Guided by Nick Athanas. This report is for the two week itinerary we offered in 2012. The 2013 tour will be a three week tour that visits several more sites.

Colombia has a mind-boggling birdlist of 1820 species, and one gets the feeling that there is still so much more to be discovered. Much of this marvelous country is relatively unexplored, and new birding sites are being discovered all the time. The country hosts over 70 endemics, most of them from the Andes in the central part of the country. The mountain chain splits into three as it traverses Colombia, and each range and valley holds its own special birds. This year we did a nice circuit through some of the best sites in these mountains, packing in a heck of a lot of birding and almost 500 species into a two-week tour. It was a bit rainier than you might expect for this time of year, but that didn’t hold us back much, and we had a very nice haul of endemics headlined by the likes of Gold-ringed, Black-and-gold, and Multicolored Tanagers, Beautiful Woodpecker, Chestnut-capped Piha, Bogotá Rail, and Brown-breasted Parakeet.

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format (1.3 MB file).

April 25-29, 2012 – Florida’s Birding and Photo Fest

TB guides Iain Campbell, Keith Barnes, Christian Boix, and Jen Brumfeld will be attending this very cool festival. They’ll be giving talks, leading bird walks, and offering info on our photo safaris as well as our bird tours around the world. Click here for the website.

March 28 – May 6, 2012 – High Island

Spring migration is not far off! Once again, Tropical Birding will be teaming up with Houston Audubon to offer daily bird walks at the High Island reserves and the Bolivar Peninsula. Come see us at our information center directly across from the entrance to Boy Scout Woods. Click here to go to the website.

Guided by Nick Athanas and Gabriel Bucheli.

This is a really fun itinerary, and the February tour certainly didn’t disappoint; it may be a short trip, but we sure pack a lot of great birds into it, and we had some great luck this year with some of the tougher birds. Two rare and endemic hummers topped the list of special birds: the poorly known Sapphire-bellied Hummingbird in the mangroves at Salamanca, and the scarce and erratic Black-backed Thornbill that was visiting the feeders at El Dorado Lodge. However, just like last year, it wasn’t even an endemic that won “bird of the trip”. The radiant White-tipped Quetzal took the prize – perhaps also because of the amount of effort required this year for the eventual great sighting; the thrill of the hunt sometimes tilts the balance. Other votes cast included Blossomcrown, Keel-billed Toucan, Black-crested Antshrike, Russet-throated Puffbird, and even one for the beautiful Cottontop Tamarin, and endemic monkey which is always a hit. I’ll also remember it for the fun and very friendly group – you folks really seemed to attract great birds! I hope to travel with you again on another tour.

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format (1.8 MB file).

Guided by Susan Myers and Sam Woods.

This intense tour packed a lot into a small space: in just 19 days we scored over half of the continents birds (433 species), and covered sites from the Wet Tropics of northern Queensland all the way down to the cool temperate island of Tasmania off of Australia’s southeast coast. In between we packed in visits to southern Queensland and enjoyed an extended stay in New South Wales too. This allowed us to visit an extraordinary array of habitats and amass an extraordinary bird list in the process. We covered the humid tropical forests of Queensland, the edge of the Outback in Queensland, the open plains of New South Wales, the sandy cays, or islands, of the Great Barrier Reef, the cool temperate forests of Queensland, New South Wales, and Tasmania, the odd mallee of inland New South Wales, and open eucalypt woodlands and regular swamp stops in between. This not only yielded a hefty bird list but also allowed us to find some of Australia’s most iconic animals too, like a mother and child Koala in Lamington National Park, the strange Platypus in broad daylight on the Atherton Tableland, a confiding Short-beaked Echidna in Royal National Park, and a variety of wallabies and kangaroos from the smallest-the Musky Rat Kangaroo at Cassowary House-to the largest-Red Kangaroo-on the Hay Plains during a successful search for the enigmatic Plains-Wanderer.

Of course along with these iconic mammals came some of Australia’s most iconic birds, from the monstrous Southern Cassowary near Cairns to the massive Emus on the plains to the secretive Malleefowl in Round Hill to the gaudy male Golden Bowerbird visiting its bower on the Atherton Tableland to the host of glittering fairywrens seen throughout the continent, there was never a dull moment, and a bewildering host of possibilities for birds of the tour. We did well on nightbirds too with all the Australian Frogmouths seen (Tawny and Papuan Frogmouths at nest sites during the day, and Marbled Frogmouth in the depths of night), and a day roosting Australian Owlet-Nightjar too. We had some long drives, and long days in the field, but looking through the checklist we left only a handful of east Australian birds behind!

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format

Guided by Sam Woods. This was a custom tour.

This private tour was arranged by John and Karen with some very specific objectives in mind: to pick up three possible new families for them, as part of a wider quest to see all of the world’s bird families, to rack up as many lifebirds for them as possible in this, their first, venture into Southeast Asia, to target as many Bornean endemics in a visit to that island, and to track down as many mammals in the process too! We achieved all these objectives, due to some extraordinary luck, undeniable persistence, dedication, and field skills on behalf of Karen and John, and due to a lengthy trip in the region. We racked up 40 Bornean endemics and more than 50 mammal species.

This being a bird tour I should, by rights, first talk of the birds, but this was a tour where mammals often took center stage, and it would be a travesty NOT to highlight them. Over FIFTY MAMMAL SPECIES were seen, a remarkable testament to the quality of Borneo as a mammal watching destination, and to the persistence and doggedness of John and Karen to put in the hours to find them. The clearly voted highlight of the entire tour was indeed mammalian, and not avian, and was universally agreed upon by both John and Karen and myself. When you see a Clouded Leopard in broad daylight, and get to gaze into its magnetic stare for some two hours, even pittas have a hard time getting a look in. The rarity and quality of the sighting made this impossible to beat by any bird! Borneo is the best region for mammals in Southeast Asia, and arguably, all of Asia for that matter. We were blessed with extraordinary luck on this tour, where we bumped into herds of Bornean Pygmy Elephants on no less than three separate occasions – twice we found herds (of twenty or more animals) around Sukau, and then finally a large animal blocked the road into the marvelous Borneo Rainforest Lodge. Indeed, the latter site, the most luxurious of our lodgings on the whole tour, provided some extraordinary opportunities to view mammals. In addition to the Clouded Leopard, and the en route elephant, we also enjoyed a very friendly troop of Red Leaf-Monkeys munching leaves that were visible from the lodge bar, a bug-eyed Western Tarsier on our opening night close to the lodge, a family party of Bornean Gibbons, a grizzled Binturong feeding in daylight within a large fruiting tree full of barbets, and at least nine different Orangutans!

The tour covered the very best sites in West, or Peninsula, Malaysia, followed by the best birding areas within the Malaysian state of Sabah, in the north of the island of Borneo. Our tour began in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, which comes with one of the most distinctive skylines in Asia, virtue of the enormous PETRONAS Towers, one of the world’s largest buildings. Our first birding came within the steamy lowland jungle of Taman Negara, West Malaysia’s flagship national park, and Southeast Asia’s version of the Amazon: It comes with incredibly avian diversity and creates hunger within visiting birders that can rarely be satisfied with just a single visit. This self-declared “oldest rainforest on Earth” is one of Asia’s premier birding sites, and we racked up some fantastic lowland species there, including several of John and Karen’s priority birds: Malaysian Rail-Babbler and Large Frogmouth. The rail-babbler performed splendidly as it circled us, dipped its neck down to the ground, and gave out its high-pitched whistle as it did so, affording excellent, and memorable views. Other highlights from Taman Negara were a gorgeous male Banded Pitta that bounced past us as we glared intently at the leaf litter that left us in no doubt we were watching one of the world’s most beautiful birds, a troop of Crested Firebacks (a flashy forest pheasant), which walked under the blind we were stood in, regular Black-thighed Falconets (a tiny, tiny raptor) near our comfortable air-conditioned cabins, the rare Jambu Fruit-Dove right within our resort, a spectacular male Great Argus (an even more flashy forest pheasant which boasts a tail of nearly 140cm/59in long), four species of dazzling trogons, including the rare Cinnamon-rumped Trogon, a hornbill-laden tree with at least eleven Wrinkled Hornbills and two massive Rhinoceros Hornbills perched alongside them, and a brace of brilliant and beautiful kingfishers with both a male Banded and Rufous-collared Kingfishers showing up on the same memorable morning.

After this prolonged stint in the Pahang lowlands to open the tour, we moved west and up into the hill dipterocarp forests around the old British hill station of Fraser’s Hill. By splitting our time between there and The Gap at its base we covered a range of altitudes, and subsequently racked up a range of birds, from the rare Rusty-naped Pitta seen along the forest trails on the mountaintop, to the boldly-marked Chestnut-naped Forktail seen near the base there was plenty on offer, and almost all of which were different from those seen at Taman Negara. Other highlights included a Brown Wood-Owl seen in town at night, a resplendent Red-bearded Bee-eater hawking insects along the road at The Gap one afternoon, a further two trogon species, with Red-headed Trogons found up on the hilltop, and the very different Orange-breasted Trogon found down near the foot of the hill, and the outlandish Fire-tufted Barbet, most memorably seen from the restaurant table, during our final lunch, visiting the hotel garden. More than anything though up on the hill is the highlight of seeing waves of birds passing by in feeding flocks that are a sight to behold, one of which held among them half a dozen or so of the unique Blue Nuthatch. A bewildering variety of birds came to us in this area from Black Laughingthrushes to Silver-eared Mesias to Bamboo Woodpeckers, which made it abundantly clear why this a favored haunt of Soiutheast Asian birders who frequently return time and again to bird within these rich hill forests, walk among the old British buildings and past the famous red post box that give this site a truly different feel to the rest we visited on the tour.

Lastly, on the Peninsula anyway, we traveled westwards to the plains and mangroves of Kuala Selangor in the coastal Malaysian state of Selangor. The standout bird of the visit was a striking Barred Eagle-Owl found sitting in the open (seemingly taunting Sam for NOT bringing his camera out with him that day!), in broad daylight, just after dawn. In the mangroves specialties came in the form of Mangrove Whistler and Mangrove Blue-Flycatcher, and a reminder that we were there in migration season, when north Asian breeders were moving south to winter, came in the form of a Siberian Blue Robin that bounced along the boardwalk ahead of us.

Then we left West Malaysia behind, having racked up 300 species, and flew to the island of Borneo, and the Malaysian state of Sabah. We started our exploration of this endemic and mammal rich island, with a visit to Sepilok, in the lowlands of eastern Sabah. Famous among Eco tourists for the Orangutan rehab center which affords wonderful looks at these animals, we avoided that completely (safe in the knowledge we were going to track down wild ones later on the tour), and instead visited their cutting edge, modern canopy walkway. The reason for our visit was simple: this is currently the best place in the world to see the endemic species, Bornean Bristlehead, a one-species family that John and Karen needed in their quest for seeing a member of every bird family on the planet. A frustrating first visit left us empty-handed, but a second trip up on their walkway led Karen to find a flock of these strange forest birds appropriately enough from the well-named “Bristlehead Tower”. The other major highlight from Sepilok came at night, when we venture out after a prolonged tropical downpour and came face to face with a remarkably tame Oriental Bay Owl.

From there we traveled to Sandakan boarded a boat up the mighty Kinabatangan River, to Sukau, a rich area of riparian forest for both birds and other wildlife. It took us little time at all to see this first hand. News came through on arrival at our luxurious, riverside lodge of a herd of Bornean Pygmy Elephants and so we raced successfully to them. A glittering Hooded Pitta watched foraging in the dark leaf litter, multiple Buffy Fish-Owls, and a host of hornbills came to us in this area. This included a group of the scarce White-crowned Hornbill, along with a large crabby male Orangutan that vented his anger at us by breaking large branches to impress us. Which he did, of course! However, our final moment of magic at Sukau was perhaps the best of all: a gorgeous Black-and-crimson Pitta posed repeatedly behind our lodge, leaving us both with memorable photos, and lasting memories of this endemic deep purple, electric blue, and scarlet “jewel-thrush”, (the old name for the pitta family).

Our final venture into the lowlands of the tour came in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, an extremely rich and diverse area of dipterocarp forest also in eastern Sabah. Our base for exploring this famous Asian birding site was the extraordinarily luxurious setting of the Borneo Rainforest Lodge. We enjoyed some truly exceptional luck here with both the aforementioned mammals, and the birds. The lodge is arguably one of the single best sites for pittas in Borneo and we understood this firsthand following our visit. One morning we got to see two different spanking male Blue-headed Pittas that gave everything but the leopard a run for its money on this tour, and after a difficult and slippery hike we managed to find a brilliant Blue-banded Pitta (thanks in no small part to our excellent lodge guide).

Although the lion’s share of the Borneo endemics are located within the highlands, these lowland sites offered some too, and we duly picked up White-fronted Falconet (before we had even arrived at the lodge), Bornean and Black-throated Wren-Babblers, multiple glistening male Bornean Blue-Flycatchers, and yet more Bornean Bristleheads. Other highlights included a male Large-billed Blue-Flycatcher (a scarce and declining Sundaic endemic), and a male Blue-banded Kingfisher fishing behind John and Karen’s lodge cabin.

Our final leg of the trip saw us visit the endemic-laden highlands of Borneo, by combining visits to Tambunan, with trips to higher elevation sites up on Mount Kinabalu. At the lower altitudes around Tambunan we found a brace of endemic barbets, though Mountain Barbet proved tougher than my previous visits to the area, while the diminutive Bornean Barbet performed with aplomb, observed calling at length on our ‘scope. Persistence also yielded the wonderful Whitehead’s Spiderhunter probing rich red blossoms in the forest canopy too, while the Bornean Leafbirds, having just recently been elevated to full species rank, were numerous in our visits there also. Up on Mount Kinabalu we enjoyed one of my most productive mornings on the mountain I had ever experienced opening with half a dozen or so Bare-headed Laughingthrushes (an increasingly scarce endemic montane species), with both endemic partridges seen (a male Crimson-headed Partridge being preceded by a good show from a Red-breasted Partridge), a couple of very confiding Bornean Stubtails, a showy party of Mountain Wren-Babblers to complete the triumvirate of endemic wren-babblers on the tour, and best of all a fantastic family of FIVE Whitehead’s Trogons that lingered for some time along one of the trails near the HQ. At the end of it all the tour closed with a final lifebird for Karen and John, in the form of a Malaysian Plover (sitting alongside a vagrant Common Ringed Plover no less) watched from the dry and comfort of our vehicle during a heavy tropical downpour on our final afternoon. An ironic finish considering how little rain we had actually experienced, with little affect to our birding from the weather, from this tour that was time just before the onset of the wet season.

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format.

Guided by Iain Campbell and Keith Barnes. Report by Sue Post.

Please click the link below for the trip report and photos. The list is given separately below.

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format (12 MB)

List of birds and other wildlife seen on the tour:

Guided by Keith Barnes.  This was a custom tour.

This tour took the form of three distinct stages, concentrating on the three most accessible, endemic rich islands in the sprawling Philippine archipelago, that encompasses more than 7,000 islands in total. We began first on Mindanao, the second largest and most southerly of the main islands, that is especially noteworthy for birders as the last stronghold of the Philippine National Bird, the magnificent Philippine Eagle; we then hit the ‘main’ island of Luzon, the largest of all the islands and where the bustling capital Manila is located; then and finally the thin tropical island strip of Palawan, that sits between the Sulu Sea to the east and the South China Sea to the west, that divides this paradise island from the huge island of Borneo further west. Biogeographically Palawan is very interesting, sharing more in common with the typically southeast Asian avifauna of Borneo to the west than the other Philippine islands to the east. However, despite this there are almost 20 endemics on this lush forested island, that is bordered with pristine white sandy beaches that make it an idyllic holiday retreat for birders, snorkelers and backpackers alike. We ensured we spent time in both montane and lowland areas on both Luzon and Mindanao to target the endemics particular to those elevations, before finishing on the idyllic beach-covered island of Palawan, for some of the Philippines’ easiest and most satisfying birding.

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format

Guided by Sam Woods.

“The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves our attention.” (Charles Darwin 1845)

The Galápagos Islands lie in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles (965km) off the coast of Ecuador, but are a world away from anywhere. This trip holds wide appeal: for the avid world lister it is a must for the thirty or so endemic bird species that can only be found there, for wildlife photographers and nature lovers it offers some unrivaled close-ups with birds, mammals, and reptiles like almost nowhere else, and for biologists and those interested in natural history, the link back to Darwin’s landmark expedition there is inescapable and absorbing. And that is just above the water. Below water a myriad of tropical marine life awaits too. We experienced all of this, time and again, on our eight day cruise of the islands. We managed to “clean up” on all of the possible endemic birds due to a specially-arranged itinerary that allowed us to visit all of the six islands that need to be visited in order to see them all. We landed on nine different islands in total during the cruise, arriving first at the airport on Baltra, before moving to North Seymour Island, just to the north of there. A full day was spent on the island of Santa Cruz exploring both the finch-filled highlands, and the coastal zone that holds the Charles Darwin Research Station and the last remaining Galápagos Giant Tortoise from Pinta Island, the famous, (and tragic), Lonesome George. We then moved east to check out some of the oldest islands in the archipelago: Española and San Cristóbal that offered an endemic mockingbird each, and plenty more besides. From there we sailed west, and spent a great day on one of the southernmost islands, Floreana, another island offering more endemics and steeped in history, (being the site of the first major settlements of westerners on the Galápagos). After sun set on Floreana, (and following a barbecue feast on the beach while watching the sun sink down below the horizon), we set sail west for the largest island in the archipelago: Isabela. We spent two days there, covering both the north and south of this seahorse-shaped island, in one of the most volcanically active parts of the archipelago. After walking the lava fields on Isabela, and swimming with Flightless Cormorants, penguins, and many, many turtles, we had the longest crossing of all, but it was well worth it. Our final full day was spent on the island of Genovesa, the gem of the archipelago, where millions of seabirds are crammed onto this low flat island that stands just 249feet (76m) high, and covers an area of only 5.5 square miles (14 square kilometers). After this treasured day spent walking among Red-footed Boobies, weaving our way past tetchy Nazca Boobies, and watching tropicbirds hanging on the wind over the cliff edges, while masses of storm-petrels fluttered nervously around the rocky sides, we finally had to head south again towards Baltra for departure. We had time on our final day for a short stop on the tiny islet of Mosquera, for some final farewells with the ever friendly, (and ever approachable) Galápagos Sea Lions before we headed back to Ecuador’s capital Quito, set in the heart of the Andes.

Through visiting all of these islands we managed to see each and every endemic, including all 14 species of “Darwin’s” Finches, including the mega-rare Mangrove Finch, and all the four endemic species of mockingbirds in the archipelago, which included another critically endangered species, the Floreana Mockingbird which we encountered on the tiny islet of Champion. In between bagging endemics and breeding endemics such as Galápagos Rail and Galápagos Petrel, we enjoyed extreme close-ups with Swallow-tailed and Lava Gulls, were able to watch frigatebirds displaying at arm’s length, and enjoy the largest bird in the Galápagos , the Waved Albatross drifting effortlessly by, from the comfort of our luxurious boat. Aside from the birds, the reptiles were a big hit too, for the Galápagos has also been referred to as the “Land of Reptiles”, with one particular beach on Floreana littered with red-dappled Marine Iguanas being a clear highlight, as were the enormous and very approachable Galápagos Giant Tortoises on Santa Cruz. The group was also keen to see the marine life of the Galápagos too, and so snorkeling sessions were undertaken on most days and brought us masses of colorful tropical fish, from Moorish Idols to Technicolor damselfish and fluorescent parrotfish, in addition to allowing us to swim with sharks, turtles, rays, sea lions, penguins, and even Flightless Cormorants in the process!

All in all, we enjoyed a great cruise on a very comfortable vessel, with a great local guide, that led us to yield a healthy bird list, sample a good selection of the marine life of the islands, and allowed us to take in some truly great experiences such as a barbecue with the orange glow of a Galápagos sunset as a backdrop!

It was certainly a trip none of us will forget in a hurry…

Click this link to view the full report in PDF format

Welcome to the latest issue of the Jungle Babbler, the TROPICAL BIRDING newsletter, your way to keep up to date with all the goings on at Tropical Birding.

In this issue:

• What’s New? (Upcoming TB Events, What’s Changed at TB? (new tours, new cruises), Latest TB Developments (tour availability)
• Tour Summaries: Malaysia, Australia, Namibia & Botswana, Madagascar, Northwest Ecuador, Galapagos, Chile, Subantarctic Islands
• Tales from the Office: A Recipe for Chicken Wings
• Where we like to go Birding: Danum Valley, Borneo

Click this link to see the entire newsletter in PDF (4 MB file).