2009

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Spread the word about the Social Media for birders workshop, please!

Yesterday, I posted the news about the forthcoming (Start Jan 10) Social Media workshop for birders.  It wasn’t the immediate success I had anticipated, because birders at large still don’t understand why social media will be so important. I re-wrote several paragraphs and added some more justification. Check it out!

Well, we still need more people to sign up!

Spread the word

Social Media is all about sharing. If you share on your Twitter and Facebook and write a Blog post about the workshop I”ll give you a FREE trip to Peru!

Errrr, what was that? I have already given away 21 trips? There is not business if I give away all the time? Right, but it just feels so right to give when it has just been Christmas and all.

But I tell you what: If you share on your Twitter and Facebook and write a Blog post about the workshop I”ll give you a FREE slot to participate in the workshop! How’s that?

Errrr! It is already free for anyone to participate? So what it the business in that then?

How can it be free?

The equation does not seem to work, but the way I see it,  if we get 1000 participants we will all gain:

  • traffic to our blogs
  • more connections when we want to go birding near and far
  • tips on new birding gadgets
  • recommended great birding articles by other birders
  • Identification help at hand for photos of mystery birds. There will always be someone that knows someone that knows!

Traffic to my blog is my principal motive for doing this for free.

I should do a disclaimer so here it is.

Disclaimer

You got be sincere about what you try to do. So I spit it out right here.

  • I will not use the workshop to sell birding trips to you. There shall be NO links to my tours in the Social Media posts.  The emails that are sent out will NOT contain any links to pages that are not relevant to the workshop
  • The emails of the people participating will never be revealed to a third party, nor will there be any tour offers generated by the same email list. The emails will NOT be added to my unsolicited email list of birders. This list is being faced out as the spam filters are too effective and the mailing list provider don’t allow for  unsolicited email.
  • When referring to books and other 3rd party services, I WILL use affilate systems if they exist. In the case of books the affiliate system of Amazon.com will be used. This will not get me rich! I have made $US 15 on Amazon since March 2009. I figure, if I mention a book link in one of my blogs I may as well earn something (beer money), but no-one in the birding blog sphere is making any substantial money on affiliate sales to other birders. Birders don’t get rich on blogging!
  • I WILL  invite everyone to opt-in for my regular newsletter  or my blog by email or RSS.
  • I MAY offer an e-book in the end.

But with that disclaimer, the workshop is still FREE and there is no other hidden agenda

Now spread the word, please!

If you share on your Twitter and Facebook and write a Blog post about the workshop I will be forever grateful, and I’ll buy you a beer for all that affiliate money I shall be making:-)

Seriously, I would appreciate all the help I can get. I have prepered a few banners you can use in your blog post and side column.

Social Media for birders

200 x 220 px

Social Media for birders

480 x 140 px

Social Media for birders

480×200 px

If you share on your Twitter and Facebook and write a Blog post about the workshop I will also post a link on my Facebook  and make a Tweet referring to your blog.

Here is the link again.

https://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/index.php/31-day-social-media-workshop-for-birders/

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Gunnar’s weekly Twitter links about birding, birds and Social Media 2009-12-28

The best from Twitter.

In this 4th installment of the weekly Twitter summary. This week was dominated by Christmas of course and one may have thought there would be slightly less links sent on Twitter, but on the contrary, there is lots of great links do digg in to. I have added a few more blogs that I like to my Twitter Feed. My own activity was centred around the 15 birding trips we gave away and the consequent announcement of the Social Media Workshop for birders.

Peru birding and news from Kolibri Expedions.

  • Three more days to win a free birding trip in Peru. Just let as many birders as possible learn about it…. https://bit.ly/8sLwMe
  • And the winners are… https://bit.ly/6b8LLw Who won the free birding trips in Peru? #
  • Here is the Peru birding tour give-away with a SU bar (hint, hint!!). Thumbs up everybody! https://bit.ly/7K9zTW
  • Presenting new blog series in three parts. Hummingbirds of SE Peru. Today Cuzco and Machu Picchu https://bit.ly/6nzymA
  • Hummingbirds of Manu National Park, Peru. Enjoy!! https://bit.ly/5G6miP
  • The special community promoting Central Peru trip with Carpish and Satipo road has now been been priced. There is a… https://bit.ly/76SruQ
  • Here is a link to Niall Perrins hummingbird pictures from Peru. https://bit.ly/550Eua

New Species, Twitching and Megas

Conservation and Climate Change

Birding in North America

Birding rest of the world

  • ¡Here is a promotional note from Guyana mentioning Bob Schutsky of Bird Treks whom I shared room with on a Guyana… https://bit.ly/6LGqbk
  • Poor Birding World: Gallery Of Shame – Pi(pi)t Your Wits Against This “Photo”: What species .. https://bit.ly/6hLh6A #
  • Bell Tower Birding: No words, just awe: Sometimes I wonder why I even bother picking up a ca.. https://bit.ly/5CnFS8 #
  • RT @matthiasrascher: Hilarious spoof 1970s birds documentaries: https://bit.ly/6qkqWo
  • merrilli Chrysoptilus and a Hapalura neumayer!  https://bit.ly/698Kvu

Social Media

  • I just joined “31 Day Challenge: Optimize Your Blog For Social Media” – Join here -> https://bit.ly/31daychallenge
  • 6 steps to kill your community. Hilarious! https://bit.ly/6DVLaw Where have I been, I just discovered Matt Mullenweg
  • SocialMedia online course/workshop/challenge for birders – sign up now! https://bit.ly/81mv9N Free of course! Pls RT
  • I’m working in Obuntu and didn’t have Seesmic desktop installed yet. Decided to try Seesmic web instead. Love it! Where have I been???
  • Not as boring as it may sounds. My weekly Twitter summary. Lots of interesting links easily browsed in categories https://bit.ly/7CoNry

Non-birding links

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31 day Social Media workshop for birders

Not a waste of time!

Social Media for birdersI think I know what many birders who are still not on Facebook or blogging think. Social Media is a waste of time and it will only result in less time for birding. Can’t be bothered with that!

I was thinking the same thing a year and a half ago.  Therefor, I challenge you to read through this article and follow this course-workshop. Give it a chance! It is winter in the northern hemisphere so you may just have a little bit more time now to actually find out WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT!

31 day Social Media workshop for birders

The workshop (I prefer to name it workshop instead of course as I also will be learning) will run for 31 days on my blog. There  will not be a daily post. More likely 3-4 post per week, so you will have time to contemplate what you have learned. You will learn how to use social media more effectively and specifically for birders and for birding related companies. Here are a few topics.

  • Listservers
  • Facebook for birders
  • Twitter for birders – including rare bird alerts.
  • Forums.
  • YouTube – sharing bird videos.
  • Flickr and photo-sharing. Building a photo guide of the birds of the world.
  • Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Delcious and other social bookmarking services.
  • Blogging. Would you like to have 100s of visitors daily to your blog?

This birding network that you will create using these tools will give you an enormous advantages anytime you look for an answer on a birding question, and ID problem, advice to buy a birding gadget or if you look how to bird a new destination more effectively and less expensively. Birding news will reach you fast and there may even be applications for Rare Bird Alerts.

Part of the resistance to Social Media among birders is that they feel they are doing quite well with the existing channels. It is hard to see the benefit of something new if you haven’t tried it…and if you try it and your mates are not on and it take ages until you actually find a lot of other birders to engage with, it becomes a bit boring and you will leave your Facebook and Twitter without activity, convinced it is not for you.

I understand you perfectly. Social Media will appear as a waste of time.  But say we get 1000 participants to this course/workshop and we all started to connect between us, start to share what we have learned about social media with our existing network who are not following the workshop. If each of us have some 50 connections in average, it means the network can reach 50 000 birders. That is for starters. With the expansion of Facebook this is already happening and with 10 years millions of birders will effectively be connected this way. If we look at the same equations regarding how birders can become more effective in conservation issues and how we can recruit a new generation of birders, Social Media become the means to achieve this.

My background

I have been on Facebook for some 21 months and on Twitter for 18 months. Both have served to connect with other birders.

I have been blogging for about a year regularly on this site. I had blogged before, but a year ago, I moved my Blogger blog to be housed on my company site and I became part of the community of bloggers at NatureBlog Network. I realized then that frequent blogging could be a way to get more birders also find my commercial site.

Soon I also realized that both Twitter and Facebook were excellent tools to tell others about my blog – and thus indirectly my business.

In spite of these early notions, I worry much less about driving traffic to my commercial site today, but rather just blog on topics that I believe will be interesting to other birders. In the end, anyone interested in the commercial part of my web-site will find it looking in the about pages. I have no need to glue it to your face. In the end, you may – or may not – chose to purchase what I offer, but it will often be after we already have gotten to know each other.

One thing that has become very clear to me as I have been on this journey, is that birders in general know very little about why social media can be just mind-blowing for birders. This, I think, is the main objective with this workshop. To show you why Social Media for birders rocks!!

Three Social Media Mantras

When social media is best, there are three pillars – three main rules to live by.

  • Listen
  • Engage
  • Share

Remember this as your Mantra. You shall hear those words again and again.

Sign up

The workshop will be published on my blog, but in order to know immediately when a post have been posted you should sign up for the Social Media for birders challenge filling in the form below. In these messages there will also be specific tasks for you to complete so you can put your achieved new knowledge into practice. It is through the mailing list that we shall be building a community. By signing up and saving all the messages in a specific folder you shall have all the items ready at hand when you need them for reference.
Finally, please share the link to this page with as many birders you know. We will come out stronger after this, building connections for conservation, for recruiting new members to the birding community, for finding info on birding in foreign countries including local guides and operators, for getting the ID:s on your photographed mystery birds, for helping newcomers to get into the hobby without get turned off before even gotten started because now they have access to more experienced birders.

Now sign-up, please!

Here is an updated post with some more justification to share the news about this workshop and also contains a disclaimer which reveals my motives to organize this event for FREE!

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And the winners are……..

The BIG Kolibri Expeditions Give-Away has some winners

Eye-ringed Thistletail - Special endemic bird of Satipo road

To stimulate eco-tourism in new areas still at large undiscovered by birders and to support the local communities in these areas, I made this first social media PR experiment for birders giving away 15 birding trips in Peru to the same areas. Read about the back-ground here…….

The  birders mentioned at the bottom of this post  have spread the word on various social media platforms, some of them general such as Twitter and Facebook, while others more specific for birders such as listservers and forums.

The above post has got 3000 hits since Dec 12 and is the most popular of all my blog posts since my blog started (seriously) a year ago.  A big hugg to all of you for making this such a fantastic event.

40 participants!

In the end I had 40 names in consideration, so in reality the chance of winning a tour was extremely high. Those that did not make it all the way in large did not have large enough networks on the internet, or simply in several cases gave up too early and did not send in a final activity report. Others that I certainly considered when they first contacted me and by professional merits seemed to qualify immediately, just disappeared and in some cases did not even bother to subscribe to the newsletter.  Connectivity and emails lost in Cyberspace  may have played trickes in some cases. I have checked my spam boxes just in case, but there may still be lost emails out there.

Many young birders

I noticed quite early that I got many requests from quite young birders. Many had excellent social media skills, but admitted not the economic means to take a organized trip to Peru. It made me very happy to see that there is a new generation of young birders out there – and I decided to ear-mark several slots for young birders. However, in the end I am unsure of the actual age of several of the winners, but I still hope I could pin down a few of the young birders.

Lack of Social Media skills

So while I ceertainly am very happy with the final results in this excersise, I wonder if we should not have had more than just 40 contestants, considering there were 3000 page views. I am looking forward to see your comments below why there were not more people wanting to part?  Was it because birders in general don’t have enough Social Media skills? I believe this could be the case, so I am pondering on the idea of maybe offering a social media workshop for birders.  Would you be interested?

I made the same question on my Facebook and immediately got the question: What is Social Media? So just in case – here is my answer: Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Listservers, Forums, Flickr, StumbleUpon, DIGG, YouTube, etc.

The offical launch for the social media workshop for birders will be presented tomorrow with start around Jan 10, 2010 (to be confirmed)

Too good to be true!

I had some reactions that obviously is not favoring the cause. These words have been mentioned: Scam, Spam, Ponzi Scheme, fraud, too good to be true…etc.

How do you think this campaign has affected the company? Good or bad?  It can’t be good for us if people think we are scamming birders!

It is not very easy to give away something without some sort of catch. But there is really not much of a catch. Just let others know about. The alturistic message is to promote community based eco-tourism in new areas. This will be good for conservation.  My company and I, get some exposure, which could/should lead to more sales. I also get 21 ambassadors (15 free trips and 6 bloggers already confirmed). That is very valuable to us!

How does it work financially for Kolibri Expeditions?

You will see from the price structure, that both trips are cheaper priced than our ordinary trips – and on top of that we are giving away a free space.  It is true that the costs of operation is somewhat smaller, but there is also an operational risk involved. Since there is lack of infra-structure and communication problems with the areas, no client shall expect things to be top-notched.  Both areas are difficult to sell among our regular programs as they are neither established and lack comfort.  By offering free trips of only 8 days, it is hoped that many of the winners as well as participants in these trips will take other programs with us. We shall not lose any money by operating these trips, but the revenue lies with selling some of our extensions.

From the communities standpoint they get the chance of doing things right from the beginning, because there will be a stream of birders coming every month. This continuity is vital to the success of this idea.

The winners are……..

No more beating around the bush….here they are. The winners:

Joel Brady-Power
Alan McBride
Kimberly Sucy
Jan Axel Cubilla
Bill Lynch
Greg Grant McCreary
Brian Allen
Radd Icenogle
Rob Ripma
Vernon Laux
Isaac Grant
Chris West
John Riutta
Chris Drysdale
Scott Artis

Congratulations all of you!!! Please resend me your preferred dates (kolibriexp@gmail.com) so I can put each in the calendar. In the next post I shall make the justification of my choices as well as designate each winner with a slot.  Now, please all winners, tell the world that this was not a scam – and invite your friends to join you paying their fare (which is quite reasonable compared to many other trips we and others offer.)

Everyone’s a winner!

Getting this sort of engagement, is extremely valuable. So I would like to offer those that have taken part a special offer, which was delivered in the  newsletter today. The offer is only available to those that were subscribed before the end of Dec 25.

Runner-ups?

There were a few people that were in consideration until very late, but I just ran out of slots. Many of them were highly qualified. With small adjustments they could have won a trip.  I will contact each personally with comments. It will take a few days, so please bare with me.

Thanks again all of you for taking part in this somewhat historic PR event in birding circles. Future will tell if we do it again!

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Hummingbirds in South East Peru, part 2

Hummingbirds in Manu

Here is the second installment of Hummingbirds from South East Peru. This time the Manu lowlands. Hummingbirds below 700m altitude.
Many of the photos are from Amazonia Lodge. All of them digiscoped with Vortex Nomad telescope by Alex Durand. Enjoy!

Rufous-crested Coquette. Photo: Alex Durand

Rufous-crested Cocquette. Photo: Alex Duran

Sapphire-spangled EMerald

,Violet-headed Hummingbird. Photo: Alex Durand

Sapphire-spàngled Emerald

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Coppery-tailed Emerald. Photo: Alex Durand

Festive Cocquette. Photo: Alex Durand.

Rufous-crested Coquette. Photo: Alex Duran

Rufous-crested Cocquette. Photo: Alex Durand

Sapphire-spangled EMerald

Fork-tailed Woodnymph. Photo Alex Durand.

Rufous-crested Cocquette. Photo: Alex Durand

Fork-tailed Woodnymph. Photo: Alex Durand

Gould's Jewelfront. Photo: Alex Durand

Violet-headed Hummingbird. Photo: Alex Durand

White-necked Jacobin. Photo: Alex Durand

Sapphire-spangled Emerald. Photo: Alex Durand

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What do 10000 birds, Sting, Ashton Kutcher, Bono and Brad Pitt have in common?

New conservation club for critically endangered birds

10000 Birds Conservation Club

Once in a while, the world famous, use their fame for a worthy cause. Sting saves rain forest, Ashton Kutcher fights Malaria, Brad Pitt stands up for human rights and Bono makes anti-poverty campaigns. Now the most famous and largest bird-blogging web-site 10000birds.com take on their share to do more GOOD. They have started a novel Conservation Club for the Critically Endangered birds.

You can become a member and support this initiative for a mere $25. Not only is it rewarding that the full amount minus the small Paypal fee will go entirely to the project they decide to support, but you also have a chance of winning some great prices.

WOOOT??? I CAN WIN???

That’s right! They get such a large number of gifts from suppliers to review (after all they get a couple of thousand visitors to the page per day), that they thought these gifts could be given away as prizes to stimulate more people to join the club. In a way by paying $25, you enter in a great raffle and the prices are plenty and valuable. You have a larger chance winning than on any other type of lottery or betting  involving horses, dogs or soccer players.

Here are the two first installments explaining what it is all about.

So what can you win?  Just check this and get blown away!

What are you waiting for? Just Join!

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Hummingbirds in South East Peru, part 1

Hummers in Cuzco, Abra Malaga and Machu Picchu

Hummingbirds are such fantastic creatures. No closer presentation or introduction is needed. Let’s just look at a sample of all the hummingbirds that can be seen in SE Peru on a tour that includes Machu Picchu and Manu National Park.

In this first delivery I present the hummers in Cuzco with surroundings such as Huacarpay lake , Abra Malaga and Machu Picchu. The following deliveries will treat Manu Road and the Manu lowlands.
I shall do frequent updates to this post to include more photos as I get them. All pictures are clickable for larger images and contain the name of the species as you pass the cursor over it.

All pictures in this installment are made by Alex Durand with a Vortex Nomad telescope and a small Fuji pòint and shoot camera.

White-tufted Sunbeam. Photo: Alex Durand

Bearded Mountaineer. Photo: Alex Durand

Bearded Mountaineer. Photo: Alex Durand

Coppery-naped Puffleg. Photo. Alex Durand.

Chestnut-breasted Coronet. Photo: Alex Durand

White-bellied Hummingbird. Photo: Alex Durand

Olivaceous Thornbill. Photo: Alex Durand

Gould's Inca

Great Sapphirewing. Photo: Alex Durand

Giant Hummingbird

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Gunnar’s weekly Twitter links about birding, birds and Social Media 2009-12-21

Here is the third edited edition of my Twitter-links. Why I do this, you can read in the introduction of the first Twitter-summary I posted two weeks ago.

Step right in! I am sure you will find something interesting.

Peru birding and news from Kolibri Expedions.

The sensational give-away of 14 birding trips in Peru was still dominating my activity on Twitter last week.  You can still join. All you have to is to let as many birders as possible learn about it.

New Species, Twitching and Megas

Conservation and Climate Change

Birding in the US

Birding rest of the world

Social Media

  • Added some great social bookmarking icons at the end of my blog posts. Check out the Free birding trip in Peru contest https://bit.ly/8s830C

Non-birding links.

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Diademed Plover

Diademed Sandpiper Plover Phegornis mitchelliiDiademed Sandpiper Plover Phegornis mitchellii

No words needed for the star of all Shorebirds in Peru! Not even an endemic, but very high on every birder’s lists. This and many more can be seen on our Central Peru itineraries. Do you want to see it? Win a free trip. Click here! Our guide Alex Durand took this picture with his small Vortex telescope and a small Fuji point and shoot.

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Kolibri News Dec 15, 2009

Kolibri Expeditions bi-weekly Newsletter.

Golden-backed Tanager - one of the star birds possible during Kolibri Epxeditions Give-Away of 15 birding tours during 2010.

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.

B. Critically endangered species.

C. Social Media and Blog Carnivals for Birders

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.

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?

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