Bird Explorers Christmas Letter 2010

Blue Tit from 2009 Christmas Trip to Sweden


To all our wonderful friends:

2010 brought many changes, but all in all was very kind and gentle to both of us. After our move to Bangkok, Thailand in early 2009 and using most of the year to settle in and get our bearings, Wojciech headed out into a brand new assignment in early 2010. In March, he received a placement with UN OCHA in Northern Sri Lanka based in Vavuniya. He would be working in this role until November 2010.

While it is never good being separated for so long, the assignment was an excellent experience, and Wojciech was able to be integrally involved in helping the people of this war-torn region to begin to try to get back their normal lives and routines after decades of civil war. Wojciech dealt daily with critical issues like mine clearing, resettlement of displaced people and protection for vulnerable women and children. It was very hard work and very long hours, but the rewards of helping people to get back on their feet are very strong. Wojciech was also surrounded by fantastic colleagues in the UN and other development NGOs and formed lots of close bonds over the year.

Back in Bangkok, Kevin continued enjoying his role of the South and Southeast Asia Director for the World Society for the Protections of Animals. Helping the region’s bears, elephants and other wildlife as well as working to help companion animals and addressing the many issues with dogs and cats is very rewarding although we still have such a long way to go out here in the region. In addition to helping the region’s animals, WSPA is very fulfilling in being able to work with so many committed and talented young people in a fun and energetic multi-cultural office with staff comprised of citizens of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France and lots of visitors from other places.


WSPA Staff at 2010 Christmas Party

With Wojciech based in Sri Lanka, we both organised our wildlife photography work around South Asia, with 2 expeditions to Sri Lanka and 2 to India including Kashmir and Rajasthan as well as many short trips in both countries.


Chukar from Kashmir

Kevin also got a small trip to the Dorsett countryside around Weymouth and Portland, where he finally tracked down and got good photos of the illusive Bearded Reedling.


Bearded Reedling

The Sri Lanka expeditions were quite fun and took us to many parts of the island’s south from the coast up to the highlands. In the end, we photographed 19 of the 24 endemic species and 40 of the 74 endemic subspecies including the world’s rarest owl, Serendib Scops-Owl.


Serendib Scops-Owl


Tickell's Blue Flycatcher

Another fun development in 2010 was the growth in Social Networking for us. Our Bird Explorers Facebook account went from a few hundred to now over 3,300 from over 100 countries. We have no idea why it got so popular, but we are very much enjoying meeting so many new and interesting people from around the globe. Anyone wanting to join our Facebook Page can just search Bird Explorers and you will find us.

The end of the year finds us in Poland enjoying the cold and snowy conditions after so much heat and tropical humidity this year. This is Wojciech’s first time home for Christmas in 17 years, as we normally have gone back at Easter. So, we are decorating the house from stem to stern and cooking up a storm. Wojciech’s mom is very happy to have him home.


Wojciech playing in the snow with Borsuk and Wiewiórka


Kevin playing in the snow with Borsuk and Wiewiórka

We are very thankful for the nice year, and hope that all of you have had a wonderful year too. There is so much difficulty and pain in the world these days, so we are truly grateful for our blessings that we have and try our best to never take them for granted and help our fellow citizens and animal friends the best we can. May 2011 likewise be good, gentle and kind to everyone. Whatever form your holidays and new year takes, we greatly appreciate your friendship and wish you all the best!!

Thanks to everyone for the great and rich friendships.

Wojciech and Kevin


Ceylon Magpie

New BirdLife International Community Page

BirdLife International has just created a new BirdLife Community Area on their Website.

Their Communication's Officer sent out the following email:

BirdLife is the world’s largest global alliance of conservation organisations that share a mission: to conserve wild birds, their habitats and global biodiversity. We have Partners in over 100 countries, with 2.5 million members and 8 million supporters. Our popular website receives over 1,500,000 unique visitors each year, and we’re often the first to publish the biggest bird conservation news of the day.
 
I’m writing because we’re just launching a new area of our website that we hope you’ll be interested in – The BirdLife Community. The BirdLife Community is the place online to discuss the latest news from the frontline in biodiversity protection. We’re now publishing many more news stories, and also blog and video posts from the frontline of conservation.
 
We’ve also started a new BirdLife Flickr group for people to share their best images of birds and nature.

We at Bird Explorers have always valued our BirdLife colleagues with very high esteem, and they have done an enormous amount to raise the profile of birds around the world and create projects to assist endangered birds and their critical habitats. So please join us in checking out their new Community Page and engaging in the dialogue there.

Kevin is currently in Bangkok and Wojciech is in Sri Lanka. Wojciech is on assignment with UN OCHA in Northern Sri Lanka for 6 months working to help resettle Internally Displaced People from the civil war from refugee camps back to their homes. Here are some preliminary photos from when Wojciech had a break in the Kitulgala Forest in Southwest Sri Lanka a few weeks ago:



Tickell's Blue Flycatcher, Cyornis tickelliae jerdoni, male, endemic Sri Lanka subspecies



Tickell's Blue Flycatcher, Cyornis tickelliae jerdoni, male, endemic Sri Lanka subspecies



Dark-fronted Babbler, Rhopocichla atriceps nigrifrons, endemic Sri Lanka subspecies



Lesser Yellownape, Picus chlorolophus wellsi, endemic Sri Lanka subspecies

Also Kevin's visit to the London International Office of the World Society for the Protection of Animals afforded him a brief break in Dorset where he was able to photograph the majestic Bearded Reedling at Lodmoor RSPB Reserve.



Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus biarmicus, male. Lodmoor RSPB Reserve, Weymouth, Dorset, England

Wojciech and Kevin will be teaming up in July to do an extensive bird photographic survey of the Southwest Sri Lankan forests around Sinharaja Rain Forest and should be getting lots more great photos in our never ending quest to photograph all the birds of the world.

Missing John Denver

Today I am stuck in Ha Noi, Viet Nam a humid, smoky city in early autumn as rice paddies surrounding the city are undergoing their end of season burn-off. I am in Viet Nam working on the Bear Farming Program of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). There are 4000 beautiful Asian moon bears and sun bears in captivity in Viet Nam, many of which are still illegally tapped for bile in the most horrible conditions you can imagine. Although we are working hard to rescue them and get many of them into sanctuaries, it is still very sad and depressing work. And being alone here with my partner at home in Bangkok, I am having the Sunday blues.



Suddenly, for whatever reason I have no idea, John Denver's song, I Guess he'd rather be in Colorado popped into my head.



I went to youtube and found the above music video and remembered that tomorrow is the anniversary of John Denver's death in 1997. I cried. I miss him and his music a lot. No one has ever since come along and filled his shoes, and sung for the forests and the animals the way he did. His songs of longing for the wilderness and for quiet, solitude and beauty of nature have stirred my heart and soul since I was a boy.

While I love the work I do in Asia and Africa to help animals and people, all the suffering gets to me sometimes, and in my heart I long for the days of my youth running barefoot along the Great Sacandaga River in the Adirondacks of Upstate New York. The beautiful fall colours at this time of year. Thanksgiving. The wonderful family, most of whom are gone or like me scattered on the wind.



I miss the time I spent at university in Missoula Montana, and Eugene Oregon, running around the northern Rocky Mountains and Cascade Mountains carefree and having the time of life. The summers I would roam up into Canada and Alaska or across the pond in the Arctic of Norway and Sweden. Those were the days!!

Somehow John Denver's music can bring it all back to my mind and soul in both a sad and longing way, but also in a comforting and warm way. Sometimes though, I wished I could have grown old with him and his music. That he would have kept on writing and singing those great songs until we were both old and grey. But alas, it was not meant to be, but his songs will always be there to rescue me in times like today and give me courage and strength to keep fighting for the bears and any other animal that needs help.



Anyway, enough of my overly tragic sentimentality. Raise a glass of the best brew to John Denver tomorrow on the anniversary of his death. We miss you John and thanks for the music that will live fore
ever.



And Remember our beautiful friends the bears!!

International Vulture Awareness Day

Vultures are totally some of the coolest things in nature. The first time I ever saw a vulture was in Pennsylvania, USA. Hiking through the forest with my my grandfather when I was about 6 or 7 years old. We were sitting quietly just resting after a walking up a hill. On a large, old branch just above our heads, two turkey vultures perched. I was in total awe as I had never been so close to such big birds and had no idea what they were. I still have that instant memory in my mind and have carried it with me all my life. Little did I know then as a small boy, that later in life I would be travelling the globe watching and photographing vultures along with all the other amazing birdlife that this great world holds


American Black Vulture, Coragyps atratus brasiliensis, Sucumbios, Ecuador

Ode to a Turkey Vulture

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Eurasian Griffon, Gyps fulvus fulvescens, Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India

Today many species vulture species face extinction from eating contaminated carcasses. One of the great culprits is the drug Diclofenac used for cattle. However, there are many other culprits like poisoning carcasses to kill predators, use of vulture parts in traditional medicines, malaria and other disease, habitat loss and collision with power lines and other man made barriers. The outlook for some vultures is grim, but now the world is putting their attention to these great birds, and many projects are underway to stabilise the populations of some of the endangered vulture species. And there have been great success stories such as the California Condor.

Please join with Bird Explorers in promoting Vulture Awareness and helping to ensure that all vulture species have a bright and happy future soaring the skies of the world for long to come.

IVAD09 blog festival






Egyptian Vulture, Neophron percnopterus percnopterus, Kargi Waterhole, Chalbi Desert, Kenya



Hooded Vulture,immature, Necrosyrtes monachus, Marsabit National Park, Kenya



Greater Yellow-headed Vulture, Cathartes melambrotus, Sucumbios, Ecuadaor



African White-backed Vulture, Gyps africanus, Bromley, Zimbabwe



Eurasian Griffon, Gyps fulvus fulvescens, Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India



Eurasian Griffon, Gyps fulvus fulvescens, Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India

IVAD09 blog festival

Support International Vulture Awareness Day, September 05, 2009 by clicking on the link below that tells you how you can help.

IVAD09 blog festival

Birding Delhi, India: Gardens of Bahai Temple and Surrounding Parks

The grounds of the Baha'i Lotus Temple and surrounding Kalkaji District Park offers a great opportunity for bird photographers to get good photos of common Delhi park birds, such as Yellow-footed Green Pigeon, Brown-headed Barbet, Asian Koel, Alexandrine Parakeet, Hoopoe, Common Babbler Asian Pied Myna, Brahminy Starling, Bank Myna, Indian Robin.


View Delhi Birding: Baha'i Lotus Temple Area in a larger map

The morning and evening lighting conditions are often excellent, and birds are quite confiding as no one pursues them. In winter and during spring and autumn migrations, the ranks of the parks residents is swelled with a variety of warblers and robins coming down from Central Asia, China and Siberia.

Enjoy the photos:

Indian Robin


Hoopoe


Brown-headed Barbet


Black-rumped Flameback


Rufous Treepie


Asian Pied Starling


Green Bee-Eater


Ashy Prinia


Common Babbler

Birding Adventures in Thailand Part 1: Northwestern Gulf of Siam-Petchaburi Coast

Since moving to Thailand in January 2009, we have already been able to get out and have some great birding, so I thought I would do some diaries about these trips. The first trip was March 7-8 on the Gulf of Siam Coast of Petchaburi Province, a well-known wader overwintering area. Here is a useful google map of the area.


View Petchaburi Coast in a larger map

To get to this area just drive from Bangkok southwest to either Samut Songkram or Petchaburi. From either of the towns, you can approach this area on many local small roads, which themselves are good for rice paddie, canal-side, telephone wire and swamp birding.

Photography is very good throughout the region as the areas are open with good light. Plan to do a mid-morning and early-evening run, as the sun at the height of the day is very strong and oppressive (as is the heat). Likewise if you go too early, you will also have poor light. Stay in your vehicle as much as possible and try to use it as a hide. If you leaves your vehicle, you will certainly scare the birds beyond any useful photographic distance as well as unduly disturbing them.

In these wader sites, you will be driving along the dykes between the salt pans (mostly dirt roads, few paved), so it is best to drive the areas first to get the lay of the land. Then plan your photography work with the sun's angle for the best lighting.

Here are some good photos from the trip.

Painted Stork (Mycteria leucocephala) Occasionally small flocks present at the "other good wader location" or seen flying around the salt flats.





Curlew Sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea), common and most still in non-breeding plumage. Pak Thale is always a good place to photograph these as they are very common here and easy to approach in a vehicle.


Marsh Sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis), also quite common. Some were going into breeding plumage. Marshies are very easy to photograph here throughout the winter.


Common Redshank (Tringa totanus), in small to medium numbers depending on the season. The "Other Good Wader Site" designated on the map is the best place to see and photograph them. Occasionally Spotted Redshank are seen.


Oriental Pratincole (Glareola maldivarum), present in small numbers although seen in open fields behind the salt pans salt pans.


Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos), always a few around, generally seem singly.


Pacific Golden Plover (Pluvialis fulva) Usually resent in small numbers.


Salt Flats Landscape