Welcome to our September emailing!
Fall migration is in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, and as we hit the official calendar marker for the season, just about all migrant species are already on the move. For many birders, this is the best time of year. As you read this, we have four tours afield. Dan Lane & Micah Riegner have a group in Bolivia; Chris Benesh is leading in California; Marcelo Padua & Jay VanderGaast are in Brazil, and Doug Gochfeld is showing folks fall migration in Cape May. And there's everything from India and South Africa to Peru and Australia ahead for October.
As ever, we have another installment of our popular Recent Photos Gallery, this month with more than 100 images of birds, birders, and scenery by participants and guides from eleven destinations, including Peru, Alaska, Brazil, Iceland, and more. Below you'll find a list of trips around the upcoming holiday season—there's time to squeeze in one more birding adventure this year. We also have a short feature about our Holland—Birds & Art: Waterfowl Spectacle & Dutch Masters tour from guide Godfried Schreur. And we feature 13 new triplists from recent tours; a selection of upcoming departures with openings; a couple of tidbits of bird news and notes; and 11 updated itineraries for the upcoming year.
Our thanks to participant Marsha Hand for the aerial photo of fabulous Kaieteur Falls from our Guyana: Wilderness Paradise tour. Our next departure is Nov 30, and we still have a couple of spaces available with Megan guiding. Contact our office to hold a space.
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Something different around the holidays? |
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We know that some of you like to get away during the busy holiday season. Have you made any plans yet? We have 11 tours to 11 countries from just before Thanksgiving through the start of the new year that will take you away for a week or two (or three!). |
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THANKSGIVING
New Zealand, Nov 13-Dec 1 with Dan Lane & local guide ( 2 spaces)
Vietnam, Nov 19-Dec 9 with Doug Gochfeld & local guide (2 spaces)
Jamaica, Nov 20-26 with Jay VanderGaast & local guide (1 space)
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EARLY DECEMBER (leaving time to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas at home)
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Hello, everyone! Godfried Schreur here. I want to introduce you to our Holland: Birds & Art: Waterfowl Spectacle & Dutch Masters tour, which will run Nov 26-Dec 5 and has just a few spaces available (and we need just two more participants for Jesse Fagan to join me as co-leader, which would be great!). This tour is an opportunity for some exciting winter birding in the scenic Netherlands, in particular waterfowl, combined with an exploration of the great Dutch art masters. This will be your opportunity to mix sightings like Smew, Red-crested Pochard, Pied Avocet, White-tailed Eagle, Tawny Owl, Bearded Reedling, and Fieldfare with viewings of the timeless artworks of Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, and Vincent van Gogh. I'm looking forward to showing you the birds, while knowledgeable local art guides will help us identify the salient points in the fine art before us. Our itinerary follows a compact route to the best birding areas and visits the finest museums. We will experience cozy villages and ancient towns, seeing examples of amazing engineering (sophisticated dams, gates, and sluices) both historical and modern.
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A quick personal bio in case you haven’t been with me on a previous tour: I am a Dutch tour leader based in Spain (having guided, in addition to Holland, many Spain and Iceland tours for Field Guides in recent years) who is amazed that a tiny, densely populated country like Holland still manages to conserve large-scale nature reserves and create new natural areas attracting even more birds! Contact our office to grab one of those last spaces in November on what will surely be a fun, relaxed, and informative trip.
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Field Guides video series |
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Explore the fine collection of videos by our guides offered through our OutBirding series! You can see samples and descriptions on our OutBirding blog page, and monthly or annual subscriptions are available and will give you unlimited access to our video library.
Our newest video is another episode in guide Doug Gochfeld's shorebird identification series called Doug's Peep Show.
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Triplists from recent tours |
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We have triplists from past tours linked below, each with some lovely images and some with video clips, and all with great annotations by our guides. Enjoy! |
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Comments from participants |
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We carefully read each post-tour evaluation we receive from our participants, so that we can continue to offer the best possible birding experiences and service on Field Guides birding tours. Here are a couple of representative recent comments. From all of us at Field Guides, our thanks for all of your valuable feedback. |
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“This was my ninth trip with Field Guides. I knew I would be in good hands. An African safari has been a bucket list trip for over 25 years. The tented safari itinerary was just what our group was looking for. Even though I knew the trip would be great, the itinerary in general—and Terry Stevenson in particular—exceeded our expectations. As I personally told Terry: Thanks for making a bucket list trip into an indelible memory!!! The wildlife and scenery were spectacular. Terry's guidance was topnotch. The way he called out field marks to confirm bird sightings was like a well-honed security blanket. In addition, Terry was able to take a group of six people who ranged from non-birders to beginners to experienced birders and create a meaningful experience for all. This is why I'll be looking forward to another birding trip with Field Guides! Tour manager Sharon Mackie deserves an “ABCD” award (above and beyond call of duty). She really helped us navigate our post-trip add-on with a difficult air itinerary as well as helping us weed through basic complexities on an overseas trip. Ultimately once we left for our trip, the whole plan played out flawlessly. Thanks again for all your hard work. A special shout out to Karen Turner who pinch hit for Sharon while she was enjoying a much deserved trip herself. You eased our minds with a last minute wrinkle, and the solution certainly turned our lemon into lemonade!!! Field Guides experiences set the gold standard for eco-tourism.” J.H., Wild Kenya: A Tented Camp Safari, 2022
“I chose Field Guides and this tour in particular for a variety of reasons. The reputation of Field Guides; that every tour I have been on with Field Guides has been excellent; that it was recommended to me by Marcelo Padua while I was on another tour; and that Marcelo was the guide. It was a very enjoyable trip. So many birds, mammals, natural history, great tour mates, great food, and scenery. Marcelo is an exceptional guide. In addition to his obvious bird-finding and identification skills, he is excellent in handling the non-birding components and the miscellaneous tasks as well. It is a pleasure to bird with him. As usual the tour manager—Christine Boilard— and office staff were excellent. I have been with Field Guides four times now. The tour manager and office staff have always been top-notch. They answer all my questions and do so quickly. I enjoy interacting with all of them. I feel it is such a personable and helpful group. Just keep doing what you're doing. Field Guides is, in my opinion, one of the very top bird-watching companies—not just for seeing a lot of birds, mammals, etc., but for an overall joyful experience. The guides, tour managers, and office staff are exceptional.” G.M., Jaguar Spotting: Pantanal & Garden of the Amazon II, 2022
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Tours with openings through February |
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Below is a roster our upcoming tours with space available, departing from now through February. There are some iconic tours with space available, which is highly unusual this close to the start of the tour. Some of these tours are typically filled many months in advance. Take a look below, and see if anything catches your eye. Then just contact our office to hold a space or if you have any additional questions.
As always, you can find more information about any of the trips by clicking below to visit their tour pages. We look forward to traveling with you—and our thanks to guide Willy Perez for the fun photo of King Penguins at Bahia Inutil, from Chile: The Classic Tour.
SOUTH AMERICA
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Northern Peru: Endemics Galore, Oct 7-26 with Dan Lane & local guide (3 spaces)
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Northwestern Argentina: The Chaco, Cordoba & Northern Andes, Oct 15-Nov 2 with Willy Perez (1 space)
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Colombia's Cloudforests: The Western & Central Andes, Nov 4-13 with Jesse Fagan & local guide (2 spaces)
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Spectacular Southeast Brazil (Part Two), Nov 5-21 with Bret Whitney & Marcelo Barreiros (3 spaces)
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Chile: The Classic Tour, Nov 13-Dec 3 with Willy Perez (3 spaces)
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Uruguay: Birds & Wines in the Land of the Gauchos, Nov 26-Dec 8 with Marcelo Padua & local guide (4 spaces)
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Guyana: Wilderness Paradise II, Nov 30-Dec 11 with Megan Edwards Crewe & local guide (2 spaces)
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Ecuador's Wildsumaco Lodge, Dec 28-Jan 7 with Willy Perez (1 space)
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Amazonian Ecuador: Sacha Lodge, Jan 6-15 with Willy Perez (1 space)
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Nowhere but Northeast Brazil! Jan 20-Feb 6 with Bret Whitney & Marcelo Barreiros (1 space)
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Colombia's Magnificent Magdalena Valley, Jan 22-Feb 4 with Jesse Fagan & local guide (1 space)
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Colombia's Santa Marta Mountains & Caribbean Coast, Feb 4-12 with Dan Lane & local guide (3 spaces)
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Birds & Wines of Chile and Argentina, Feb 4-18 with Marcelo Padua (3 spaces)
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Brazil: Bahia Birding Bonanza, Feb 4-18 with Bret Whitney & Marcelo Barreiros (open)
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Southeast Ecuador: Orange-throated Tanager & Foothill Specialties, Feb 17-26 with Willy Perez (2 spaces)
NORTH AMERICA
MIDDLE AMERICA & WEST INDIES
AFRICA
EUROPE
ASIA
AUSTRALASIA
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Bird news and notes of interest |
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When a 19th-century ornithologist named Edmund Selous noted in a journal his observation of bird behavior, he changed the course of bird history forever. Over time, watching birds to study them gradually replaced the unemotional and indiscriminate killing of them, and birdwatching was spawned.
It is easy to muse over whether a bird's response to different calls is innate or learned. Researchers in Costa Rica endeavored to find out. They played sounds from Black-capped Chickadees in Central and South America—where the species does not occur—to see how the local birds reacted.
Responsible bird watchers are always concerned about window strikes, especially as bird feeding begins to ramp up with winter approaching. This article contains many ideas and solutions to help minimize or eliminate the number of birds injured from collisions with glass.
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Recently posted upcoming itineraries |
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Click on any image or link below to see the detailed itinerary for the following tours. All of these itineraries are packed with information (and have a few nice photos as well). |
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Field Guides Incorporated, 9433 Bee Cave Rd #2-105, Austin, TX 78733
1+800-728-4953 • 1+512-263-7295
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