VENTflash #110 August 12, 2010
Posted by Victor Emanuel
Victor Emanuel
Victor Emanuel started birding in Texas 63 years ago at the age of eight. His travels have taken him to all the continents, with his areas of concentration being Texas, Ari...Dear friends,
My close friend Bob Fleming called me recently to tell me about a trip he had made to the Pantanal region of Brazil, where highlights included seeing jaguars on three different days and Hyacinth Macaws perched in the trees around his hotel. Our conversation that day was timely because VENT also had a tour operating there at the same time of Bob's visit. It also reminded me of my own feelings about that region and how I consider the Pantanal one of the world's greatest birding and wildlife viewing areas.
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Jaguar, Porto Jofre— Photo: Kevin Zimmer |
If you do not know about the Pantanal, it is a seasonally flooded plain of the Paraguay River where vast numbers of waterbirds, raptors, and other wildlife congregate. The marvelous diversity of mammals and birds one can see here reminds me of wildlife spectacles I have seen only in India and Africa. It is a place where you have good chances of seeing many of South America's most high profile animals including capybara, black howler monkey, giant anteater, Brazilian tapir, giant otter, crab-eating fox, and ocelot, along with marvelous numbers of herons, ibis, storks, birds of prey, kingfishers, and other birds. This is also one of the best places to see jaguars, and VENT has developed an excellent track record for finding them in recent years.
Years ago, I co-led a trip to the Pantanal with the well-known tropical ornithologist, Robert Ridgely. Roger Tory Peterson was on that trip as well. Since Roger's main interest was photography, we arranged for him to spend a day with a private guide. I remember, upon his return, that he seemed happier than almost any other time I was with him.
Closer to home, Barry Zimmer told me that his recent Big Bend Summer trip was one of the best tours he has ever led to this destination. His tour group had great looks at Colima Warblers and saw all the West Texas specialty birds including Montezuma Quail, one of the world's most strikingly-patterned birds.
In this issue:
UPCOMING BIRDING & NATURAL HISTORY CRUISES
EASTERN VENEZUELA WITH DAVID ASCANIO
FALL AND WINTER TOUR OPPORTUNITIES
CLOSING THOUGHTS
UPCOMING BIRDING & NATURAL HISTORY CRUISES
Our next three birding and natural history cruises will operate in the November through February period. The first two of these trips—Galapagos Islands and Amazon River—feature timeless destinations that are available only by ship, while the third, a cruise of Costa Rica and Panama, offers a look at seldom seen sides of two of the world's most biodiverse countries. Birding is a central theme of all of these departures, but our programs also include observation of all aspects of natural history. All of these trips are ideal for birders and non-birders alike.
Galapagos Islands Cruise: Aboard the National Geographic Islander, November 6-15, 2010 with Paul Greenfield and Bob Sundstrom; cabin fees originally started at $5,880 in double occupancy from Quito. This departure features a savings incentive of $500/person! Cabins now start at $5,380. Five cabins are still available!
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marine iguana— Photo: Michael O'Brien |
November is an excellent time to go to the Galapagos Islands. For this departure, we have reserved space aboard one of the best ships available, the 48-passenger National Geographic Islander, for a birding and natural history cruise that incorporates visits to most of the major islands. On this trip you will have a chance to see the majority of special birds and other famous creatures that inhabit these magical islands including Waved Albatross, Galapagos Penguin, Flightless Cormorant, Galapagos finches, giant tortoise, marine iguana, and many others. Our itinerary includes ample opportunities for snorkeling and numerous shore excursions.
The VENT leader for this voyage is Paul Greenfield, one of the top experts on the birds of Ecuador and a veteran of many trips to the Galapagos. In addition to Paul, you will travel with experts from the staffs of Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic, as well as highly knowledgeable local guides.
An optional two-day pre-trip to the Tandayapa Valley northwest of Quito will afford participants an opportunity to see some birds of the Andean cloud forest and witness the greatest hummingbird show on earth, with around 20 species coming to feeders.
Amazon River Cruise: Aboard La Amatista, January 20-30, 2011 with Steve Hilty and David Ascanio; cabins are $4,995 in double occupancy from Lima.
I am excited that VENT is returning to the Amazon in January 2011 for another Amazon River Cruise. We've chartered La Amatista, a 28-passenger, triple-deck riverboat offering comfort and security without sacrificing quality. This is the perfect vessel for exploring the waters of the great river while searching for macaws, toucans, sloths, freshwater dolphins, and monkeys.
As the world's largest river, the Amazon forms the heart of the most complex ecosystem in the world, where one may see a dazzling profusion of tropical birds, an amazing assortment of exotic wildlife, some of the most incredible sunsets on the planet, and star-filled skies like you've never seen. Visiting remote and unspoiled regions of Peru, this trip will be an unforgettable opportunity to see a variety of macaws and parrots, ponderous Horned Screamers rising from stream banks, and exotic wildlife that includes Hoatzins, umbrellabirds, capybaras, and birds of prey.
This expedition will be led by Steve Hilty and David Ascanio, two of the most recognized names in tropical ornithology. Steve wrote the monumental Birds of Colombia and has spent decades studying South American birds. David Ascanio, a native of Venezuela, is possibly that country's premier ornithologist. Steve and David have led many VENT tours together and make a wonderful team.
More than half the cabins on this cruise have already been sold. If you have ever wanted to experience the thrill of an Amazon River voyage, I urge you to call our office soon while space is still available.
This trip may be combined with our Machu Picchu Pre-trip, January 15-20, 2011 with Steve Hilty; $3,695 in double occupancy from Lima.
Panama, the Panama Canal and the Wonders of Costa Rica: Aboard the National Geographic Sea Lion, February 19-26, 2011 with Brad Schram; cabin fees originally started at $4,980 in double occupancy from Panama City (ends in San José). This departure features a savings incentive of $500/person! Cabins now start at $4,480.
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Sea Lion— Photo: Courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions |
VENT has operated land-based tours to Panama and Costa Rica for over three decades, but this coming winter we are offering a different means for experiencing these remarkable countries: a birding and natural history cruise from the Panama Canal to Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. This will be a multifaceted trip focusing on birds, wildlife, marine life, and tropical ecosystems.
Highlights of our time in Panama include a transit of the Panama Canal; part of a day on the Smithsonian Institute's Barro Colorado Island; cruising in the Gulf of Panama; and birding and snorkeling on Coiba Island, a Panamanian national park. Cruising along Costa Rica's Pacific Coast, we will visit a slice of Corcovado National Park, the wildest remaining region of the country; Casa Orchideas, an enchanting private garden amid native forest along the shore of the Golfo Dulce; and Manuel Antonio National Park, a remarkably diverse park where two species of sloths, three types of monkeys, coatis, iguanas, and a variety of birds occur. Many specialty species of the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica are found here. A representation of enticing possibilities includes Scarlet Macaw, Baird's Trogon, Fiery-billed Aracari, Golden-naped Woodpecker, Charming and Mangrove hummingbirds, and Panama Flycatcher.
We'll travel aboard the 62-passenger National Geographic Sea Lion, a perfect-sized expedition vessel for plying these tropical waters. Once aboard, we'll cruise in total comfort, enjoying immaculate accommodations and high quality cuisine. Sea Lion features comfortable, outside-facing cabins with lower beds, private bathroom facilities, and individual temperature controls.
This trip will be limited to 28 participants and will be led by Brad Schram. In addition to traveling with Brad, you will have access to a top-notch staff of experts provided by Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic.
An optional pre-trip to Panama's Gamboa Rainforest Resort and an optional extension to Costa Rica's Cerro de la Muerte provide opportunities to experience many more tropical birds and greater biological diversity of both of these marvelous countries.
EASTERN VENEZUELA WITH DAVID ASCANIO
This fall we are offering a superb tour to Eastern Venezuela, a region that is so rich, yet so little- known. Venezuela has been in the news a lot and most of what we hear is not good, but I want to let you know that the country is safe for birders and an excellent choice for a birding vacation. Specifically, Eastern Venezuela provides an incredible South American birding experience that features an unbeatable lineup of large, showy species and some of the continent's most majestic scenery.
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Harpy Eagle— Photo: Kevin Zimmer |
Eastern Venezuela presents perhaps the best opportunity anywhere for seeing a Harpy Eagle, and VENT tours in years past have consistently had good luck in finding this species. You'll also see the famed flat-topped mountains known as "tepuis," giant rainforests, and the Orinoco River. Beyond Harpy Eagle, the list of birds for this area is immense, and includes as many as 5 guans and curassows, 13 parrots, 12 woodpeckers, 10 woodcreepers, over 30 antbirds, and more than 50 flycatchers. Traveling through this remarkable region of cloud forests, gallery forests, waterfalls, elevated grasslands, and mesa-like mountains offers immersion into a world of extraordinary tropical birding where macaws, cotingas, cocks-of-the-rock, and tanagers abound. Those with an interest in botany will find the trees and plants of this region fascinating.
The trip concludes with a day on the Orinoco River, one of South America's greatest landmarks. The numerous tributaries, marshes, and swamp forests of this mighty river offer superb birding. A full-day boat trip, in the vicinity of the delta, accesses areas where hoatzins, macaws, and puffbirds all thrive.
I hope you will be able to join David on this wonderful trip. I know you will have a great time.
Eastern Venezuela: Rainforests, Tepuis & the Orinoco River, November 12-22, 2010 with David Ascanio; $3,125 in double occupancy from Caracas. Limit 8.
FALL AND WINTER TOUR OPPORTUNITIES
As we enter the last month of summer, now is the time to make travel plans for the fall and winter. VENT has a wonderful array of tours to choose from during these seasons. I wanted to draw your attention to a few outstanding opportunities:
Fall at Panama's Canopy Tower, October 16-23, 2010 with Barry Zimmer and a local leader; tour fee originally $2,795 in double occupancy from Panama City. This departure features a savings incentive of $500/person! Tour fee is now $2,295 in double occupancy.
Panama's Canopy Tower is the premier destination for birders going to Panama. VENT was the first bird tour company to bring birders here more than 10 years ago and today it remains one of our favorite places. Offering spectacular birding and excellent accommodations and amenities, the Canopy Tower may well be Central America's most unique lodge. In only a week you'll see 300 species of birds, including many colorful tanagers, toucans, trogons, and motmots; enjoy close-up views of the Panama Canal; and travel with popular tour leader, Barry Zimmer. Mid-October is an outstanding time to visit the Canopy Tower and experience the thrill of hawk migration, when thousands of Swainson's Hawks and other species fill the skies over Panama on their journeys south. An excellent list of tropical mammals is also typical of our tours here, with sloths; howler, capuchin, and tamarin monkeys; capybara; kinkajou; and lesser anteater possible.
This tour may be combine with our Panama: El Valle's Canopy Lodge Extension, October 23-28, 2010 with Barry Zimmer and a local leader; $1,595 in double occupancy from Panama City.
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Maroon-bellied Parakeet— Photo: Kevin Zimmer |
Brazilian Specialties: The Wonders of Minas Gerais and Intervales, October 26-November 13, 2010 with Andrew Whittaker and Kevin Zimmer; $4,995 in double occupancy from Sao Paulo (ends in Belo Horizonte).
A variety of habitats, from grasslands and cerrado to humid Atlantic forest and montane páramo, combined with often spectacular scenery, make this an ideal introduction to the biological riches of Brazil. Many colorful and endemic specialty birds are expected, such as Brazilian Merganser, Maroon-bellied Parakeet, Helmeted Woodpecker, Red-tailed Parrot, Hyacinth Visorbearer, Cock-tailed Tyrant, and Three-toed Jacamar as well as great mammal-viewing, with possibilities for maned wolf, giant anteater, woolly spider monkey, and others.
Madagascar, October 31-November 19, 2010 with David Bishop and a local leader; $9,725 in double occupancy from Antananarivo.
Madagascar is one of the world's most fascinating destinations for anyone interested in natural history. Millions of years of isolation from the African continent have produced an astonishing array of endemic birds, reptiles, mammals, and plants. Eighty percent of the plants, animals, and birds found on Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, are found nowhere else. The lemurs are the island's most famous inhabitants, but Madagascar also contains equally marvelous birds, including six endemic bird families. I have been fortunate in co-leading six trips to this special island and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Our tours typically record most of Madagascar's wonderful endemic birds and many of its mammals, including up to 12 species of lemurs.
There will be an optional Northern Madagascar pre-trip, October 21-November 2, 2010, in search of the Helmet Vanga and other localized and seldom seen birds and lemurs. Fee is $6,495 in double occupancy from Antananarivo.
Ecuador: The Northwestern Andean Slopes, November 15-23, 2010 with Paul Greenfield; $3,055 in double occupancy from Quito.
A leading reason Ecuador is considered one of the world's top birding destinations is the close proximity of the country's capital, Quito, to a world of bird-filled Andean cloud forests, and a dazzling assortment of hummingbirds, antpittas, and tanagers. VENT has been taking birders to Ecuador for over 30 years, and the super-diverse, well-developed northwestern Andes remain our flagship destination. In a little over a week tour participants will see 20 or more species of hummingbirds in breathtaking profusion, leks of displaying cocks-of-the-rock, and perhaps most extraordinary of all, a display of antpittas that must be seen to be believed. For added pleasure, species such as Golden-headed Quetzal, Toucan Barbet, Crimson-mantled Woodpecker, Turquoise Jay, the extraordinary Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan, and an incredible assortment of jewel-like tanagers are standouts among hundreds of other wonderful tropical birds.
New Zealand Highlights, November 29-December 15, 2010 with Dion Hobcroft and Chris Gaskin; $5,995 in double occupancy from Auckland (ends in Invercargill).
This fall, for the first time in several years, we are offering a New Zealand tour that explores the best of the North and South islands with the aim of seeing all of the country's special birds. Participants on this trip will visit island sanctuaries, search for elusive kiwis at night, and experience incredible seabirding in some of the world's most productive waters.Of course, as our literature says, scenery is paramount. Nowhere else but in this one small country will you find such a diverse and spectacular combination of natural features—the mighty snow-capped peaks of the Southern Alps, glacially carved fiords, tranquil lakes and bubbling mud pots, towering forests, dense coastal scrub, and lovely near-deserted beaches. New Zealand is also an extremely pleasant, sophisticated, and immaculate country, with outstanding food, excellent accommodations, friendly people, and picturesque towns and countryside.
I can't say enough about New Zealand and I would recommend a trip there to anyone.
South Florida Winter Weekend: A Relaxed & Easy Tour, December 8-12, 2010, with Brennan Mulrooney; $1,695 from Fort Lauderdale.
South Florida provides some of the best weather and wintertime birding in all of the country. As one of our Relaxed & Easy tours, you'll travel at a relaxed pace to a number of South Florida's special birding areas, including the Wakodahatchee Wetlands, the Tamiami Trail, and Everglades National Park. Enjoy resident specialty birds and a host of wintering waterfowl, shorebirds, and songbirds.
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Crested Quetzal— Photo: David Wolf |
Ecuador: Eastern Slope of the Andes, January 15-24, 2011 with David Wolf and Paul Greenfield; $3,495 in double occupancy from Quito; Register by September 15, 2010 and receive a $500 per person discount!
Forming the spine of the world's most bird-rich continent, it follows that the Andes offer the world's most spectacular mountain birding. San Isidro Labrador, our base for most of this tour, is in the heart of the Ecuadorian Andes in the fantastically diverse subtropical zone. Within easy reach is an incredible transect of habitats, from lush upper tropical forest in the foothills to temperate cloud forests, stunted alpine scrub, and treeless páramo. This region of the Tropics harbors some of the greatest diversity of tanagers found anywhere, along with hundreds of other exciting trogons, quetzals, parrots, hummingbirds, antbirds, ovenbirds, flycatchers, and cotingas. Without question, this tour offers a premier Ecuador birding experience.
Our Eastern Slope of the Andes tour may be combined with our Amazonia at Napo Wildlife Center tour, January 7-16, 2011, for a combined "Andes to Amazon" extravaganza. Tour fee is $3,695 in double occupancy from Quito. Register by September 15, 2010 and receive a $300 per person discount! Receive an additional $100 per person discount when taking both tours.
Northern Tanzania, February 23-March 11, 2011 with Adam Riley and Anthony Raphael; please call our office for tour fee; departs from Arusha. 3 spaces remain.
The great parks and game refuges of Northern Tanzania are a remarkable place to visit at any time of the year, but in February and March they witness a phenomenal gathering of over one million wildebeest, a half-million gazelle, and a quarter-million zebra in herds of tens of thousands, concentrated together to calve on the short-grass plains prior to the rains. This trip is one of our greatest adventures, where participants will experience daily birding extravaganzas plus abundant big game: elephant, giraffe, zebra, lion, leopard, and cheetah in the famous locations of Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Manyara, Tarangire, and Lake Victoria.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
As we move into late summer, I have been thinking about the start of fall migration. While the southward passage of North American birds is not as dramatic as the northward movement in spring, it is a phenomenon as wonderful in its own way. Since I know that I will not see our warblers and other Neotropical migrants again until next spring, I appreciate the chance to see them one more time before they depart on their long journey to the Tropics. As we are about to operate our annual tour to Canada's Grand Manan Island, I am reminded of the years when I co-led that trip, and of the fond memories I have of seeing migrating warblers in early September.
I also love witnessing hawk migration, because of the number of birds one may see in a short period of time and because hawks fly during the daylight hours, in full view. I have had especially memorable hawk-watching experiences in Panama in late October. The richness of tropical birding combined with the spectacular migration of raptors has provided me and our tour participants with many great memories.
I hope you are having a good summer and are looking forward to fall migration as much as I am.
Best wishes,
Victor Emanuel