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David Southall's Photos and Trip Reports
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2012 Latest news:
February 6th:


I have made some minor edits/corrections to the trip report about my enjoyable September 2011 trip along the Rio Tambopata in Peru. Check out the 
Trip Reports: Peru tab to download the updated .pdf document.

Hopefully my report will provide 
prospective 
visitors with some good insights into the excellent birding that can be found along the Rio Tambopata... If you want to check out further 
details about the Tambopata Macaw Project
that is located at
Tambopata Research Centre
, the remotest of the sites that I visited, 
then see their website at
www.macawproject.org and
if you want to find out more about how you can visit the lodges in this amazing area then look up
Rainforest Expeditions at 


January 26th:

 

Happy Australia Day! To celebrate I am publishing a new trip report covering my birding exploits during our Christmas vacation in Sydney. See the Trip Reports: Australia tab to download the .pdf document.

January 16th:
Happy (belated) New Year! I'm back from 3 weeks in Australia, where some part-time birding around Sydney and the Capertee Valley delivered some 64 lifers, including my 2,000th lifer - Speckled Warbler - seen in the new Capertee National Park. Busy working on a trip report....

 

2011 Blog entries:
December 31st:

Three days of birding in the Capertee Valley, on the western side of the Blue Mountains, lived up to the hype. The scenery was spectacular and our intensive birding delivered a large number of specialities and many other species that we had not yet seen in the Sydney region. We also had good views of Platypus, Common Wombat, Lace Monitor and lots of Eastern Gray Kangaroos. In addition to birding along the valley's roads and streams, plus in the Wollemi National Park and the new Capertee National Park, we also found the birding on the extensive grounds of Lansallos, the excellent B&B we stayed at, to be very productive. See www.lansallos.com.au for more details. Photography of the often fast moving birds was a challenge, but I secured a few nice images, including this female Crested Shrike-Tit.



December 28th:

Enjoying the delights of birding the National Parks and coastline around northern Sydney, where we have seen and photographed several lifers. The wrens in this part of the world are spectacular and quite easily seen - check out this (appropriately named) Superb Fairywren that was busy feeding nestlings in Ku-ring-gai National Park. In total there were at least 2 males and 5 females bringing food to their voracious offsping. Next stop for us is a much anticipated trip to the Capertee Valley, one of the mecas of South-East Australian, even global, birdwatching.


December 4th:

I have never been overly enthusiastic about sparrows, no doubt influenced by the challenges associated with identifying one cryptic species from another and the fact that they are not typically asociated with my favourite forest habitats, however this weekend I had a great time visiting the nearby Katy Prairie where winter migrants are gathering in large numbers in the fields, hedgerows and fragmented woodland patches. I saw - and identified - several lifer species, whilst no doubt failing to differentiate many others within various mixed sparrow flocks. Clearly I will have to work harder for my next visit. The striking male White-crowned Sparrow was one of the more easily identified lifers...


November 28th:

I have just published a trip report covering my September visit to Lima, including a three day trip with Kolibri Expeditions to the nearby Santa Eulalia valley and highlands of Milloc and Ticlio (up to ca. 4900m altitude). Interestingly, despite seeing far fewer birds than 

during the preceding 10 days in the mega-diverse Rio Tambopata region

, I actually saw almost as many lifers - thanks to this being my first birding visit to these hotspots of high altitude

endemism 

around Lima!  The trip report includes 

photo highlights 

and an annotated bird trip list. See the 

Trip Reports: Peru tab.


November 23rd:

Just received my copy of the new 'Cotingas and Manakins', by Kirwan and Green (published as part of the Helm Identification Guides series). It contains lots of great information and images of these colorful and charismatic species, including my photos from Venezuela of several species such as Orange-bellied Manakin, Scarlet-horned Manakin and Pompadour Cotinga. 




October 11th:

If you are looking for a nice (free) souvenir from a trip to the Tambopata Research Centre, then ask for a stamp from the guards at the 'La Torre' control point (Puesto de Control) where tourists check in on their way up river into the Reserva Nacional Tambopata. I had the front page of my copy of the 'Birds of Peru' book stamped and it looks great - see below. Although I did not see a Jaguar, its worth noting that the visitors on the next day's boat traveling to TRC did catch sight of a Jaguar on a sand bank between Puesto de Contro Malinowski and TRC...

October 7th:

Enjoying working on photos and trip list from the Lima portion of my Peru trip. Also saw a bonus 'lifer' in the back garden, when a Wilson's Warbler appeared in some bottle-brushes during a stop-over on its' migration back towards Central America...

October 2nd:

Published an updated Tambopata trip report, including further annotations to the bird trip list and some additional photos. See the 

Trip Reports: Peru tab.

September 28th:

A preliminary trip report for my visit earlier this month to the Rio Tambopata in Peru is now available - see the .pdf document located under the Trip Reports: Peru tab. My plan is to add some commentary to each of the species sightings included in the trip list, but for now this is restricted to a simple list of the sites were each species was encountered. 

September 23rd:

Completed a preliminary trip list covering my nine night visit to the Rio Tambopata in the eastern Peruvian lowlands. My trip total was some 270 species, including 85 lifers - see attached .pdf document. I also have many, many photos to sort through. Here's one that brings back fond memories from a visit to the Collpa Chuncho, where we enjoyed a lunchtime stop-over to admire, from long-distance, a large number of Red-and-Green Macaws visiting this immense clay lick. The macaws and hundreds of Cobalt-winged Parakeets all departed in a so called "flash" creating some dramatic colours ...




September 19th:

Just returned from an amazing two week trip to Peru, where I saw close to 400 bird species, including over 150 personal 'lifers', and visited some wonderful locations.

During nine nights in the Amazon lowlands along the Rio Tambopata, on a tour arranged by Rainforest Expeditions, I experienced close encounters with some amazing mammals and birds. As a taster, I've attached below images of an inquisitive Giant Otter (seen at dawn at the Tres Chimbadas ox-bow lake) and a skulking Rufous-capped Antthrush (with the 0.6 sec exposure capturing its glowing coppery crown as it sang, late-afternoon, from a perch alongside a trail at Refugio Amazonas).






I then spent a few enjoyable days based in Lima where I visited friends, ate the 'world's best cerviche' prepared by Javier Wong at the Mistura food festival and participated in a 3 day, intensive birding trip in search of endemics in the high Andes and steep river valleys close to Lima. See the below image of a very cute Peruvian Pygmy-Owl that we found early one morning in the Santa Eulalia valley.

Over the coming days/weeks I will prepare illustrated reports for each of the Tambopata and Lima area trips.

July 31st: 

Added several example publications under the "Publications" tab...

July 24th:
The Spring 2011 edition of The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's 'Living Bird' Magazine includes one of my images of a Bearded Helmetcrest in an article on the re-emergence of Colombia as a viable birding-tourism destination. Based on our fantastic trip in 2008 (see Trip Reports: Colombia) I would absolutely concur that Colombia is an amazing place to visit. See the link to the Living Bird article at http://www.allaboutbirds.org




July 12th:
Back from a long-weekend in Panama birding hot-spots in the Canal Zone. See the new .pdf trip report located under the Trip Reports: Panama tab.

July 3rd: 
Currently enjoying my first trip to Panama, where new sightings have included a calling Streak-chested Antpitta...

 

 

June 16th:
Frustratingly few opportunities for birding trips this spring, given my focus instead having been on triathlon training and racing. Last weekend we did squeeze in a few hours of birding during a trip to the Hill Country west of San Antonio (Los Maples area) and added a few lifers including iconic Texan species such as Greater Roadrunner and Wild Turkey!

 

May 15th:
During a short trip to Spain to participate in the first ITU Cross-Triathlon World Championships, I enjoyed a few hours of birding near to the race venue in Caceres, Extremadura and an afternoon in and around the renowned Monfrague National Park. See the new trip report that I have added under the Trip Reports: Europe tab.

 


January 1st 2011:
Back from a one week trip to Honduras, where we birded the excellent forest at Pico Bonito and dived on the Mesoamerican reef at Roatan. See the new .pdf trip report which is located under the Trip Reports: Honduras tab.

 


    

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