We are fast approaching what is, for me, one of the most poignant times of the year. It’s when I step outside my back door, look up, and fail to spot the black scimitar shape of a Swift, coursing across the sky. The departure of the Swifts marks the decline of summer just as markedly as the arrival of the first Cuckoo ushers in the spring. I usually see my first Swift of the year towards the end of April: this year it was on the 29th, while in 2023 it was two days earlier. However, it’s not until the end of the first week of May that the majority of the breeding birds return to our village. F ..read more

By Fitzroy Rampersad Fitzroy or Fitz as he is fondly called began observing and photographing birds when the COVID-19 Pandemic forced border closures around the world including Trinidad & Tobago where he was vacationing at the time. Fitz used his free time to observe the many hummingbirds in his mother’s flower garden and soon, with the help of the internet he was able to identify the various species. He started putting up homemade feeders to attract the hummingbirds. His interest soon grew to include other species of birds developing a love for wildlife and especially bird photography. F ..read more

In this second post on the birds of Tan Phu Forest, let’s get the bulbuls out of the way first. Three seem to be particularly common here. The Ochraceous Bulbul looks similar to the Puff-throated Bulbul, with which it shares a genus – the similarity made one of my travel companions doubt the whole framework of species distinctions.   Even for a bulbul, it is a “bulky, very noisy, conspicuous” bird (HBW). The HBW also indicates that these bulbuls can be hooligans: “Associates in loose noisy parties of 4–8 individuals … often aggressively displaces smaller bulbuls”. Presumably this inc ..read more

Last week I wrote about the hot and dry conditions that now affect much of the Iberian Peninsula. My own solution when it comes to birding at this time of the year is to concentrate on the coast. At Gibraltar, where I live, I spend many hours at its southernmost tip, Europa Point. If the winds are blowing from the west, the afternoons can be spectacular. As the land heats up, a fresh south-westerly sea breeze sets in. Many birds heading towards the Atlantic, whether migrating or performing feeding movements, are pushed inshore. Sea-watching has always been exciting for me because there is alw ..read more

Rotterdam is the only city in the world where shops sell shirts with the sleeves already rolled up. It’s a city that prides itself on its hard work mentality, diversity, modern architecture, its absolutely fantastic football club Feyenoord, and its super-sized port. It’s this port we will be visiting. The Rotterdam port stretches from its origin near the St Laurens cathedral to the second Maasvlakte – a distance of 40 km as the Carrion Crow flies. Buried beneath the port: entire villages and pretty awesome natural areas. All that’s gone but in return we now have “rocky shores”, endless steppe ..read more

There is a German word, fernweh, which, according to the internet, literally translates to “farsickness,” but it is used to describe the feeling of being homesick for a place you have never been. For me, there are a few places I can think of that I yearn for – although I have never been. One such place was somewhere that I never thought I would ever actually go: Petra. If you are an Indiana Jones-obsesee, such as me, you may already be aware of Petra. It was featured prominently at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In the movie, the characters explore the ruins of the Treasury bu ..read more

The Datang area stretches North from Tengchong, with basically just one road (G219) having less and less traffic before it eventually peters out in a series of curves about 10 kilometers before reaching the border to Myanmar. Unfortunately, this makes it sound a bit more interesting for birding than it turned out for me – though admittedly, I spent less than a day there. And the area was recommended to me, so most likely my limited birding skills are to blame, rather than the birds themselves. That said, there were a few interesting birds, such as the Bar-throated Minla. Somewhat strangely ..read more

The outside temperature in the shade reads 47 degrees Celsius and I’m about to enter a hide to photograph birds. At times like these, I question my sanity. But I keep coming back for more. It was only two weeks ago that I was on a bleak moor on Shetland and now I wish that I had the cool temperatures, the cloud and the rain that I had moaned about then. This is central Spain instead, and I am well into the worst time of year for birds. For three months, often more, temperatures here are in the forties Celsius and there is no rain. The ground is parched, the plants are yellow and dry and many ..read more

As I have mentioned repeatedly over the past months, life this spring has gone topsy-turvy in central Mexico, as we experience what has certainly been one of our driest years in history. So it was with heart in hand that several of us drove one hour downhill to the town of Paso Ancho, to check up on one of Mexico’s rarest and least-understood birds. The Sinaloa Martin is a large swallow, which seems to breed only along a narrow band of the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit, and Jalisco. It sports the intense purple back and head of its close relative ..read more

Six months of the year have now slipped by, so time to review the state of my bird lists – my UK list, and my European list. Three months ago the former was on 139, but it’s now grown to 180, while the European list was 173, but has now reached a much more satisfactory 303.   My target at the start of the year was 200 species in the UK and 300 in Europe, so I’ve achieved the latter, while the chances of reaching the former are pretty good. An everyday bird, the Woodpigeon. This one was photographed in my garden on a wet day in April. One tends to take woodies for granted Brown but not ..read more