well the quality birding offered by the desert and high Andes of northern Chile. Our 2011 tour throughout this great country maintained its fine birds and amazing weather right through to the end, with numerous highlights on the last section including tiny male Chilean Woodstars (below), the little-known Canyon Canastero (below), raucous flocks of Gray Gulls and Franklin's Gulls "wading" amid pulsating carpets of Sanderling on a sunny beach, the bizarre Peruvian Thick-knee (below), and simply the rarified experience of birding amid the mind-blowing scenery at Lake Chungara, the highest lake in the world (at 15,000 feet, below), its surface dotted liberally with Giant Coots and Andean Silvery Grebes, the surrounding slopes and bogs home to elegant wild Vicuñas (below) and herds of domesticated Alpacas (and spot the Andean Gull..., below). A fine dinner with pisco sours and Chilean wine and a relaxed last morning’s beach walk (producing a surprise Elliot’s Storm-Petrel close to shore) rounded out the tour before we headed homeward.
November 16: James Lidster on his just concluded Ghana tour
Just home from a brilliant trip to Ghana. We saw Yellow-headed Picathartes as close as we always do (below), and were also the first birding group (ever?) to set eyes on Nkulengu Rail. Further, we saw a Hartlaub's Duck with ducklings, confirming the breeding of one of the world’s rarest ducks. If that wasn't enough, we saw other sought after species from African Piculet, Red-billed and Black Dwarf Hornbills, Cassin's Hawk-eagle, Red-thighed and Black Sparrowhawks, to Fraser's Eagle Owl, Black-shouldered, Plain and Long-tailed Nightjars. We enjoyed amazing views of Rosy, Black and Blue-headed Bee-eaters, (Rosy, below), Yellow-bearded Greenbul (below), Chocolate-backed (below) and African Pygmy Kingfishers, Rufous-sided Broadbill, and umpteen sunbirds, weavers, etc. The forest remains as beautiful as ever, our ground agents as attentive as any I work with so every tour seems so exciting. This was my 5th and I still managed 15 birds, testimony to the ever growing knowledge of this country and the hard work the local guys make to keep checking new sites. Now, time to get some washing done before Gambia on Friday...
November 15: Gavin Bieber on the last part of his and Judy Davis's tour to Australia
We just finished the third section of our tour, concentrating on the diverse state of Queensland, with additional time at the incomparable O'Riley's Rainforest Retreat near Lamington National Park, and a few days around Sydney, surely one of the most attractive large cities on the planet. Some of wonders of the itinerary are illustrated below: a flock of Spotted Whistling-Ducks (a recent colonizer from New Guinea) north of Cairns; a Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher that we located near Kingfisher Park in the Atherton Tablelands and there as well lengthy and very close views of the impressive Southern Cassowary; fuzzy Brown Booby chicks among the throngs of Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies (among 8 other species of terns for the day!) on our trip to the Great Barrier Reef; Regent Bowerbirds and Australian King Parrots at the magical O’Rileys; calm seas and pleasant weather on our pelagic trip out of Sydney which enabled us to really study Wandering Albatross, a host of shearwaters and Great-winged and Providence Petrels at close range; and finally the coastline of Royal National Park with Southern Emu-Wren and Rock Warbler against some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. All in all, it’s just an amazing place.
November 15: Steve Howell and Jake Mohlmann with more from their ongoing Chile tour
Our time in central Chile was blessed by continued amazing weather - from perfect high overcast and low seas on the pelagic (below, with Royal Albatross), to stunning sunshine in the Andes. Today we watched a confiding Diademed Sandpiper-Plover (below) feeding on a bog surrounded by huge lilac and green talus slopes, overlooked by a couple of hanging glaciers, and to the backdrop of numerous hooting Gray-breasted Seedsnipes! Our venture into the Humboldt Current produced a bonus young Wandering Albatross (below) as well as the more usual Northern Royal, Salvin's, Southern Buller’s, and Black-browed Albatrosses, plus a vagrant Shy Albatross (below), one of only a handful of documented records from Chile. The Sperm Whale (below) wasn't bad either, and we celebrated the magic pelagic with a glass of wine as we returned to port. Other highlights have included Great Shrike-Tyrant, Crag Chilia, Rufous-tailed Plantcutter (below), White-throated Tapaculo, and Chilean Tinamou (below). Now off to the Atacama for the last leg of the tour...
November 5: Steve Howell with an update on his and Jake Mohlmann's tour of Chile
We're now back in Santiago after a fabulous visit to the temperate rain forests of the Lake District, home to the iconic Magellanic Woodpecker (image taken yesterday morning outside our lodge) and some incredible scenery (Volcan Puntiagudo, below). This morning we enjoyed an unparalleled tapaculo fest, seeing all 4 forest species very well in less than an hour - and in sunshine! (photos of Chucao Tapaculo and the normally elusive Ochre-flanked Tapaculo, below). The added bonus of the active Puyehue Volcano contributed an amazing juxtaposition of clear and ash-laden rivers, the latter still with Torrent Ducks (images below). Now we get to enjoy a week of sunny spring weather in central Chile before heading north to the Atacama Desert.
November 5: Gavin Bieber on his and Judy Davis's just completed tour of South Australia and Northern Territory
Our second leg of our Australia tour to South Australia and Northern Territory combined an amazing array of habitats and landscapes with some of the continent's most special birds. The shrubby mallee forests of the Murray River region was lush thanks to a wealth of rainfall over the last year, and many rare nomadic species were in evidence. Our chief prize from the South Australia portion of the tour must have been this female Scarlet-chested Parrot (below)in the Gluepot Preserve. In Alice Springs we experienced the timeless landscapes of the Macdonnell Ranges (below)while seeking out such outback specialities as the absurdly beautiful Spinifex Pigeon (below) or the charismatic lizard, the Perentie (below). We finished in the humid tropics around Darwin with its astonishingly rich avifauna (we added about 100 species to the triplist!). One definite highlight was our riveting views of the odd Rufous Owl (below), roosting in amongst a large colony of flying foxes, but I suspect the group favorite might have been the gorgeous male Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove (below) found in mangrove forests just outside of Darwin....and now it's on to Queensland and New South Wales.
November 2: Steve Howell and Jake Mohlmann from their Chile tour
It's been fantastic... Yesterday crossing the Straits of Magellan over to Tierra del Fuego we had almost balmy weather followed by a mild and amazingly near-calm afternoon - during which we found a pair of Magellanic Plovers in record time and watched them feeding alongside handsome Two-banded Plovers and migrant Baird's and White-rumped sandpipers. Among many other highlights these first few days we've enjoyed Magellanic Penguins "wading" through bunch grass and flowering Berberis bushes (below), displaying Magellanic Snipe (below), flashy Canary-winged (Black-throated) Finches, stately Guanacos and sleek South American Gray Foxes roaming the Patagonian grasslands, and beautiful Commerson's Dolphins (below). The "common" birds are also easy on the eyes - from Black-faced Ibis to Rufous-collared Sparrows (both below).
October 29: Steve Howell and Jake Mohlmann on their search for the new storm-petrel
Today, in the company of pelagic aficionado Dave Shoch (the happy trio in habitat, below), we braved wind waves of up to 5mm (did we say it was calm?) and were successful in locating numbers of "Seno Storm-Petrel," the undescribed taxon (species?) of storm-petrel that inhabits the Seno de Reloncavi near Puerto Montt, Chile. This striking bird was discovered in 2009 by a visiting group of perceptive Irish and US birders, who published their observations in Dutch Birding (volume 31:218-223; 2009). Little is known of 'Seno Storm-Petrel' (Seno pronounced "say no?"), very few people have knowingly seen it, and needless to say its breeding grounds remain unknown.
While some have suggested a similarity between Seno and the recently rediscovered New Zealand Storm-Petrel, we felt the bird was clearly of the Wilson's/Elliot's Storm-Petrel ilk. It had highly variable plumage, with some individuals resembling the chilensis taxon of Wilson's, others much more like Elliot's. The bold whitish underwing stripe appeared to be the most consistent feature (and some also had white tongues on the inner webs of the outer primaries), the upperwing band and white tail base was also bolder than most Wilson's, and the white belly patch varied from indistinct and almost lacking (like many chilensis) to bold and extensive (but differently shaped than on Elliot's, as noted in the DB article). Some photos of this exciting enigma are posted below.
October 26: Steve Rooke on his just-completed Ethiopia tour
The first of our two Ethiopia tours has just ended. We managed to see all of the expected endemics and in a stark change to all the recent news from this part of Africa, we found most of the country green and verdant thanks to recent rains. We began along the dramatic River Jemma gorge (below), a tributary of the Blue Nile where we had wonderful views of the rare and little known endemic, Harwood's Francolin (below). Our tour crosses the roof of Africa, where in the strange landscape of the Sanetti Plateau in the Bale Mountains (below) we saw several Simien Wolves (below), the world’s rarest canid. It is also a great place for raptors and this young Lammergeier (below) perched right next to the tour vehicles. Other highlights included African White-winged Dove (below), which although not an endemic, is restricted to the river systems of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya,and another rarely seen bird. Most people expect our accommodations to be basic, and in some cases even the best available are, but others can be delightful, such as these chalets set amongst tall acacia trees on the edge of Lake Awassa (below) where Guereza Colobus (below) cavort around the grounds, and massive Silvery-cheeked Hornbills (below) call out from the tree tops.
It's now on to my second tour.
