Wildfire in the Chiricahuas

We're sure that everyone who has joined us on our many tours in south-east Arizona will share our concern at news of the serious fire that is currently threatening Cave Creek Canyon and the surrounding area - an area that includes the Southwestern Research Station and quite a number of homes. The fire is currently burning on lands administered by the Coronado National Forest within the Chiricahua Wilderness approximately five miles south of the town of Portal.

The Horseshoe Fire, as it is being called, was first reported on 26th May and is currently affecting about 1800 acres. It is thought to have been started by illegal immigrants crossing the nearby border from Mexico. More than 750 firefighters are involved in the containment operation which is currently estimated to take at least two weeks.

Regular news about the fire is being reported to the birding community by local residents Helen Snyder and Narca Moore-Craig. For more information, see the Portal-Rodeo community website or Narca's blog.

Portal, AZ

On Safari in Northern Tanzania

This year's Avian Adventures tour in Tanzania followed the now familiar itinerary that includes Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. Familiar it might be but it’s an absolutely wonderful area and once again we had a great tour with plenty of birds and huge numbers of mammals. Without any doubt this is one of the world's top wildlife destinations.

If I were write about it in detail I would probably have to repeat much of what I wrote last year so this time I will keep it brief and just share a few photographs.

White-headed Buffalo-Weaver - a common species in Tarangire and the Serengeti.

Black-faced Sandgrouse - regularly found in pairs along the roadside in Tarangire.

Lilac-breasted Roller - very common but always popular.

African Spoonbills - there were hundreds at Lake Manyara. Maybe one day we'll find one in the Algarve!

This Lion did his best to frighten us...

...but he obviously had other more important things to do!

Capped Wheatear - numerous along the road through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Zebras head-resting

Mwanza Flat-headed Agama - the field guide says they are 'quite wary...and often reluctant to allow humans to approach closely'. This one was very much an exception - an impressive beast! They are reported to have become popular as pets because of their resemblance to Spider-Man.

Auditioning for a place in Trafalgar Square? Rocky outcrops like this one are popular resting places for Lions.

Rufous-naped Lark - particularly common in the Serengeti, singing from bushes and termite mounds, but what a monotonous song.

A personal favourite - Double-banded Courser

Long-crested Eagle - if only all raptors were so obliging and easy to identify!

White-backed Vulture - the commonest of the vultures...

...and Lappet-faced, the largest

Little Bee-eater - widespread and usually seen in pairs. In the Ngorongoro highlands we also saw the similar but much larger Cinnamon-chested Bee-eater.

Rufous-crowned Roller - somewhat eclipsed by its much more numerous and brightly-coloured cousin.

Bateleur - another easy to identify raptor. The name "Bateleur" is French for "tight-rope walker", referring to the bird’s characteristic habit of tipping the ends of its wings when flying, as if to keep its balance.

Serval Cat - our attention was drawn to this one in the Serengeti by several very alarmed and noisy Helmeted Guineafowl. Servals hunt in the long grass and can be difficult to see, so we were pleased the next day when we came across another one in Ngorongoro Crater.

Ngorongoro Crater seen from the rim, some 600 metres above.

Tacazze Sunbird - a garden bird at the Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge.

White-naped Raven - this is a seriously big bird - check out that huge bill!

One of the very approachable Yellow-billed Kites that frequent the Ngoitokitok picnic site in Ngorongoro Crater.

There was more water in the Crater this year than I've seen before and as a result more wetland birds. Ducks included Cape Teal, Hottentot Teal and these Red-billed Teal.

We watched for several minutes as this Black-headed Heron wrestled with a snake and was finally able to swallow it.

If only Great Bustards were as approachable as Kori Bustards!

Cheetahs were hard to find this year but eventually we had close-up views.

Finally, a sunset! Huge old baobab trees like this one are a feature of Tarangire.

Once again thanks go to our local driver/guide, Peter Loishiye Laizer and Roy Safaris for their contributions to making our birding safari the undoubted success that it was.

Arizona

I'm just back from Arizona, my 17th visit to my favourite 'Grand Canyon State'. It was another tour for Avian Adventures and followed the now familiar itinerary: Tucson, Portal, Sierra Vista, Green Valley, Sedona and then the Grand Canyon itself.

What made this trip different was the weather! This must have been the coldest late-April in Arizona in living memory. There was really late snow and as it began to melt, rivers and creeks were flowing that I've only been used to seeing completely dry! To give an example of how cold it was, the temperature in Sierra Vista on 30th April reached a high of only 57° F when the average for this date is 80° F. You might think that 57° isn't really cold but it was so unexpected and what made it worse was the wind, really strong wind that on one or two days made birding extremely difficult. Fortunately, we also had several more typical baking-hot Arizona days.

With the spring being late some of the migrant birds were hard to find but there weren't too many surprises and the total bird list fell only just short of 200 species. There was only one of these that I hadn't seen before in Arizona: Red-necked Phalarope - two birds at Sweetwater Wetlands. The total included 11 different hummingbirds and 'Flameboy', the unpaired male Flame-coloured Tanager that has returned for the eighth consecutive year to Madera Canyon.

'Flameboy' on his favourite feeder

Broad-billed Hummingbird - common in the Huachucas and elsewhere

Greater Roadrunner - 'Beep, Beep'

Desert Spiny Lizard - one of several reptiles seen

Great Horned Owl - seen here on its usual perch at Whitewater Draw

The Grand Canyon - one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World

Zone-tailed Hawk - a Turkey Vulture mimic

California Condor - re-introduced to Arizona - a face only a mother could love

Painted Redstart - always on the move

American Robin - according to the IOC the only Turdus to remain a Robin.
Maybe it should be called North American Lawn Thrush

Gambel's Quail - flying the flag

Spotted Owl - one of the Miller Canyon birds

Mexican Duck - soon the be a separate species?

Western Tanager - heading for the jelly jar

Photo practice

To say that I’m dangerous with a camera is an understatement so when our friend (and professional photographer) Ray Tipper suggested a trip to Spain to photograph Red-knobbed (Crested) Coots in breeding plumage I thought I’d tag along and just watch the birds. But with Peter in Arizona and his Canon 10D and 300mm lens here, it was the perfect opportunity for me to at least try and take a photograph that (a) contained the intended subject and (b) was even slightly in focus – a tall order indeed!

We arrived at the Marismas del Odiel just about an hour after leaving Tavira. The sun was shining but the biting northerly wind soon had us donning our fleeces. Our target was spotted as soon as we left the car and we quickly set up our gear. We spent a very pleasant few hours waiting for the Coot to come close enough for us to photograph it, which it did several times, but only briefly, and it was never still. Ray photographed flyover Pallid Swifts, Spoonbills and Purple Herons and we watched a male Montagu’s Harrier as it quartered the nearby saltpans putting up flocks of small waders. We could see Greater Flamingos, mostly adults, feeding in a more distant pan and at least two Great Reed Warblers were singing close by but alas it was too windy for them to sit high in the reeds and sing.

The Coot didn’t come as close as I would have liked and the gusty wind caused some problems but I think I got a passable shot.

A Couple Of Hours Off

Peter managed to get to Arizona on schedule with his Avian Adventures group and is enjoying some wonderful spring birding - the travel chaos caused by ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano now only a fading memory – let’s hope it stays that way!

For the past few days my only birding has been from the balcony here at home in Tavira when I have needed an occasional break from the computer. And what great birds I’ve seen: Bee-eaters, Hoopoes, Pallid Swifts, Collared Pratincole and best of all last night, a Red-necked Nightjar!

So today I took myself off for a walk around the local saltpans. Almost as soon as I started my walk I heard the unmistakable honking of Flamingos and quickly counted a dozen or so. Although the wader numbers have decreased with many heading north to breed, the ones that remain are mostly sporting colourful breeding plumage. There are black bellied Dunlin, Red ( very red) Knot, strikingly rufous Curlew Sandpipers , Little Stints showing foxy red and dark brown backs, Grey Plovers showing why they are called Black-bellied Plovers in the USA and Ruddy Turnstones also living up to their name, their normal black and white plumage transformed with a wash of tortoiseshell. Add to these the resident breeders who are all busy sitting on eggs or already have young downy chicks and you realise there is plenty to see. Whimbrels, Kentish and Ringed Plovers, Stone-curlews and Bar-tailed Godwits were fairly laid back but as usual the Avocets, Black-winged Stilts and Redshanks announced their presence with a noisy flight display.

I spent quite some time watching Bee-eaters as they hunted for insects. Their seemingly effortless flight alternating between a graceful wheeling and bursts of rapid wing-beats, as they swooped to capture their prey.

Then it was home for a late lunch and back to the computer.

Rollers Return

Several days of rain and generally unpleasant weather has meant that we've mostly been staying at home catching up with 'admin'. There have been a couple of visits to the local saltpans in between the thunderstorms but otherwise it's been an opportunity for both of us to finish writing the reports relating to our recent Avian Adventures tours.

At the same time we've been keeping an eye on news of the travel chaos caused by ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The impact on the travel and tourism industries that we are just a very small part of is obviously enormous. Our personal concern is the need for Peter to be back in the UK in time to fly out to Arizona on Saturday with another Avian Adventures tour. All fingers are crossed!

Anyway, the weather forecast for today was good and proved for once to be reasonably accurate - it hardly rained at all! We set off early and spent the day in the Castro Verde area. As usual, there were plenty of Great Bustards and Little Bustards, we saw a couple of Short-toed Eagles, a Booted Eagle and a rather distant Spanish Imperial Eagle, there were countless Montagu's Harriers and Lesser Kestrels and several Black Kites and Black-winged Kites. Add to that list Golden Orioles, Stone-curlew, Calandra Larks, Black-eared Wheatears and our first Rollers of the year and we reckon we had quite a good day. It was certainly a welcome escape from 'admin'.

Little Bustard - getting harder to see as the vegetation gets taller

Three Montagu's Harriers chase off a Black Kite

Roller - our first of year

Black-eared Wheatear

Costa Rica - Part 5

There is only one place that I have stayed on every one of my fourteen tours in Costa Rica and that is Selva Verde Lodge, located in the midst of the 500-acre Sarapiquí Rainforest Preservation Area in the lush Caribbean lowlands. Not only does the lodge offer some first rate birding and other wildlife in its immediate vicinity but it is ideally situated for visits to Braulio Carrillo National Park and La Selva Biological Station, two sites that no visiting birder would want to miss. The founding of Selva Verde Lodge is a story in itself and on this visit I was privileged to meet Giovanna Holbrook who started it all more than 20 years ago.

Selva Verde Lodge - the view from the bar!

La Selva Biological Station is operated by the Organization for Tropical Studies and is one of the most important sites in the world for research on tropical rainforest. It comprises 1,600 hectares of mainly tropical wet forests and averages 4 metres (!) of rainfall annually. Not surprisingly, we needed umbrellas, ponchos and rain jackets pretty much throughout our day here.

It's the rain forest!

The birds at La Selva are outstanding. In spite of the weather and an extended lunch (and drying out) break back at Selva Verde Lodge, we saw about 80 species during the day. Among the highlights were Great Green Macaws, Yellow-tailed Oriole, Pied Puffbird, Semiplumbeous Hawk, Vermiculated Screech-Owl, Spectacled Owl, Olive-backed Quail-Dove, Great Tinamou and Grey-necked Wood-Rail. The mammals are pretty good, too! They included Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth (which should surely be called 'ten-toed'), Collared Peccary and everyone's favourite, cute little White Tent-making Bats.

Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth

Our visit to Braulio Carrillo National Park was combined with stops at several other sites. It was good to find that El Tigre Marsh has not yet been drained and turned over to pineapple cultivation, although that is apparently still on the cards. Nicaraguan Seed-Finches were more abundant than I've ever seen them but sadly there was no sign of Pinnated Bittern or Green Ibis that I have seen there in the past. Along the Rio San José, we found a Sunbittern at a nest and also a Fasciated Tiger-Heron; at the butterfly garden of El Tapir reserve we were treated to great views of the much sought-after Snowcap.

Snowcap

Braulio Carrillo covers a vast expanse of lowland and highland forest much of which is virtually inaccessible. From the Quebrada Gonzalez Ranger Station we walked the 1.6-kilometre Sendero Natural Las Palmas. This is a trail where you hope to find mixed feeding flocks. However, when you do, identifying all the birds involved as they quickly pass overhead can sometimes cause even experienced birders to panic! Although we did come across a couple of flocks, we were perhaps lucky that our best experience was at a fruiting tree where Blue-throated Toucanet, Bay-headed Tanager, Collared Araçari and Speckled Tanager were all feeding along with White-nosed Coatis and Central American Spider Monkeys. It was while we were watching the two mammal species interacting that a Yellow-eared Toucanet appeared close by us. We expect to see two toucan species and two araçari species on this tour but this second toucanet is definitely a hard one to find and certainly not guaranteed!

Blue-throated Toucanet

We finished the tour with a night in the Talamanca Mountains at Savegre Mountain Hotel, situated at an elevation of 2200 metres. Sadly for most of the short time we were there it rained but we still managed to see an amazing variety of birds, many of them for the first time on the tour. My personal favourite here is always Flame-throated Warbler but American Dipper, Torrent Tyrannulet, Flame-coloured Tanager and Acorn Woodpecker were all popular, not to mention the many hummingbirds. The Fiery-throated Hummers seen on Jorge Serrano's feeders were a particular delight.

White-throated Mountain-gem

Fiery-throated Hummingbird

I have long ago lost count of the number of people whom I have taken on Avian Adventures tours to Costa Rica; I have never heard any one of them say anything bad about the country. The people are friendly and welcoming, the accommodation is of a good standard, the food is excellent and the birds are just brilliant! I'm already looking forward to the next time...