A Saturday with my brother in Tabarca resulted in some fun snorkeling but few birds. However, migration is in full swing, and a flock of dotterels has returned to El Hondo again.

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.

Estaca de Bares is the ultimate seawatching location in the Western Palearctic, offering dozens of shearwaters, skuas and jaegers, two fulmars, a Wilson’s storm petrel and a cracking brown booby.

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.

Summer season is the prime time for waders in south Alicante, with marsh sandpipers, godwits and curlew sandpipers in El Hondo and black tern, pratincoles and regular rarities as elegant terns in El Pinet.

Summer season brings an array of specialties to Helsinki, including broad-billed sandpiper and common rosefinch in Viikki, red-breasted flycatcher in Haltiala and stakeouts of Blyth’s reed warbler and river warbler.

Rainforest Discovery Center in Sepilok holds a large patch of lowland dipterocarp forest, home to many Borneo specialties. Orangutans and many other species call this vast tropical woodland home.

Bukit Fraser is a prime highland spot just 100 km away from Kuala Lumpur. A couple of foggy, rainy days offered terrific views of Atlas moth, red-headed trogon, fire-tufted barbet and other targets.

Tinença de Benifassà Natural Park provided red-backed shrikes, ortolan buntings, stock dove, common rock thrush, tawny pipits — all localized breeders in the region — and a handful of picturesque villages.

A highlight of a recent trip to Somiedo was Saliencia lakes. The incredible montane landscape offered great views of breeding water pipits, common rock thrushes, Egyptian vultures and Alpine choughs.

Laguna de los Peces is a glacial lagoon surronded by prime montane scrub near Sanabria. Ortolan buntings, red-backed shrikes, bluethroats, Galán’s rock lizards and Seoane’s vipers live in a magical yellow and pink infinity.

The Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park is composed of four small archipelagos. Among them, Sálvora bears different herp gems: Boscá’s newt, Lusitanic wall lizard and the island-endemic ocellated lizard race.