Kolibri Expeditions bi-weekly Newsletter.
Golden-backed Tanager - one of the star birds possible during Kolibri Expeditions Give-Away of 15 birding tours during 2010.
I decided to present the full version on the Kolibri News directly on the blog today. However, the give-away of free birding trips is only for the opt-in Newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, do so on the right of the blog.
In this issue:
- Free birding trip in Peru
- Upcoming trips – Fixed departures
- Blog posts by Gunnar since the last newsletter
A. Birding in Peru
B. Fascination by Mega twitches, new species to science, re-discovered species and critically threatened species.
C. Social Media for birders - Recommended external links the last month from Gunnar’s Facebook stream
Free birding trip in Peru
Last Saturday, I pulled a PR stunt, giving away 14 birding trips to Manu and Carpish/Satipo road in Peru. The give-away is still active if you follow the directions on my blog. This is not just bold advertising for my company, but more than anything else an attempt to draw attention to birding areas that have communities that can be involved in the conservation of the same and initiate eco-tourism benefiting the same communities.
To be eligible for a free trip, you need to sign-up for our opt-in newsletter – if you have not done so already (there is a form on the blog), and you need to start sharing this link https://bit.ly/8s830C where ever you can (Facebook, Forums, Blog, Twitter, Listservers for birders, Flickr, etc.). The newsletter that will be sent out to you after you have signed up will contain all the additional information and rules that you need to participate.
Fixed departures-upcoming confirmed tours.
The Kolibri Expeditions Birding Tour Calendar for 2009 is beginning to take a more final shape. Our fixed departures have been placed here. There are still a couple of tours that need to be uploaded as fixed departures so do pop in later. I imagine by the end of the week it shall be complete. The give-away hosts will be announced on Christmas Day. The fixed departures shall have both a lower price and an expert leader designated well in advance. Some tours are promotional for new areas and some are an intention to get slightly larger groups so that we can give you a better price. If you don’t find a departure to your favorite destination for your preferred dates, we can still arrange a trip for you. Just let us know your preferences.
Here are a few examples:
- Satipo road – short 7 day tour FIXED DEPARTURE Guide: Jose Antonio Padilla. Before: $1085 Now: $868 based on 5 group of five people.. Support the local community at Satipo road. Birding like Manu road and several yet undescribed species. Dec 26, 2009
- North Peru 1: Tumbes and pelagic FIXED DEPARTURE: One extra day in Tumbes forest (surcharge 120 US$). With pelagic from Punta Sal. Only 2 vacancies. Jan 4, 2010.
- North Peru 2. Piura to Tarapoto. Featuring White-winged Guan, Marvelous Spatuletail, Crescentchest, Royal Sunangel, etc. Departure: Jan 9. More North Peru trips will be scheduled for later in the year.
- Amigos SE Peru. The best birding in SE Peru. A place where you have a single base for your birding during the entire stay. 7 or 14 days. At least one departure per month leaving always on a Thursday. Can be arrange also on demand. On Sep 2, 2010 we arrange a lowland amazonian birding workshop. Learn how to separate all the Furnarides, Antbirds, Flycatchers and Woodcreepers by voice. The trip ends with a BIG day for the clients and finally on the last day an attempt for the 24h world record. Everyone should get a personal best.
- Guyana, Suriname and Roraima (Guyanan Tepui area in Venezuela) 3 weeks. Start on March 27. Price to be announced. It is possible to make a shorter one or two week trip. I am working on the details and the price for this tour the coming week.
- Butterfly-watching. Trip in May in Central Peru is under production. Also a the trip to Manu Communities in December with Corey Finger will include a fair bit of butterflies.
Gunnar’s blog the last three weeks.
A. Birding in Peru.
- Anyone seen the Great White Shark or Willy lately. About the uncontrolled Swim-with-the-Sealions activity in front of Palomino island. From the Nov 18 “Pelagic”.
- Skua and Tern ID-nuts. From the Nov 18 “Pelagic”
- The Pelagic that never happened. As a pelagic the trip on Nov 18 was a bit lame, but I nevertheless managed to get three blog posts out of it, so in that respect it was quite productive! This last one, show some of the additional birds we saw.
- I found the world’s most accessible Oilbird cave. Basically, just park your vehicle, walk 50 m along the road to the bridge over the gorge and look down. The oilbirds can be seen during the day, and you don’t need to enter a moldy cave where you risk getting Histoplasmosis (Caused by bat guano fungus).
B. Critically endangered species.
- Slender billed Curlew – Extinct birds don’t count. Link to a great series of two posts on 10000 birds and some thoughts on that birders and especially listers ought to do more for birds that are critically endangered.
C. Social Media and Blog Carnivals for Birders
- Twitter updates Nov 29, 2009. A mistake auto-created by the Twitter Tools application for the WordPress platform. While this post is a bit boring, it struck me as it could be used for a weekly summary of the Twitter activity. I just had to edit the tweets into different categories (see below for the weekly updates.)
- Facebook News Feed and Live Feed. What is the difference? Customize your own News Feed. This was a bit of a revelation to me. How could I hope to engage with over 2000 friends on Facebook. Well, you can’t! But what you can try to do is to follow more intensely the ones that have been kind enough to comment anything you have posted on your wall. I created a customized newsfeed and get this to open first when I open Facebook. This post shows you how.
- How to read a blog carnival and leave comments to 23 posts in 59 minutes. I and the Bird #114. This slightly provocative article questioned the value of blog carnivals. It received one of the most interesting stream of comments of all the posts I have posted on my blog.
- Weekly Twitter updates Dec 7, 2009. First try of weekly summaries (see above).
- Science for Dummies. Scientia Pro Publica Blog Carnival. The best Natural History and Science blogs explained to ordinary people.
- Carnival of the Blue. Blog Carnival about the oceans.
- Weekly Twitter updates Dec 14, 2009. Second delivery. This definitely looks more and more like a good idea. It stimulates to share even more stuff on Twitter.
Recommended Links picked up on Facebook.
Kind of hard to chose a favorite external link from the past 3 weeks, but since Christmas is coming up and I just announced on my Facebook wall, that I don’t want people to put bulky Christmas greetings applications there (If you are on Facebook, you know what I mean – the hideous virtual gifts are worse than spam), I thought I had best show that I am not Scrooge or the Grinch, the following video has been viral on Facebook. Happy Christmas everyone.
Links about Peru
From the last newsletter, you may remember the story of the Peruvian human oil extractors – The Pishtacos. Dan Tallman who accompanied the LSU expeditions in Peru in the 70s, wrote a great comment on this blogpost about his experiences in Carpish in the 70s. Things have calmed down now and a visit to Satipo road last week had no incidents. Good to know for all of you who plan to host Central Peru in the freebie bird tour give away.
Just a few days after my post about the Swim-with-the-Sealions tourism activity in Lima, I find a local post (in English) that praises the whole thing. I just had to ventilate my thoughts in the comment section….and get insulted!
Check it out – and do leave a comment to show that I am not the only one thinking this is too much intrusion.
Diana Fruguglietti and Paul Ippolito posted some of their pictures from our recent Northern Peru trip. The pics are on Facebook, but with the new more lenient privacy rules I hope they can still be seen by all.
Alan Wilkinson did part of the North Peru trip and part of a Manu road trip with us. Here are his photos.
Rich Hoyer has don a fantastic job blogging from the latest Field Guides birding and natural history tour to SE Peru including Manu and Machu Picchu. Here is delivery of Day 6, but any of the posts in October and November from the trip is worth you time. There is also a lot of photos about herps, butterflies and plants.
And a couple of referrals to the Manu and Carpish trips giveaway here. All websites are well worth a visit per se, not only to see the referrals.
- The birder’s library. A wealth of information about bird books. Definitely worth a visit.
- Jan Axel Cubillas in Panama has already visited Carpish, and been to Peru 3 times. But he wants to back, Here he blogs about Carpish and Central Highway.
- Corey Finger from 10000 birds is cordially invited to host the trip in December, 2010 to Manu. Here is his blog posts about his expectations of the Manu trip.
Here a great picture of one of my favorite Hummingbirds. The Sword-billed Hummingbird. Check out that bill.
Other birding links
One of my favorite bloggers, Jochen of Bell Tower Birding, made this hilarious view on The Splitting of Birds.
The Guardian has provided a number of good posts on birding, especially in The Observer supplement. Here is a piece that explains what make the birders “tick”. To a birdwatcher, one glimpse, one moment is happiness enough.
You may remember I wrote about Floreana Mockingbird in the last issue of this newsletter. This post also received some interesting comments from the main scientist that made the study of the DNA from Darwin’s specimen. What an honour for me and my blog to get such qualified comment to my review!
David J. Ringer has a great blog for anyone interested in new species and taxonomy. His posts are ofter very thorough, and I always feel I learn something from his detailed style, but yet easy to understand. Here he writes about the recently described Limestone Leaf Warbler from limestone karst region of West Vietnam and Laos.
Darwin Finches Tatoo. You got to see this.
Again from Facebook – and not sure if you will be able to see it. But this photo on Jeffrey Gordon’s wall of people looking at an Ivory Gull at Cape May is probably one of the coolest picture of birders doing their thing I have ever seen.
The ultimate birdfinding guide to iPhone. Kenn Kaufman reports on Birdseye – an amazing application for your iPhone.
Some Funny Videos that I shared on Facebook.
Warning: You watch on your own risk. I find these funny, but it may not be your case.
Rowan Atkinson tells the Gospel of John
Robin Williams on Bush and Obama – introduced by John Cleese.
Por eso es mejor sin condon
You need to know Spanish for this one
That is all folks. Another newsletter will be published in about 2 weeks. The winner of the 15 trips to Manu and Carpish will be published on Christmas Day. Maybe you get a trip to Peru for Christmas?
