August has been a month of changes. My last days in Spain involved beach terns and waders. Moving to Argentina, both visiting the yungas and living in Patagonia brought a whole new set of birds.

A montane creek within the yungas cloud forest north of Salta is home to the mega rufous-throated dipper, which provided great views. Torrent ducks, Andean condors and endemic brushfinches also obliged.

My first time birding in the Neotropics involved a couple of hours walking the grasslands around Viru Viru Airport in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, featuring grasping looks at nothuras, tinamous and rheas.

Mythical locations around The Cape delivered memorable encounters with Cape rockjumpers, sugarbirds and griffons, Verreaux’s eagles, sunbirds and rock thrushes surrounded by flowering proteas and ericas.

Cape Town arguably offers some of the world’s most interesting urban birdwatching experiences. Within few kms, the city area harbors pelicans, penguins, albatrosses and a set of smart endemics.

A whole month exploring different landscapes across South Africa delivered memorable encounters with rockjumpers, sugarbirds, bustards, secretarybirds, finfoot, albatrosses, penguins and more.

Waters around Cape Town gather some of the best seabird densities worldwide. We connected with hundreds of albatrosses, thousands of petrels including several spectacled petrels and Antarctic prions.

Lions, warthogs, meerkats, giraffes, blesboks, bat-eared foxes, aardwolf, secretarybirds, sandgrouse, bustards, owls, falcons, eagles, hornbills and a variety of weavers and finches awaited us in the Kalahari desert.

The shrublands and grasslands of the karoo offered an array of habitat endemics including numerous bustards, warblers, chats and larks as we drove north of Cape Town for some days.

Although busy, June provided some time to catch up with local summer specialties including Eleonora’s falcon, common rock thrush or western olivaceous warbler, plus a welcome variety of waders in El Hondo.

June combined typical local breeders with excursions chasing summer targets. Outings this month featured marshland waders, mountain specialties, some late coastal seabirds and nocturnal encounters.

Spending a day with colleagues from Asociación Ulula taught me a good deal about owl ecology while monitoring nests and driving Saladares de Guadalentín for little bustards and black-bellied sandgrouse.

This typical but idyllic month of April brought typical migrating passerines, several great encounters with displaying bustards and sandgrouse in the steppes, a couple of lifers at home and some others on a short trip.

Crakes are an elusive group of waterbirds that strongly caught my attention lately. This season, I enjoyed connecting with two of the local combo of three species: spotted and little crake.

The arid island of Fuerteventura holds a diversity of habitats with different specialties, from Canary Island stonechat in gorges to trumpeter finches in deserts or introduced species in lawns and gardens.