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.

Dramatic wildfires are sweeping across northeast Iberia this summer. A visit to Fuente Dé in Picos de Europa National Park still yielded alpine specialties, persisting beneath the heavy smog from a nearby blaze.

Exotic species and birds reminiscent of European forests co-occur in central Vietnam at Mount Lang Bian. Range-restricted treecreepers, nuthatches and tits share this forest with sunbirds, babblers and laughingthrushes.

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.