MANNIKIN COURTSHIP

The National Geographic has just published new images and information on the remarkable courtship ritual of the Club-winged Mannikin.  A little bird with a big performance.  This one of the many wonderful birds you can see if you book an Ecuador birding trip through Partnership for International Birding.  One of our clients just returned from a week-long birding trip with over forty species of hummingbird, and just as many tanagers.  Come along, and see for yourself.

Take a look at this little gem:

A Booted Rackettail, one of the Andean hummers you should see on our Ecuador trip.

 

EXCITING FIRST FOR OUR GUIDE IN UGANDA

There are some words that thrill a birder’s heart: “endemic” or “rare” or “newly discovered.”  Another littel phrase that can make your day, your week, even your birding career: “first time.”  We at Partnership for International Birding already knew that our man in East Africa is a birder without peer.  Johnny Kamugisha is the ace of Uganda bird guides.  Now he gets to add the phrase “first ever” to his accomplishments.

Here’s a picture he took of a Gray Pratincole (Glareola cinerea).  It is a common-enough bird in Africa, but only along the Atlantic Coast.  That’s WEST Africa.  Johnny took these shots at the Kazinga Channel in Uganda.  This is the first time this bird has been recorded in Uganda. That’s EAST Africa.  It remains unknown in neighboring countries like Kenya and Tanzania.  There is a single previous record in nearby Burundi.

So that’s just one more very good reason to add a Kamugisha trip across Uganda to your global birding plans.  There are hundred more including numerous endemics.  Look at these pictures also taken at Kazinga just last year.  Look at the variety:

The crowded pictures at the bottom were all taken within a short time. Spoonbill, various storks, gulls, terns, stilt, etc.  A tiny fraction of the birdlife variety you will find in Uganda.  So click here to check out our tour schedule for future birding trips led by “First Ever” Johnny Kamugisha.

GET YOURSELF TO BIRDING PARADISE

Paris for art, Himalayas for altitude, Peru for birds.  The biodiversity in Peru is tops in the League.  No other nation has as many bird species.  There are over 1800 species known to have occurred in Peru.  There are over 100 endemics and one-fifth of those are endangered.  From a rainless desert to mountains over 20,000 feet high. From the Pacific littoral to the
Amazon Basin, Peru provided a myriad of habitats, climate zones and hundreds upon hundreds of bird species. With a
few months in the field you would see more Peruvian birds than Owen Wilson’s character in the entire “Bird Year” portrayed in the movie.

Now PIB has a relaxed pace trip next summer that can get you started on your Peruvian life list.  We’ll confine ourselves to the northwestern section of the country.  But your trip list will still includes hundfeds of species and some birds you can see nowhere else.

This trip will move from Chiclayo on the Pacific Coast eastward into the montane forest around Jaen and on to Abra Patricia.  We will bird in the dry coastal forest and the humid Andean forests above 7000’ elevation.  We’ll spend more than a full day birding the Chaparri Reserve where nearly 3 dozen endemics have been recorded.  In the Andes we’ll bird Abra Patricia mountain pass.  Among the birds we’ll seek here is Johnson’sTody-tyrant, first described just ten years ago.

Click here for links to fuller itinerary.

The trip next summer (July, 2012) is organized for the Lucky Birgade, a group of birders who want a good trip list but also espouse an easier pace.  Usually at least two nights in a given location so each morning doesn’t mean packing and moving.

Pictures from top: Parrot-billed Seedeater.  Marvelous Saptuletail. Purple-backed Sunbird.  Now get those reservations and start studying your field guide.  It’s two inches thick.

WINTER BIRDS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

UPDATE: SIGN-UPS FOR THIS TRIP CLOSE ON NOVEMBER 15, 2011.  This coming January PIB and Minneapolis Audubon are teaming up on a trip to the Pacific Northwest.  For Minnesotans the weather will seem mild despite the rain.  The wintering birds will agree.  Most have come down  from the Arctic to enjoy the temperate weather of coastal Oregon and Washington State.  The trip will begin and end in Portland.  For a complete itinerary, dates and list of target birds click here.

Here are soe pictures taken by birder Bob Shade on one previous trip:

Male Barrow’s Goldeneye on Hood Canal.

Black Turnstone on the rocks at Seaside, Oregon.

Pair of Harlequin Ducks just off the ferry dock at Keystone Harbor on Whidbey Island, WA.  This photo by tour leader, Harry Fuller.

A Pacific Wren in brush at Fort Lewis, OR, near the mouth of the Columbia River.  And a Surfbird with its gray back on the same stretch of beach as the turnstones.

A bunch of Brant watching a bunch of birders near Hama Hama, WA.

Other birds we see on this trip include: Red-throated and Pacific Loons, Black Oystercatcher, Long-tailed Duck, Pigeon Guillemot and Rhino Auklet, Glaucous-winged and Western Gulls, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Anna’s Hummingbird.  We will also visit Ft. Clatsop where Lewis & Clark spent the winter 1804-5 and a Native American cultural center for the S’Kallam Tribe.

Here’s a link to blogs done during last year’s trip.

2012 IS THE YEAR YOU GET THE BIRDS!

Partnershipfor International Birding now has 80 trips scheduled for 2012 with a score more in the works.  Check out our website for the list.  We can take you to almost every birdable cranny of the planet.  And you’ll be in small groups, not with a busload.

AFRICA:  We now have trips to Gambia, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Ghana, Uganda. There are many birds you’ll never see if you don’t get to Africa.

This four-foot high, pedestrian pelican is the Shoebill.  He lives in papyrus swamps around Lake Victoria in Uganda.  Once we’d seen this guy at eye-level from our small canoe the other hundreds of birds, the numerous antelope species, the elephants, the warthogs digging up the lawn…those were all a bonus.  Shoebill is the single best reason to bird Uganda.  He won’t show up as a vagrant at Cape May.

ASIA: India, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia.

In all our overseas trips we use only the best local guides.  We stay in local eco-lodges.  And we plan these trips with your lifelist in mind.  And we can get you to six continents and then get you to the birds you want to see.

This colorful character is the Masked Trogon female.  She liked hunting outside our breakfast hall at one Ecaudoran lodge.

LATIN AMERICA; Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina,
Guyana.  And our Ecuador trips can include a few days in the amazing world of Darwin’s Galapagos.

OCEANA: New Zealand and Australia, where the endemics are pandemic.  Don’t you want a couple Kiwis and a Kookabura on your life list?

We can put together custom trips for your small group of birding friends so you get the time to find your target birds.

NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE.  Of course we also provide great trips in the U.S. From Lark Bunting to Hermit Warbler.  From Sprague’s Pipit to Cassin’s Auklet, we have the trip you need to fill out your lifelist.  North Dakota, Colorado, Pacific Northwest for winter specialties from the Arctic, Northern California, Tennessee in spring.  If you hanker after some of Europe’s goodies, we can plan your trip for Great-crested Grebe, Black and Red Kite, Hoopoe or Wallcreeper.  From Spain to the U.K.  Or from Turkey to France, we have your ideal bird trip to the Old World.  Below: a Common Shelduck at the Camargue in southern France.  Then a Pied Wagtail playing the ancient field at Stonehenge.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

If you’ve been birding east of Sierra most of your life, you’re missing something.  Definitely you’re missing a list of birds that are awaiting your visit to the Pacific Slope.  The Pacific-slope Flycatcher would be one.

Here is one of the Pacific-slope Flycatchers I watched carrying insects to a nest in July.  And there’s the nest on the ledge of a park service building at Pt. Reyes National Seashore.  The large object next to it is my wallet for a size comparison.

Note this bird’s broken eye-ring, short wing extension, moderately heavy beak.  Also a bit of a crest showing.

To see this bird, let PIB plan your spring visit.  At that time of year you’ll also see Allen’s Hummingbird, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Brandt’s Cormorant, Hooded Oriole, Hermit Warbler, California Thrasher.  With some luck, we may find Lawrence’s Goldfinch.

If autumn is a better time for you to travel, try this:  Wandering Tattler, Surfbird and Black Turnstone sharing the same seaside boulders.  Hundreds of Red-throated and Pacific Loons on migration.  All three scoters.  Check out the southbound raptors with Golden Gate Raptor Observatory on Hawk Hill with a stunning view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Heermann’s Gull and Elegant Tern.

Here’s a Heermann’s landing on the beach.

Here’s a Surfbird on his beloved coastal rock.

This is a seaside scene you can find any time of year:  Western Gull loafing, Pelagic Cormorant clearing debris from its water-soaked plumage before the next dive.  Other year round birds in Northern California include White-tailed Kite, western Red-shouldered Hawk, Hutton’s Vireo, Anna’s Hummingbird, California Towhee, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse and Wrentit:

The Wrentit, on the berry branch here, is the only American species in the large, Old World family of babblers.  They’re all brownish, secretive, forest birds.  Only Wrentit made it across the Siberian land bridge to Oregon and California. It is one of the most sedentary birds in North America.  It will NOT show up at a feeder in Colorado or Minnesota.

And there’s this guy, a California endemic.  Not many states in the U.S. even have an endemic species, right?  This Yellow-billed Magpie is 50% of the endemic species of California.  The other is also a Corvid, the Island Scrub-jay.  An extension to our regular California birding trip can get you BOTH of these endemics.

SO JOIN THE PIB CALIFORNIA BIRDING TRIP IN 2012. 

The tour leader is Harry Fuller who has over two decades of California field trip experience.  In less than 5o0 square miles of San Francisco’s urban habitat he has well over 300 lifetime species.

NORTHWEST WINTER BIRDS: A GALLERY

Our Colorado birders got 114 species on the Oregon/Washington State trip last week.  As we headed south from the Olympic Peninsula we got our final two species at the Wild Birds Unlimited Store along Hwy 101 southeast of Sequim.  Pine Siskin and Cassin’s Finch were among the crowd in the garden full of feeders there at WBU.

Look at the beak on this fella.  It would make a House or Purple Finch jealous.  It’s a serious seed-crunching implement.

Amonmg our 114 species: five alcids including a few fly-by Cassin’s Auklets and good look at Rhino Auklets. There were twenty-nine species of waterfowl from Trumpeter Swans to Eurasian Wigeon, three mergansers, two goldeneyes, Harlequin, Long-tailed Duck and both scaup in large numbers.

You got your Wood Duck, your Mandarin Duck, your Cinnamon Teal or even your Red-breasted Goose.  But this guy in full breeding regalia…Parisian courtiers could not conceive of such glamor.  Neither could I until I finally saw this duck up close a few years back.  This male and his mate paddled around the Keystone Ferry harbor, Whidbey Island, within thirty feet of us for half an hour.  An ecstatic half-hour for our birding group.

We did OK on raptors, with over sixty different Bald Eagle sightings. 

And we enjoyed some pretty good land-birding as well, from Pileated down to Pacific (nee Winter) Wren and both kinglets at close range.  And then there is the Northwest’s scenery where snow, fog, steep mountains, volcanoes and blue seas combine for a panorama not found in most of the world.

Not the overcast skies but no rain.  While the Coloradans’ friends and family struggled with blizzard and sub-freezing, we breezed around the Northwest under mild temps of 45-55 degrees and only a half day of rain in seven days afield. 

Finally there were several satisfying looks at Varied Thrush, including one in the garden at Wild Birds our last day.

The park is named for the Dr. Tolmie who gave his name to the Latin binomial for MacGillivray’s Warbler.

This group of VATH was in the shade beneath the Sitka spruce at Tolmie State Park near Olympia, WA.

Winter Wonderland For Water Birds

What would you say about a birding day that brought dozens of Harlequin Ducks and Rhino Auklets?  Plus a Cooper’s Hawk on an offshore piling, Red-breasted Mergansers by the score, Red-necked Grebe, Cassin’s Auklet, Long-tailed Duck, Black Oystercatcher, Greater Yellowlegs and even a co-operative Belted Kingfisher who posed for pictures at our luncheon restaurant?  Well, our Colorado birding group said, “Wow!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And our total for the trip: 112 species and a couple dozen lifers for many on the trip.  A nd this is the season.  There won;t be any Pacific Loons or Red-necked Grebes this far south in summer.

NORTHWEST: Nisqually NWR and Tolmie State Park

Our PIB Northwestern Birding tour hit Washington State at dawn today.  We birded Tomie State Park first. It’s named for the Hudson Bay physician who also gave his name to the MacGillivray’s Warbler’s Latin binomial.  Then we went next door to the Nisqually National Wildli8fe Refuge.  We added many new birds, pushing our total to 95 for the trip.  White-winged Scoter, Pileated Woodpecker, Peregrine, Long-tailed Duck, Northern Shrike, Eurasian Wigeon, Marsh Wren and a small flock of highly unseasonal Barn Swallows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And these California sea lions on the boat dock next to our motel in Astoria:

Birding the Continent’s Edge

Out PIB Northwestern Birding Trip was at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon today.  And then went south to Cannon Beach on the Pacific shore.  Have you ever really seen the feathering on a Black Turnstone?  We did.

We encountered White-fronted Geese in a Cannon Beach city park.

Altogether we’ve seen over seventy species.  Today we added Surf Scoter, the turnstones, Dunlin, Sanderling, Horned Grebe, the White-fronts, Varied Thrush (always a hit among visiting birders), Wrentit and Pacific Wren.