Vietnam

Anyone who likes colourful birds needs to visit Vietnam! I finally got there earlier this year and had a great time photographing some absolutely stunning birds.

Before the birds, though we spent a very interesting couple of days in Ho Chi Minh city(Saigon) wher ethere was some fascinating history to enjoy. The War museum was very disturbing but fascinating, with anamazing selection of photographs from the war.

The following day , we went out of the city to the Cu Cuchi tunnels to see the amazing conditions that the people lived in during the war.

The tunnels were tiny. How did they manage??!!

It was Chinese New Year with horses at the forefront!

Soon though it was off to start looking for birds! We travelled to Tan Phu for the first of my target species. The trip was essentially centred on a series of amazing hides. Not always my favourite as they tend to just produce the same images with limited options.

However, some of the species like the pittas are SO difficult to see, it is really the only option when time is limited. The first bird which was superb was the bar bellied pitta. It didn’t disappoint, what colours.

This hide actually also had the slightly more restrained blue rumped pitta.

From Tan Phu, we moved on to one of the most important national parks in Vietnam, Cat Tien. Here we saw some other great birds, but also the highly endangered golden cheeked gibbon

From here we went to Di Linh where we had a couple of very pleasant days. My favourite bird here was the lovely silver breasted broadbill.

We then moved to the higher altitude at Dalat. This is quite a busy town, with some amazing birding spots nearby.

Its a great coffee growing area, with some delicious produce!

As well as so of the more ‘ethnic’ offerings

Many fabulous species found their way into my lens.

The amazing Indo Chinese magpie, what a crazy bird

Another bird that I really wanted was the lovely little Annam sunbird.Not easy as theis was not from a hide and they were hard to find.But…

And with it in the same area was another sunbird, the Langbian sunbird

There was another gorgeous pitta in this area, the blue pitta.

Pheasants are common at home, but the silver pheasant was fantastic, here displaying to a female.

Colurs are so beautiful in birds.How about this one, the verditer flycatcher.

The last bird at Da Lat was the lovely Annam barbet, what a poser!

It was time to leave Vietnam, and we stopped over in Kuala Lumpur before returning home. This was very pleasant. Quite an impressive city.

There is now an even taller building

I managed to get a day out to do some final bird photography. A spectacular Barred eagle owl

and a buffy fish owl were both great as I hadnt seen any owls in Vietnam.

But the best was the fourth and final pitta, the hooded pitta.As spectacular as it’s Vietnamese cousins!

A great trip. Would love to return and explore further north, soon I hope!

Botswana

In October we went back to the Chobe river in Botswana. The previous trip in 23 was amazing and I wanted to go back to see if I could get a slightly different selection of shots. We again stayed on the Pangolin houseboat which is now new and all electric!

The wildlife was once again spectacular, though the photography was  quite different underlining the obvious fact that with wildlife , nothing is ever the same

Elephants form a large central role with great views every day, including this family crossing the river first thing one morning.

There is also lots of hippo action. On land

And in the water!

And of course, the birds are fantastic.Bee eaters are so colourful and great tp photograph.The swallow tailed is a local speciality.

Being near the water also means kingfishers! This is a pied hunting for an early breakfast at dawn one morning.

Predators were present both in and out of the water. We came across an elephant carcass floating in the river, with about 20 large crocodiles getting stuck into the free meal.

We had some lion sightings with cats near the bank of the river.

The best proved to be wild dogs. They hunted and took down an impala on the last morning.

There were also the rest of the usual cast of characters such as baboons.

And the ever present jackals.

The other big guys that we saw plenty of were buffalo.usually quite chilled but these two boys were quite frisky one morning.

They did also provide a nice sunset shot.

We also spent 5days at Shinde footsteps camp in the Okavango delta. Sadly this proved somewhat less productive , especially as we spent a lot of time looking for a leopard cub that was sighted very close to camp, but sadly proved totally elusive. 

There was a nice male lion.

Another bee eater nesting on the patch was the carmine bee eater, my favourite.

This Verreaux eagle owl was very close to camp as well.

There were black egrets around with their fascinating fishing method of producing an umbrella over their head shading the water.

Magpie shrikes are were a new bird for me.

Too soon as always, it was over! I just love Africa!

Colombia

In May We went on a great trip to photograph some of Colombias wonderful bird species.  From start to finish our great guide Daniel from Photo Wildlife Tours was superb getting to great places to see nearly all the birds I wanted. 

We started with a small target bird, the spectacular multicoloured tanager, which duly appeared and certainly lived up to its name!Along with numerous others and some lovely hummers, we were up and running!

The next morning we visited and Andean cock of the rock lek site, and although I have previously seen this birdie is one of my all time favourites so being able to photograph its extraordinary behaviour at the lek site was great.

We went onto see a huge variety of birds at different sites. They were all great, with very friendly and helpful locals helping out. I love toucans and there were two high altititude species I wanted to  see, the grey breasted mountain toucan

Like all toucans, they have quite a comical face with their huge bills.

And the black billed mountain toucan, my personal favourite.

There were many great hummers, notably the rainbow bearded thornbill which was surprisingly difficult. I spent several hours in heavy rain and low temperatures trying to get this bird only to subsequently find it in the lodge car park! 

The other beauty was the tiny Buffy helmetcrest. This bird lives up at 4000m and chasing around trying to get pictures with a heavy lens was quite hard work! Worth it though.

There were many other wonderful hummingbirds, toucans, antpittas and tanagers, but I really loved the manakins, especially the golden collared which I managed to great some great shots of at a lek site. They make an amazing snapping sound which carries through the forest. They do it by hitting their wings together. Its quite astonishing how loud it is. I used a slow-ish shutter speed to try and capture this movement.

I am also a great parrot fan and back up in the highlands we found two amazing species nesting in massive palm trees. The golden plumed parakeet.

And the endangered yellow eared parrot.

By the end of the trip I had taken tens of thousands of images! The country has such a bad reputation but it was friendly and felt completely safe. Can’t wait to go back for more!

Norway

I have always wanted to photograph puffins on a snowy background. It is a very difficult thing to do as puffins spend their winter out at sea coming into breed in the spring. By this time there is really only one place in Europe where there may still be snow on the land, the island of Hornoya in NE Norway. There is a one week window when there may still be snow and the birds are coming ashore. This year, I tried to reach it! It was a long a difficult journey due to massive air travel problems, so I didn’t reach the Varanger until 1day later than planned. The snow was still visible from the mainland so it was very exciting. Unfortunately, landing on the island is quite a tricky procedure and for the three days I was there, the harbour remained closed due to rough seas! I could literally see the snow melting as the temperature gradually rose above 0c. There were some nice photos to be taken of the area.

A couple of slightly tricky moments also occurred such as getting the car stuck in snow , leading to the bumper being ‘ripped’ off!

We then had to leave Vardo and move further north to stay at the Arctic lodge at Kongsfjord . This was very frustrating but did offer some different photo opportunities. Reindeer could be seen along the road north.

We arrived at the very pretty lodge, our base for the next couple of days.

The best of the wildlife was the lovely mountain hares that I came across. Photographing them on the snow and ice was great fun.

They whizzed around and were gorgeous!

Other goodies included the wonderful Stellers eider ducks in Batsfjord.

Some of the males were quite aggressive!

Afriendly harbour seal waved a goodbye to us.

The trip was approaching it’s end so we headed back to Vardo to try and make it onto Hornoya for the last day. Thankfully we succeeded.

That night we were trated to some very nice Northern lights.

Seeing the puffins , as well as shags, razorbills and guillemots on snow was really lovely. Makes for different photos, the name of the game!

Such cute birds.

The last minute success made it all worthwhile!

Laikipia

At the beginning of the year,I finally got the chance to visit Laikipia in northern Kenya. The reason for the visit, was to try and photograph the beautiful and now famous black leopard that lives there. She is known as Giza. I have previousely tried to photograph black leopards in India with only very limited success, so I was very excited about the trip. Prior to my arrival, there was some news filtering out that Giza was pregnant and may have had her first litter of cubs. This was confirmed on my arrival, along with the disappointing news that she had made her den in an adjacent and completely closed reserve. This was very worrying as in the past two years, she had been quite active in the day in Laikipia. This had now stopped completely! Atleast there was plenty of other wildlife in the reserve, including superb ‘spotty’ leopards like this male.

He was quite active, even late into the morning, hunting in broad daylight!

There were plenty of herbivores including the endangered Grevvys zebra with their fine stripes and big ears!

Some nice birds such as the Eastern Chanting Goshawk

The days came and went though with no sign of Giza. It was getting concerning!

The other stars in the reserve was a pack of wild dogs. We did manage to track them down and got some nice views of the pack.

These are such great predators, and I love them!

There is also a lion pride which includes Laikipia within it’s territory.

The males were quite relaxed unlike the females who stayed well hidden. The males did not have big manes, were certainly big cats!

and they had big teeth!

As the week rapidly disappeared,I became increasingly anxious, but finally, Giza decided to hunt back in Laikipia one evening. She is a very efficient huntress and caught dik-diks within minutes of starting hunting. She was truly beautiful, and everything I hoped for.

We had to use pink spotlights to see and photograph her. Horrible but necessary. Her eyes were hynotic.

As soon as she caught a dik dik, we saw the resident male approaching to steal her kill.

This was possibly because the male was using our spotlights to find an easy meal. It meant that we had to leave her alone quickly. Sad, but what a truly special cat.

After seeing Giza,I was so happy. The trip came to an end, but first,I decided to pop into Nairobi national park before my late flight home. I was able to spend the day in Kenya’s first fully electric land rover safari vehicle on it’s first day at work. It was nearly silent, very impressive, though clearly still needs a little software tweaking!

This is a very interesting park, in the city virtually. Amazing. It has a good number of rhinos like this ‘black’ rhino.

There are also plenty of ‘white’ rhinos as well, like this female and her calf.

The star for me however was another cat, the small grassland hunter called the serval.

On the out of the park, suddenly this one crossed the road.

The light was difficult, but luckily it moved into the grass where I was able to get this nice shot showing the lovely eyes of the cat.

Great trip!

Chile and The Weddell Sea

The next trip which completed an amazing year was to re-visit the Emperor penguins at Snow Hill.
A place that I had visited a few years ago and was desperate to go back to however was Torres del Paine in Chile. The chance arose as were lucky enough to be able to go back to the Antarctic and so decided to add Patagonia on first! We started by flying to Santiago. We had a days layover before heading south so went to the coast to the town of Valpariso where I was able to see these amazing Inca terns.

They were nesting in the harbour wall so able to get great views very easily.

There were seals around too, always fun!

In the afternoon, we visited a large swampy area near Santiago where I managed to grab a couple of shots of this beautiful little bird, a many coloured rush tyrant.

Then it was south to Punta Arenas Where I briefly tried to photograph condors. Climbing up the side of the cliff was really not my cup of tea, and I decided the risk of dying for the sake of a few pictures of condors was not worth it!

The drive to Torres del Paine was quite long, but the hotel Las Torres was a wonderful destination just near the spectacular Torres. 

Next morning,I headed out with Patrizio and tracker Martial to find a puma. It didn’t take long before we found one up on a hill side. We climbed up to get closer, only to find that the young female was one of two females and they were both watching the local alpha male who had a kill.Not the most attractive of individuals, but clearly, he has had an eventful life!

Over the next three days, I got some amazing views of these stunning cats. Among them was the famous ‘Petacca’ who had been the star of a BBC documentary, Dynasties .She has two large cubs, very cute.

My favourite puma was known as Frost, this beautiful grey female, a colour I had never seen before. Very photogenic.

Amazing eyes!

The days soon passed and we had to then move south . We first drove across the border to El Calafate where there is a very nice little nature reserve at which I have photographed cinereous harriers before. I went for a morning visit but the conditions were very difficult for photography due to the dreaded heat haze. It completely ruins all the photos except those taken at very close range. Frustrating, but nothing I could do. There were some nice small birds around like the spectacled tyrant.

The Austral negrito was another little star!

It was then onto Ushuaia to join the Ortelius for our journey to Snow Hill in the Waddell Sea.It is such a great privilege to visit somewhere so remote and beautiful. We were especially lucky crossing the Drake Passage which became known as the Drake pond! The weather did deteriorate however and so our entry into the Antarctic sound had to wait for ice conditions to improve. Instead we visited Whalers bay on Deception Island. This volcanic caldera is home to a group of gentoo penguins. They are very cute, but the black volcanic sand is not as attractive as snow!

Overnight we continued south and next day had  to find a way through the ice. We were quite lucky and by the end of the day, we had got close to Snow Hill Island. This is probably the most accessible of the 50 or so Emperor penguin colonies around Antarctica. The birds are on sea ice around the island and you need good conditions to get close enough to then fly by helicopter to within walking distance of the colony. This we did next morning

Emperors are the biggest penguins and have their chicks in winter. By the time we arrived in early November, the chicks are growing rapidly. They are still super cute though. 

It is so amazing to be lucky enough to visit such wonderful places, and see such amazing things.

The rookery is in a lovely setting, and we were incredibly lucky with the weather. It was actually too nice!

We were due to be stay at Snow Hill for 2 or 3 days, but the next morning there was thick fog making flying impossible. Furthermore, the ice charts suggested that there was a massive iceberg some 50miles long drifting towards our exit route to the Antarctic sound. We had been the first ship in this year, and a couple of others behind us had turned back. We therefore also had to leave earlier than planned. It happens on expeditions! We got out quick and headed to the South Shetland passing an amazing iceberg graveyard where they had all drifted up to the coast of the Antarctic peninsula.

We headed north to Half Moon Island where we stopped to enjoy the lovely scenery and the chinstrap penguins. It is amazing how they start nesting in such inaccessible places, but where ever there is bare rock, off they go! 

They are perhaps the cutest of the smaller brush tail penguins, looking like little soldiers with their helmets on!

There were also a couple of Weddell seals there along with Antartic shags.

From here we moved onto our final landing at Yankee harbour. There is a large gentoo colony here and the birds were on snow. 

Watching them walk back from the sea is lovely and there was plenty of interaction to enjoy. 

This rookery was also in a very attractive setting.

All too soon, it was back across the Drake, not quite so smooth this time. From Ushuaia to Buenos Aires where we had a lovely night at a lovely hotel, Estancia Villa Maria looking just like an English country house! I highly recommend it as an alternative to the city , but beware, the taxi driver from the airport really ripped us off, charging three times more than the transfer arranged by the hotel!

Brazil

In august I travelled to Brazil to revisit an area that I came to in 2012 and never really got the chance to revisit, the Pantanal.  The first was amazing and I actually took one of my favourite photos ever , the drinking toucan. However, I really didn’t get the jaguar shots I wanted. This was finally my chance.

I flew to Sao Paolo first and headed to the Atlantic rainforest for the first weekend. Here I wanted to see another beautiful member of the toucan family, the saffron toucanet. 

After a 5hour drive,I arrived at the lovely little lodge called ‘Trilha dos Tucanos’. I walked in and immediately saw a pair of saffrons sitting near the veranda! Amazing.

In fact, this place attracted a huge number of birds to its feeders and some of the tanagers were spectacular! This is a gorgeous green headed tanager, surely one of the most beautiful of the family

There were also a number of gorgeous parrots including these maroon bellied parakeets.

After 2 days, it was time to head back to Sao Paolo and catch a flight to Cuiaba before the long drive along the famous Transpantaneira road, another long journey. My guide Tom was amazing and immediately started finding interesting wildlife like this huge female yellow anaconda!

We reached our lodge halfway along this massively long straight road where I was staying two nights in the hope of seeing an ocelot. A bit like the toucanets, I barely had time to unpack my cameras before an ocelot appeared! Stunning. This female stayed around for about 30minutes before a young male, perhaps her son, made a fleeting appearance. 

There was also a crab eating fox that showed up.He was a local who paraded around the lodge next morning looking for scraps!

Next morning, we went out walking initially to see the local howler monkeys that Tom has been working with to help boost numbers.

Then on to find more birds like this crimson crested woodpecker

In the afternoon, a boat ride along the Pixiam river where there was an abundance of birds and caiman helping themselves to the fish therein!  This belted kingfisher was my favourite flying up and down the river trying to escape from the attention of herons and hawks  that were after the fish!

The black collared hawks were also very entertaining!

Perhaps the best sighting was this tayra, a very large and often quite shy mustelid also hunting by the river.

Later that afternoon I saw the ocelot again, then next morning , it was on to the end of the road where I would get a boat to the houseboat that would be my base for the next few days. The jaguars in this area hunt along the river system looking for caiman and capybaras. They have become very relaxed and can be seen relatively easily  So as soon as possible,I was out with Tom in a boat cruising along the river and it didn’t take long to find our first jaguar. These cats are very impressive and stunningly beautiful. Watching them was great though sitting most of the day in an open boat with temperatures in the high30s was hard work.  Worth it though as you can see.

As well as the jaguars, there is another big predator around on these rivers, giant river otters.

One afternoon we travelled upstream for a site about three hours from base to look for the very rare Brazilian maned wolf. While waiting we had great views of this tapir.

After waiting six hours we were on the edge of giving up when this stunning wolf appeared. I looked like a fox on steroids with extraordinarily long legs.

There were more lovely kingfishers like this green kingfisher

Also gorgeous hyacinth macaws

The jaguars remained the stars of the show however. What a trip! 

Thailand

So having abandoned the idea of getting to PNG, whilst in Australia we decided to try for Thailand. We arranged to meet our amazing guide Jay in Khao Lak. From here we were able to visit various sites, most notably Sri Phang Nga and Ao Phang Nga national parks. There were some extraordinary birds.

Our first morning revealed perhaps the best, the mangrove pitta.What colours, even in the deep dark forest on a wet miserable day!

The mangroves are a difficult area to be in as they are full of mosquitos, though worth it! This woodie is the streak breasted woodpecker from the forest at the edge of the mangroves.Not too different from our green woodpecker at first glance.

The mangroves were also home to two spectacular species of kingfisher. They are both quite shy so I was incredibly lucky to get great views of each.The first is the ruddy kingfisher.

This is a medium sized member of the family, while the other one is somewhat bigger, the brown winged kingfisher

That evening we stopped off at a site which Jay knew where we could look for an owl. It was a small town park near the beach and after some searching, we found this brown wood owl.

Next day, we focussed on the forests. It was quite hard as this environment is always tricky, with action all high above in the canopy. We managed to start well with some very cute monkeys, dusky langurs. They are quite happy being watched until I lifted my camera with long lens attached. I assume they were spooked by the ‘gun’ and immediately turned as moved away.I did manage a few shots.

We went into the forest where one of the rangers took me to an extremely rare and highly endangered bird, the Goulds frogmouth, a rather odd looking character!

In the forest we found a lovely and quite large bee eater, the red bearded.

Another difficult but stunning bird was the third kingfiaher. It was nesting in a stream bed that was not easy to reach. After waddling through the stream a couple of times with tripod and heavy camera, we got to the site, and waited….and waited….and waited. Eventually we gave up assuming that the chicks may have fledged. Within two minutes of leaving the site, we heard the bird flying down the stream back to the nest! We turned around and set up again, having to wait another hour before this beatiful male blue banded kingfisher appeared with breakfast.

We revisited the area of forest as we had heard another pitta calling near the park entrance. This time we were lucky to see a similarly spectacular bird, the blue winged pitta. It looks like the mangrove pitta but is not closely related.

We visited another owl site where we found this spotted wood owl

I tend to walk along in the forest looking up into the trees, but you have to keep an eye down on the ground as well!

A giant forest scorpion, and it was pretty giant!

Back at the hotel, I had some more kingfisher fun. In the gardens I spotted a collared kingfisher eating a cicada.

And a white throated kingfisher

My absolute favourite woodpecker was this stunning banded woodpecker

There were so many others, but the best remains the amazing mangrove pitta.

It was a great few days, and Jay was a superb guide. I look forward to returning to this part of SE Asia in the future to see more of the amazing wildlife there.

PNG…not!

We were all set to finally visit Papua New Guinea after years of trying to get there and being thwarted by factors out of my control, when the tragic landslide occurred. Over a thousand lives were lost, and we had to change our plans at the very last minute. Heartbreaking but we fly out to Singapore anyway. I love the Botanical gardens and always visit if I can. There is so much birdlife there. Within minutes I was snapping my first subject, the lovely olive backed sunbirds.

The much rarer and harder to see crimson sunbird also made a fleeting appearance.This was actually the one that I really wanted but I only got yhe one sighting, with him looking away most of the few seconds he was there!

A scarlet backed flowerpecker was a first for me.

There are lots of impressive water monitors wandering around the gardens and swimming in the ponds. This one was heading for 2metres long!

Water always seems to attract lots of birds. This is a white breasted waterhen skipping across the Lilly pads

And here was the first of several amazing kingfishers that I saw on the trip, a stork billed kingfisher.

Even the insects were beautiful,this is a blue carpenter bee

With PNG off the menu, we had to arrange an alternative holiday, so we then headed to Perth in Western Australia. Not the best time of year for birds but it’s a nice city and we spent a great week there. First stop as always was the botanical gardens. Some nice birds including one that I was really hoping to see, the Western Spinebill

Lots of New Holland honeyeaters as well.

Everyone that goes to Perth seems to visit Rottnest Island, and we were no exception! It is famous for the cute little marsupials called quokkas that live there. Seeing them in the settlements was a little disappointing as in spite of all the signs, people keep feeding them their junk food! I wanted to find some ‘wild’ ones, and after a bit of travelling around the island succeeded. They are very tame and happy to come very close.

The mst exciting destination however was a small national park just north of Perth called Yanchep NP. This was very pleasant and we enjoyed a nice walk seeing both western grey kangaroos

and a number of birds like the grey fantail.

We stopped for a morning coffee and suddenly heard a lot of noise as a flock of cockatoos flew overhead. I had seen some flying around during the week, but none that I could get close to. These guys hoever landed nearby. They are a local endemic called Carnaby’s black cockatoo.

The highlights however were a couple of amazing raptors that were hunting dragonflies over the swamp. The first one that I saw was a Nankeen kestrel. His tail feathers weren’t up to much but a stunning bird nonetheless.

While watching him, I suddenly saw another small falcon flash past in the background. This was a stunning Australian hobby. The amazing thing was that just days before leaving on this trip I was photographing (or trying to ) Eurasian hobby at Thursley common near home. Travel to the other side of the world and bingo, see the same thing!

It was a great few days and some unexpected bonus birds too! Whilst in Perth I managed to fix the second part of the trip, to Thailand.

Spring at home

This spring was quite productive with some nice days of photography on my patch. I was hoping to photograph the lovely great crested grebe weed dance, but never seemed to be there at the right time. Lots of courtship behaviour like head nodding

They are stunning birds, but while waiting for their performance, I enjoyed ‘playing’ with the other birds on the lake.

Fighting coots are always fun!

I didnt see the grebe dance but did see these mute swans doing their thing.

Lots of flying ducks and geese so plenty to practice bird in flight shots like this greylag.

Surely the most spectacular of ducks is the mandarin male, amazing

I was not successful at a couple of other sites which provided a grey wagtail

It was not to be, so I diverted my attention to a family of urban foxes. I spent a lot of time waiting, and managed some nice shots, initially of the vixen

Then the cubs started to appear, so cute!

and a week later…

This time of the year is also when the migratory hobbies come back from Africa, so it was off to Thursley to try and see them hunting dragonflies. They sadly seemed to only hunt very but I did get a couple of shots

It is always amazing to watch a falcon stooping at full speed

A walk along the river Wey provided this cormorant eating a young pike!

Colin the cuckoo has sadly gone from Thursley, but I did see another one

All in all, a nice spring albeit no joy with the grebes this year!