Bright snow and northern lights lit up Helsinki over winter. Different owls, woodpeckers, crossbills and other northbound specialties show up randomly over cold breezes, turning outings harsh but rewarding.
Ría de Santoña in New Year’s provides cracking winter specialties: brant geese, horned grebes, loons and waders. Mega red-breasted geese and redpolls are bonus additions to an awesome short trip.
On a legendary seawatching day with friends, while twitching Richard’s pipit and ring-billed gull, we connect with great skua, black-legged kittiwake and Castellón’s 4th red-throated loon and 10th velvet scoter.
Mauritius capital city turned out to bear good numbers of the endemic and endangered Mauritius flying fox. Curlew and Terek sandpipers or greater sand plovers occur in the city’s Terre Rouge bird sanctuary.
A Cape gull from Southern Africa and a laughing gull from the Americas have shown up in Northern Spain. We enjoyed awesome birding while twitching these stunners on a roadtrip.
Bustling Bangkok offers local goodies in urban Lumphini and Rot Fai Parks and many waders and migrants in Bang Pu wetland. We face exotic bird trade at a local market and see a lost species on a museum.
Vietnam’s capital city gardens are a passerines haven. We bagged gray-throated martins, sooty-headed bulbuls and gray-breasted prinia on a Red River island and ‘commixtus’ Asian tit in the Botanical Gardens.
Bird feeders at this hotel-restaurant in the middle of Finnish Lapland provide world-class photographic opportunities of Arctic specialties while enjoying a warm atmosphere and tasty food.
Ceuta hosts different North African birds: African chaffinch and blue tit, common bulbul, Levaillant’s woodpecker, long-legged buzzard, house bunting, black-crowned tchagra, Maghreb owl and Barbary partridge.
The enigmatic Dupont’s lark is extremely range-restricted in our region. Some friends and I try tracking them down at their habitat, and end up having a fantastic migration day with 13 raptor species seen.
The bearded reedling is an uncommon inhabitant of reedbeds in south Alicante wetlands. Skulky and skittish, we eventually enjoyed some views of a couple of this stunning species in El Hondo.
A quick stopover in Kuwait provided WP specialties using public transport: white-tailed and spur-winged lapwings, isabelline and masked shrikes, white-throated kingfisher, clamorous reed warbler and more.
An intense full day watching birds in Alicante delivers a great final count for our party of three. Different migrant birds seen include four different Eurasian hobbies, definitely the top species of the day.
A full-day stopover in Dubai can provide some goodies despite extreme heat. We connected with Indian rollers, purple sunbirds, shikras, white-cheeked terns, Socotra cormorants or sooty gull within the city.
