by Gunnar Engblom December 4, 2009 1

Content in the bi-weekly newsletter

The lekking males can be seen December to April at our private reserve. Marvelous Spatuletail. Photo: Alejandro Tello

The lekking males can be seen December to May at our private reserve. Marvelous Spatuletail. Photo: Alejandro Tello

Thought I’d share with you some content from the last newsletter sent out about 10 days ago. I have done some editing, so please have a read through again if you already read this once. Another newsletter is in the pipeline. If you have not signed up, please do so now to the right. You will get blog summaries, notes on upcoming trips, discounts and special offers. This particular newsletter is a compilation of 6 weeks of posts and hence way too long. Future newsletters will be shorter.

In this issue:

Upcoming trips Dec-Jan
Request for suggestions for fixed departures 2010
Blog posts by Gunnar since the last newsletter.
1. Fascination by Mega twitches, new species to science, re-discovered species and critically threatened species.
2. Social Media
3. Peru
Recommended links the last month from Gunnar’s Twitter and Facebook stream.

Upcoming trips December-January.

After our busiest November in Kolibri Expeditions’s 11 years in business, December is slowing down somewhat. In fact a month ago we did not have a single booking. But now we have 3 upcoming trips that are confirmed in December and will run regardless of number of number of people and one trip that needs more takers.

Satipo road 7 days with confirmed departures on Dec 26 is species rich and endemic rich at the same time. The trip supports the local community, where a community lodge is to be build soon.
Los Amigos rain forest birding Confirmed departure Dec 10.
Manu Community lodges with Greg Laden as host and official blogger. Dec 30. This trip needs more people to run.

In January, 2009 there are more trips. Some are already full, but we can open space on other trips if we get demand.

Two confirmed Tumbes trips with pelagic included on Jan 4 (two vacancies) and Jan 21 (No vacancies).
North Peru 2 program (7 days) on Jan 25 (No vacancies), if there is interest a 7 day North Peru program can be set up on Jan 9.
Manu Community lodges with Rick Wright from Wings as host and official blogger. Jan 10 (need five people to run). Fixed cost.

The rest of the year 2010?

There are still very few departures scheduled for 2010. And in the coming two weeks, we shall start filling the calendar. I would like your help.Are you ready to interact with me? I am playing with the idea of offering some fixed departures for max 10-12 people, with 2 fixed top well prepared guides (not only for birds), fixed (good very compatible) price and fixed dates. What do you think?

When and where should the tours go? How long should the programs be. One idea which is already happening is promoting the community lodges in Manu through the blogging tours, but one may also do a longer trip to maximise the yield. There are also the community programs in Central Peru of various lengths (one week or Birding Carpish and Satipo road 18 days). We may also want do offer some more comfortable trips ot Manu and Amigos as well as North Peru.

For Amigos, I am playing with an idea of offering a 14 day workshop at Amigos in September to learn rain forest species both by sight and ear ending with a BIG DAY attempt – and a go at the world record. Have to break 332 species for the record of one site!

North Peru could have a combined Cactus/Orchid/Butterflies and Birds trip in January-April. Furthermore the lek of Marvelous Spatuletail is active between December and May and can be sampled in trips as short as 5 days or 7 days.

Please send me a lot of comments.

I have a several other trips piled up that needs to enter the web-page and the calendar – work for the coming two weeks. Several trips in Asia with Ashley Banwell, a trip to Guyana/Suriname/Roraima in SE Venezuela and possibly trips to Bolivia, Colombia and NE Brazil as there are already requests for these areas.

Also contemplating maybe make our family holiday in mid-February to Thailand into a tour. Are there other couples of mixed birder/non-birder that would like to squeeze in tropical birding in Thailand during a family holiday? Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Guerney’s Pitta, elephants, tigers (tiger temple), temples, thai food, beaches, mangroves, theme parks. Our kids are 7 months and 3 years by then.

Gunnar’s Blog

A. Mega-twitches, re-discoveries and critically threatened species.

B. Social Media for birders.

C. Birding in Peru

Recommended links from my Facebook streams.

I would have included links from Twitter here as well, but this got quite voluminous as is, so I won’t this time.

The number one link was without doubt the BBC high speed footage of the Marvelous Spatuletail lek from the series Life – presented by David Attenborough. A bit bitter-sweet though, because our protegé Santos Montenegro was paid peanuts (290 US$ for 3 weeks of work) and no funding was secured to protect the lek-site on the small reserve which Kolibri Expeditions have funded by raising the money so Santos could buy the land. I am preparing a longer blog post about this issue during the coming days so please check in later – and BBC will be approached. I am sure it wasn’t intentional not to give a larger donation for the conservation project of the lek.side. Needless to say, I was not involved in the filming. I was however approach in an early stage of BBC:s planning and did recommend both Santos and our reserve as well as mentioning the importance of securing the site.
In any case, if you want to see this lek live and in action – the only known place in the world where it can be seen with certainty is within Santos and Kolibri ‘s reserve between December to May.

Seabrooke Leckie is a blogger who is invited by us to blog at the Manu-Amarakaeri community eco-tourism project that Kolibri is support. Her blog explains it all – this is what it is all about. Learn how your trip to Manu can help the local indigenous community

Jean Paul Perret has done some excellent blog posts on Neotopical birds that I highly recommend. For example.

Second Chances: Rediscovering Lost and Extinct Birds I

Second Chances: Rediscovering Lost and Extinct Birds. Part II

Endemic Neotropical Shorebirds I

Endemic Neotropical Shorebirds II

Some trip reports from Peru – not necessarily in our regime – are always worth sharing:
Niall Perrins from South Africa has a report from North Peru and Lima.

Rick Hoyer from Wings has made an excellent trip report in 19 parts from his Lima-Cuzco-Machu Picchu-Manu recent trip on his blog. Here is part 1. Nice to see a trip report that also include plants and critters.

Jeff Harding shared his photos from Lima and North Peru also birds, plants and critters.