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Some recent scenes from Field Guides tours: Rose Ann Rowlett & Uthai Treesucon guiding one of our Thailand tours, photographed by participant Leslie Flint; Campo Troupial by Bret Whitney from our Northeastern Brazil tour; a view of Chile's El Yeso Valley by The Heart & Sole of Chile participant Joy Wallis; and birding from Sacha Lodge's canopy walkway in eastern Ecuador by Jan Pierson.
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| See a lot of birds, have a lot of fun. With us you don't have to choose between the two. We've got top-notch Field Guides service and a great community of guides, for your best individual and group experience. We love guiding tours and it shows! IN THIS EMAILING - Ecuador - Spring & Summer Spaces - Madagascar - Meeting of the Waters Do a little virtual traveling! See some of our new tour images on the March 7 recent photos page. |
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I'm just back from Ecuador, where I guided our second Sacha Lodge tour of 2008 (a few thumbnail pix above; two more departures on tap for FG this year), the highlights of which were many, including, for a sample: the group (a lot of fun and laughs, and we discovered a bunch of us were rock-and-roll trivia fans), a Zigzag Heron sitting on the main boardwalk railing (nice!), a Black-banded Owl scoped on a just-discovered dayroost, a multitude of Scarlet-shouldered Parrotlets swarming around one of the mineral licks, a fantastic orange-headed Collared Puffbird sitting quietly in the understory, and of course the parade of wonderful birds to be seen from the wooden canopy platform as well as the multi-towered canopy walkway, at which one of our morning visits netted 74 species seen from on high in a few hours. Great stuff!
 But what I really want to mention is that, when I had a free day pre-tour, Mitch Lysinger and his wife, Carmen Bustamante, were kind enough to invite me on a daytrip up to the altiplano around the base of Antisana volcano (OK, Carmen had not yet been there, so I helped provide a good excuse to go!). The high-altitude open plains there are lovely, the volcano itself spectacular (as are of course Cotopaxi, Cayambe, and Pichincha around Quito as well!), the birding good fun: Black-faced Ibises and hordes of Carunculated Caracaras, Andean Gulls, and Andean Lapwings joined Many-striped Canasteros, Black-chested Buzzard-Eagles, a Cinereous Harrier, Black-billed Shrike-Tyrants, and various others to keep us occupied. But for me the real highlight was just getting to spend a good part of the day with Carmen and Mitch. If you've been to Ecuador on one of our tours with Mitch and visited San Isidro, their lodge on the east slope, well, I'm already preaching to the choir. If you haven't, then it's time for a planning session. You will have a fantastic time traveling and birding with Mitch, and Carmen has the San Isidro staff buzzing with hospitality and bringing gustatory delights to the San Isidro meal tables that you won't soon forget. Do you need an excuse? How about two: We have a couple of spaces still open with Mitch on Montane Ecuador I (June 23) and three still open on Montane Ecuador II (July 28). You'll laugh, you'll see a pile of great birds, and you'll eat great food..how bad could it be? Don't forget to send me some photos of the fantastic hummers (not to mention gobs of tanagers and everything else you'll see) when you get back, thanks! — Jan Pierson
Travel options over the next few months...
Actually, we say it "Roadrunner" because that's what we like to call Dave Stejskal, our versatile and sharp-eared guide-on-the-spot who is leading our September Madagascar tour with a Masoala Peninsula extension. Really, though, some of those Malagasy (=Madagascar) names aren't spoken the way they are written, so here's a very quick little primer: most s's are pronounced "sh," most o's are proounced "oo," and most vowels falling at the end of a word are just dropped. So, from the above guidelines, Masoala sounds more like Mashooal or Mashwal, those amazing leaping lemurs the sifakas are pronounced "sheefaks," the capital is pronounced Antananariv without the o on the end (though everyone just calls it Tana anyway -- it's easier!), and Roadrunner is pronounced Monsieur David (yes, those historical French ties). Who knows what they would do with Stejskal (which, by the way, is "Stay-skull," FYI). Enough word fun, though. If you haven't been to Madagascar, let's just say that, with Papua New Guinea (on which we still have a few spaces on our July/August tour with Phil Gregory and Dave), it is one of the two most fascinatingly different destinations in the world (for birds and culture). A great wealth of endemic birds (125+), 5 endemic bird families, and some truly fantastic mammals, amazing chameleons, and bizarre endemic spiny forest along the way (which just happens to be home to such very cool birds as Long-tailed Ground-Roller and Subdesert Mesite). Plus, of course, the Masoala -- Helmet Vanga, bird of legend, anyone? Allons-y! Let's go! Dates are September 18-October 9 for the main tour, with the Masoala extension continuing to October 14. Small Wonders: Brazil |
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| Check out our various web links for the trips listed above, and please don't hesitate to contact us by email or phone for more information on any of our tours.
Good birding! |
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Contact our office by e-mail in Austin, Texas at fieldguides@fieldguides.com.
Field Guides Incorporated, 9433 Bee Cave Road, Building 1, Suite 150, Austin, TX 78733 |
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Finally, here is a brief tribute to the wonders of birding travel. The world is full of the unexpected, and part of the great fun of birding travel is being surprised, not just by the birding but by other things as well. We regularly receive lots of great tour photos from participants. This one from participant Deborah Linde on Bret Whitney’s