Green Season in Trinidad and Tobago

From back home in Ohio, Kenn writes: Most birding tours to Trinidad and Tobago (T & T) are planned for winter or early spring. That’s the season when you can expect the highest total number of species, because the local resident birds are joined by migrants from the north -- padding the list with birds that you could have seen back in Ohio or New Jersey during the summer. People who judge the success of a birding trip by the sheer number of species seen (we’re not among them) might see that as reason enough to go to Trinidad in winter.

Winter and early spring are the seasons when most other tourists go to T & T also. Partly they go in winter to escape the cold weather up north. But another factor is that the other half of the year, June through November, is what used to be referred to as Trinidad’s rainy season.

I say "used to be" because we’ve changed it. That half of the year is now known as the "Green Season."

Yeah, there’s some rain. But we just spent eight very full days in T & T at the peak of the Green Season, and rain was never an inconvenience for us. We carried rain jackets, we carried plastic bags for the cameras and binoculars, and we used common sense about watching the sky. Showers came a couple of times a day but they were brief, and then the skies cleared again. We didn’t lose more than a few minutes to rain, and in between, the birding was fantastic.

I’ve already written about our extraordinary night with the leatherback sea turtles. That’s an experience you won’t have in winter, because the turtles aren’t breeding then. In a more directly bird-related vein, the Green Season also has a lot of breeding bird activity. The total number of species present may be lower than in mid-winter, but the resident tropical birds are highly active and visible. We saw plenty of evidence of that during our visit.

Palm Tanagers were everywhere in T & T, including in the towns. At the Asa Wright Nature Centre, a pair was nesting inside the living room of the main house, and the adults were coming and going without any regard for all the humans on the verandah. We decided that this could be called "Palm Tanager" because it might easily land on the palm of your hand.

This Barred Antshrike nest at the Grafton Estate on Tobago was just one of many nests we found during our trip.

These male Golden-headed Manakins (and 7 or 8 of their buddies) were displaying like mad at a "lek," or communal dancing ground, down one of the trails at Asa Wright. The gaudy males perform little moonwalks and other dances while making buzzing and trilling notes, all to attract females. Which suggests to me that those female manakins must have really weird tastes!

Over on the Main Ridge on Tobago, the male Blue-backed Manakins were similarly preoccupied with doing freaky dances and making strange noises.

Some of the most interesting breeding behavior that we saw involved Common Potoos on the grounds of the Asa Wright Nature Centre. Potoos are genuinely bizarre creatures. Distantly related to nighthawks and Whip-poor-wills, but classified in a different family, potoos spend the day perched bolt upright on high tree branches, looking for all the world like dead stubs. At night, they fly around catching large insects in flight. The naturalists at Asa Wright had located a potoo nest, which really just consisted of a depression on a high branch where the female would have laid her single egg a few weeks earlier. The poor blurry photo above shows an adult potoo brooding the young bird. If it's hard to see what's going on, the next couple of photos should help. Here's a photo taken a couple of days later, when the adult was roosting atop a different perch. Even here, it doesn't really look like a bird. It's facing toward us, and its very short, broad bill is pointing up toward the left.

And here's the young Common Potoo by itself, still perched on the spot where it had hatched. Its bill is pointing up toward the right, and its eyes are closed. Good camouflage, isn't it? It doesn't really look like a dead stub of a branch -- it looks more like a discarded pale teddy bear, plucked from the trash can and tossed up into the tree -- but it doesn't look very edible. Predators aren't likely to go for it.

Here the young potoo has lowered its head a little, its bill is pointing toward the right, and its eye is slightly open. See the eye? (It's under that impressive bushy eyebrow.) Does the shape of the bird make sense now?

Here the little tyke is more thoroughly hunched down. Possibly because it senses that it's just about to start raining. Um, I mean, greening. This isn't the rainy season, it's the Green Season!

Here's Kim (just right of center), surrounded by a group of students and their teachers, showing them the baby Common Potoo through our digiscoping setup. We saw several groups of students during the time we were at Asa Wright, and it was inspiring to see the amount of educational programming that was going on at that fine nature center.

Incidentally, anyone who wants to visit Asa Wright Nature Centre, or explore nature anywhere in Trinidad and Tobago, should contact Caligo Ventures. They are THE experts on birding and natural history in T & T, and they're the exclusive agents for Asa Wright in the USA. Mark Hedden from Caligo traveled with us in T & T, and he proved to be a very impressive guy in terms of his dedication to birding, conservation, and quality travel.

Along the Oregon Trail

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: The last few days were like a blur, almost, inspiring me to think of a new title: "Blur-ding with Kenn and Kim!" Friday night our band played at Mango Mama’s in Port Clinton, and it felt like one of our best performances yet, but we didn’t have time to bask in the afterglow of a rocking fine time: I had to hurry home, in most un-rockerly fashion, and sleep for a couple of hours. At 3:45 a.m. I was leaving the house to drive to the Cleveland airport so I could fly to Boise, Idaho, get into a rental car, drive three and a half hours west into Oregon, and arrive in the town of Burns in time to set up and give the Saturday evening keynote talk at the 28th annual John Scharff Migratory Bird Festival.

If you’re familiar with the concept of bird festivals, that figure will have caught your eye: 28th annual? Has any bird festival been around that long? There are now hundreds of bird and nature festivals all over North America, but most of them have sprung up within the last decade or two. A couple of the long-standing events, the Festival of the Cranes in Socorro, New Mexico, and the Hummer/Bird Festival in Rockport, Texas, are now about twenty years old. But the festival in Burns, Oregon, preceded them. If I’m counting correctly, they would have held their first event in 1982, years before most of the current festivals got off the ground.

Burns is the largest town in Harney County, a huge county (larger than Massachusetts) with a population of only about 8,000. Birders know Burns for the proximity of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a fabulous area for huge numbers of waterbirds, and for the wealth of raptors, sagebrush country species, and other wonderful birds in the surrounding area. The Harney County Chamber of Commerce, working with the refuge staff and with other biologists in the area, have created one of the finest bird festivals anywhere. For several days each spring, the festival takes over the local high school and the local fair grounds, local businesses roll out the welcome mat in an obvious way (see the sample signs to the right), and hundreds of people come from all over the northwest to attend.

After my marathon of rock concert / air travel / long drive, I arrived in somewhat woozy state, but the organizers made me feel welcome and at ease immediately. Jessica Boone, director of the Chamber of Commerce, and Carey Goss, the energetic Visitor Services Manager from the Malheur refuge, were in the final stages of setting up inside a huge building at the fair grounds, with a dozen young volunteers from the high school softball team helping out. In no time I had my laptop hooked up to a projector, and I had an hour to relax before the crowd started to arrive. So of course I went outside. In the parking lot I ran into my longtime friends Harley and Karyl Klein, who had come down from the Portland area, but our conversation was constantly interrupted as we paused to stare at the waves of Ross’s Geese and Snow Geese flying overhead. Literally thousands of white geese streamed over the parking lot as we stood there. What a way to welcome people to a bird festival!

In conversations later that evening and the following morning, I talked to dozens of people who had come from several hours’ drive away to attend the festival, and who had been coming annually for many years. And I could understand why. Aside from the fact that I was missing sleep somewhat and missing Kim very intensely, this was one of the most delightful bird festivals I had ever attended. We’ll certainly make a point of coming here together in some future year.

For more infomation about this festival, visit http://www.migratorybirdfestival.com/index.htm

My eyes have seen the glory....

Kim writes: Some of you may be wondering why--outside of a few random photos and thoughts--I haven't really attempted to describe the Antarctic experience. In fact, I've been wondering about it myself. Certainly time is a factor. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. In the Kaufman Universe, life moves at warp speed. But, time (or lack thereof) is not the real problem. It's the trip itself.

Unlike Kenn, I was not born with the "travelin' bone." I grew up on a farm in rural Ohio and throughout most of my childhood no one I knew ever went anywhere, to speak of. If someone actually went someplace that required a SUITCASE it was a really big deal! Funny story---When I graduated from High School one of my Aunts got me a set of luggage. Of course I accepted the gift graciously, but inside I was thinking, "You gotta be freakin kidding me with the luggage, right?" (Sorry Aunt Connie! You're the best.)

Now, you might think that marrying someone like Kenn, I must have had some idea that travel would be part of my life. But to be honest, it wasn't something I really even thought about. I mean, yeah, I knew that Kenn had worked for many years as a bird tour leader--traveling all over the world. But, by the time we met, he had moved on from tour leading to work on his field guide series. I guess on some level I assumed that far-flung travel was a thing of the past. Kenn is an amazing person and he fills my life with so much adventure that I would be perfectly content if we never left home. But, traveling with him is like the ultimate bonus. And now--that girl who laughed at the idea of owning a suitcase--has been to some pretty astounding places.

Antarctica....

Now, be honest...If you were asked to make a list of the top 10 places in the world that you wanted to travel to, would your list include Antarctica? For me, the thought of going someplace like that was just too far outside the scope of my imagination. For good reason. It was a totally mind-blowing, life-altering experience. Nothing could have prepared me for it. No books. No pictures. No videos on U-Tube. Nothing does it justice.

But now I have been there. And I have struggled for weeks to find a way to tell you what it was like. I will try. But I must tell you that I will fail. Until your eyes have sparkled with tears at the sight of an iceberg peppered with penguins. Until a flock of Cape Petrels dances for you. Until the bow of your ship has moved in close enough to kiss the edge of a glacier. Until your senses have been exercised to their ultimate limits by a colony of Adelie Penguins. Until your heart has practically thumped its way out of your chest as you stared straight into the eyes of a Leopard Seal. ----- Until you've walked where ice is magnificent enough be a place on the map.....It is truly hard to imagine.

But we will do our best....

See the black lumps in this photo? EVERY BLACK LUMP IS AN ADELIE PENGUIN!

Now, imagine that you are standing a few feet from the edge of this astounding scene. Waves crash and stir bits of ice against the rocky shoreline like rhythmic music...your ears ring with the sound of it. Adelies are before you in numbers that are nearly incomprehensible...your nose wrinkles with the smell of it. The rough and tumble rocks of the island--and the occasional Adelie at your feet--make you aware of every footstep. And your soul weeps with the joy of it.

Maldives Vacation

When I was in Maldives for holidays, I wasn’t shock by those beautiful beaches and ocean but I was shock that there were actually people playing badminton in Maldives.

Elsewhere, I posted that, in the Maldives, the locals don't play badminton. How wrong I was. I should have made it clear that the locals don't play badminton 'in the resorts'... and that's only because the few courts they have are reserved for the guests.

The Maldives has a small but active badminton community. This is centred on Male (maa-lay) - the capital island. There are no resorts on this island - and the resident population is almost fully Maldivian. To play here, you need to sign up for an annual membership. This costs two photographs (keep them handy) and MVR 650 (USD 51). This gets you a laminated photo-identity card but, well, it takes a few days. (Life in the Maldives is slow-paced... and such delays are normal). Meanwhile, you can gain entry by flashing your receipt at the gates.

Remember to bring (or buy) shuttles and your choice of drink.There are no vending machines around - and you'd have to walk some distance to get soft drinks or bottled water. The locals use 77 speed RSL shuttles - they are cheap and bad. It's very difficult to persuade them to use Yonex or ProAce or other brands. Just remember to hit your clears more gently - else, it's out every time!The national team trains here (they are now away at the ABC) and all the ex-national players who haven't yet migrated elsewhere play here in the evenings (except on Friday, which is the weekly holiday). A few of them are very very good - fast, sharp and powerful - and Moosa, their best player, is quite an exceptional player.

Around a dozen women too turn up regularly - although they usually play among themselves, a few are good enough to play a good game of mixed doubles

The Maldives has now in place a programme that aims to build quality teams in football, basketball (yes, they do have quite a few very tall players) and badminton. In fact, they beat India in the South Asian Federation Games recently. (Although Indian football is no big deal in global terms, it is big in the region.)

Vietnam Business Trip

Museum

vietnam dragon fruit


somewhere in Vietnam...nearby our client office ...right hand side its a big drain....

Just Blank!!! Dunno wat to do in Vietnam!!!