In the dictionary, “cairns” are human made piles of stones used to mark a trail or a burial site. It is pronounced as the word “care” with a distinct “n” at the end made plural and pronounced as such with the “s”. In Australia Cairns somehow ignores “ai” and is pronounced as it would be without those letters as in “cans” of tomato soup. We found ourselves often catching ourselves mispronouncing the word, only rarely in front of Australians, fortunately. Even more fortunately, mispronouncing it did not keep us off the flight from Uluru to Cairns – 4 hours over mostly mostly uninhabited land of which Australia has a lot. Cairns is on the tropical northeast coast of the country, heavy vegetation and wet and dry seasons and home to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world. In 2003, I spent 4+ days birding in the Cairns area in Eastern Australia – including north up to Cape Tribulation. My memories are nonspecific but very positive – blue skies, blue waters and lots of birds. Why not – I had 82 species and all but two of them, Osprey and Caspian Tern, were lifers. Well, maybe. At the time I was not using Ebird and I probably saw some other species that I had seen previously on that 2003 trip that never made it onto the lists I posted on Ebird many years later. Nonetheless, 80 lifers was really fun. However, I was not taking photos back then so the 80 lifers resulted in zero life photos.

When Cindy visited Australia in 2018, she, too, visited Cairns but her interests were not birds so she was occupied with the Great Barrier Reef with some snorkeling and a trip on a submersible. In 2003 I had stayed at Kingfisher Lodge, Cassowary House and Red Mill. Not sure it would have been a good idea to repeat any of those places with Cindy, but they were unavailable anyhow. We chose what looked like a fun place to stay in Port Douglas, about an hour north of Cairns. The plan was to rent a car and combine some birding with some croc spotting and maybe a visit to the Reef. Our “home” in Port Douglas was to be “Le Cher du Monde”. Online it looked – well, better than in real life. In fairness, the location was great in the heart of the very touristy Port Douglas’s “downtown” and it was “ok” and our room was quiet, but it was not what was expected – lots of stairs and no elevator, no food service of any kind, no maid service, no atmosphere, a loss of electricity one day and a mix up about beds – but we weren’t planning to spend much time in the room anyhow, so – well, ok.

I had arranged one day of guided birding with Doug Herrington, an excellent birder/guide in the area and I hoped that would cover some of what I had seen in 2003, but the 2003 list was very strong, so mostly I wanted to get as many life photos as possible and did not expect many new lifers. At the top of the list for both Cindy and me was to see and photograph a Southern Cassowary. I had seen an adult and chick briefly in 2003, but no photo. We covered a lot of areas where they were found and often saw “Cassowary Crossing” signs and even “Cassowary in Area Recently” signs but not keeping you in suspense, we never saw one. No Cassowary but before going out with Doug, we managed 59 species – one lifer, an Australian Swiftlet, and 19 life photos. After my trip with Doug Herrington the numbers would be 107 species, 4 lifers and a total of 50 life photos. Amazingly 50 of the 82 species seen in 2003 were not seen on this trip – reflecting the different habitats I visited in 2003 with much more time off the coastal area and up into the forests. The close of this post will be the full day with Doug Herrington but until then here is what we did each day – birds mixed with being tourists.

It was almost 5:00 pm when we got into Port Douglas after the flight from Uluru. On the way in I saw an interesting bird at the side of the road, a Bush Thick-knee, like a cross between a shorebird and a wader and a species I had seen only once, in Brisbane in 2003. This time I also got a photo. Another species seen before checking in was the beautiful Torresian Imperial Pigeon. Apparently these birds was just moving into the area as the Australian Autumn was approaching – equivalent to our Spring when migrants returned. We would see them in great numbers throughout our stay in the area and then again in Brisbane – another life photo.

Port Douglas has lots of nightlife and many restaurants including many on a street by the Marina which had many very impressive yachts moored there. That first night we ate at one of the restaurants, the Lichi Restaurant and Cocktail Bar described as “sophisticated with a fusion menu”. The food very good and Cindy and I both tried new seafood dishes: Barramundi for me and coral trout for her – both were very nice and would show up on our dinners again.

Cindy has this fascination with BIG reptiles. In Costa Rica it was to see crocodiles or caiman and in Africa it was again to see crocodiles and she is always hoping for an Anaconda so of course we had to go look for some big “salties” – Australian Saltwater Crocodiles. After dinner on September 17th as we planned the next day it was imperative to do a river cruise on the Daintree River to see big crocs. She found Bruce Belcher’s Daintree River Cruise and reserved two spots for 9:30 am the next morning. We got a message back that there had to be at least 4 people to make it a go, so we imagined a small boat and not too many passengers and since it was reasonably priced decided to “buy” two more spots if needed to make it a go. We shouldn’t have worried. Bruce has a big operation with several boats and there were at least 8 other people there for the 9:30 trip when we arrived. Their promotional material said they were “keen bird watchers with a good eye for crocodiles and tree snakes”. Crocodiles? Yes. Birds? Not so much. But we did see several crocodiles and they did take us to see a roosting Papuan Frogmouth but I was the one who pointed out an Australasian Darter, Forest Kingfisher and Sacred Kingfisher. The Frogmouth, Darter and Forest Kingfisher were all life photos. I had seen and photographed the Sacred Kingfisher in Sulawesi. Leaving the river, I also got a life photograph of a Whistling Kite. The crocodiles were all resting on the riverbank which was fine by us and we got close up excellent looks.

After our crocodile adventure we continued north up to Daintree National Park and Cape Tribulation including crossing the Daintree River on the small ferry. We were constantly on the lookout for a Southern Cassowary and were constantly disappointed. But the scenery was beautiful, either the tropical forest or the beautiful Coral Sea eventually reaching Thornton Beach which I had visited in 2003. A couple of new birds for the trip, no lifers and a single and very pleasing life photo of a Macleay’s Honeyeater.

Time to head back so we turned south and I caught site of what looked like a wetland near Wonga Beach. It turned out to be the Wonga Beach Barra Farm – a manmade series of ponds where Barramundi (the same fish I had eaten the night before) are farmed and and then available (at a price) to be caught by the public to be taken home and eaten. Barramundi are also known as Asian Sea Bass. They can get to be as large as 6 feet and 180 pounds but average 2 to 4 feet and the farm raised ones are much smaller. We pulled into the parking lot just as everyone seemed to be leaving and indeed they were closing operations for the day. I had hoped to be able to get a quick non-paying walk into the facility and if not then to walk along the fenced in area from a side road. Here is another prime case where we kept meeting wonderful Australians. Despite their closing, they invited us in to not only get a couple of photo ops of birds there, but to walk around with them as they were feeding the fish to get a look at the Baramundis and hear about the operation. Fun and interesting – and – there were some birds including several Radjah Shelducks which were the ones I had seen from the road and got my attention in the first place. That was a life photo and I also got a life photo of a Bar-shouldered Pigeon. Other birds there were three species of egrets (Eastern Cattle, Little and Plumed), Pied Stilts, a Laughing Kookaburra and a fly-over Osprey.

We continued south and in the town of Mossman, I saw some birds perched on a wire that I assumed were doves or pigeons but you have to check out every bird you can. Thankfully I did as they were all Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos and then a few hundred yards further down the street there was a large flock of Metallic Starlings, two more life photos.

A last stop was at the Wildlife Habitat facility at the turn-ff into Port Douglas. After a u-turn, we found that what I had thought were Australian Ibis in the palm trees were actually Magpie Geese, and more flew in to roost in the trees as we watched, and across the street, now in diminishing light was a Helmeted Friarbird. I would get better photos of each later, but these were both life photos – a great way to close out the Cassowary-less but none-the-less excellent day with 11 life photos!! We closed the night with another good dinner at one of the marina area restaurants.

There was a small kitchenette in our hotel in Port Douglas and we had bought milk, granola, orange juice and some fruit which we had for our breakfasts – as there was no food service of any kind at the hotel. There was, however, a small cafe next to the hotel and each morning we had coffee and a pastry there before heading out. The coffee was not as good as in Melbourne but better than at Uluru and a welcome start for the day. On September 19th we would be heading a bit west into the area bordering the Tablelands, one of the areas where I had stayed back in 2003. Specifically we went looking for Kingfisher Park, one of those 2003 places where I had great birds – 35 species of which 27 would have been new for this trip. We made a first stop at the Cattana Wetlands, an Ebird Hotspot. It was pretty quiet. We ran into two local birders who said the same thing and we found no waterbirds at all.. The biggest disappointment was the Green Oriole that was singing right over our heads somewhere but could not be found even with coaxing with some playback. I did get life photos of an Orange Footed Megapode and of Willie-Wagtail, a common black and white flycatcher that did indeed constantly wag its tail.

Then we began our search for Kingfisher Park Birder’s Lodge. We had excellent GPS directions and followed them precisely leading us to – a spot on the road in the forest in an area that had a few residences – no sign of any lodge. We drove around and tried a different GPS source with the same result. We stopped a woman walking in the neighborhood and she had heard of Kingfisher Lodge and gave us some directions that took us close to the same place we had stopped before but no Lodge. However, persevering, not far away we found a worn track into the forest with an old beat up sign that said “kingfisher”. It was barely the width of our vehicle, but we followed it to a garage/workshop with a car parked alongside and got out. A bit further in there was what looked like a residence. We approached and could hear a television inside and called out “hello”. No response for 5 minutes and then a woman came out who told us that it was no longer a lodge but had occasional guests. I have no specific memory of my visit in 2003, but find it hard to believe that I could have been there. The lady told us that cassowaries did come by and were found all through the area, but the regular one had been through a couple of hours earlier and probably would not return for hours. An Australian Brushturkey walked down the road and gave me my life photo, but that was it. So much for reliving old memories – at least that one. In 2003 I had also birded the Cairns Esplanade and we decided to head on into the City and maybe have better luck.

Among other reasons to visit the Esplanade, it can be a great place for shorebirds. In 2003, my Ebird list for the Esplanade had only 11 species, 8 of which were shorebirds, and half of those were ones for which I still did not have photos: Gray Tattler, Greater Sand-Plover, Little Curlew and Broad-billed Sandpiper. Hopes were high to see them again and get pictures. This time we saw 29 species, and again 8 were shorebirds, none of the targets. A Kelp Gull was a continuing rarity but I had seen and photographed one elsewhere earlier and a very odd leucistic Pied Oystercatcher was a challenge tio ID . A Nordmann’s Greenshank had been seen at the Esplanade the previous year and a local birder I met thought one of the shorebirds we saw might be it again but unfortunately it was only a Common Greenshank – not the would be lifer.

But there were a few treats – life photos of a Pacific Reef Heron, a Varied Honeyeater and an Australian Swiftlet, with many of the latter seen. This would be one of those odd stories that happens in birding. As mentioned, I had met another birder/photographer there – a very nice fellow originally from South Africa. He knew the local birds and at first we started looking for a Rose Crowned Fruit-Dove which he said could be found in some large trees near the northern end of the Esplanade where we were biding. I don’t know how the goal changed but he had received a photo of a nest with a Double-eyed Fig Parrot in it located further south on the Esplanade. Cindy was game so off we went. It was a very long walk as the tree was much further south than expected and when we got there we found the parrot-less nest hole and then it was a very long walk back with no time now to look for the Fruit Dove. As it turned out, I got the Fig Parrot later in the trip and never did see the Fruit Dove – but it was fun visiting with the fellow and we did get a lot of exercise at a very pretty place. But I got a life photo of a Peaceful Dove on our walk. I am also including a portfolio of other nice photos from the visit.

Catching the Terek Sandpiper in flight was a treat. I first saw this species in Wajima, Japan in 1983 without a photo. In July this year, one made a surprise visit to a Sewage Treatment Plant in Snohomish County, Washington, about 30 miles from my home. It became my life photo. This one is much better. It was about an hour to get back to Port Douglas. A comment is in order here. Originally we had planned to spend this day going out to the Great Barrier Reef on one of the many excursion boats leaving from either Cairns or Port Douglas. I am not a water person, poor swimmer and snorkeling is a challenge. Cindy had done this on her earlier visit and we looked at trips using glass bottomed boats. On close look none of the trips were that appealing and Cindy said she was ok to skip the activity. I wish I was able to snorkel as I am sure it would have been amazing. Another time where Cindy probably sacrificed for me.

Cindy and I were both scheduled to go out with Doug Herrington on September 24th. I got a surprise message from him that another birder would be joining us. This would be a “hard core” birding day which would inevitably include some of those LBJ’s (“Little Brown Jobs”) that are the part of birding Cindy does not like so she decided to sit it out and explore Port Douglas. Although there were some awesome birds that day, it was probably a good decision on her part as there were definitely some tedious moments including a visit to a trailer park that was very birdy but admittedly not that scenic. Doug was going to pick me up at the hotel around 7:00 am. I got a much better Helmeted Friarbird photo as I waited. The other birder was a Britisher about my age and more into photography than birding. We took turns being in the front and back passenger seats and all worked well.

We would make 11 stops during the day and since Doug did not use Ebird, I did my best to enter species as we found them. When we were done, our species list was 76 species and I had added 3 lifers and 31 life photos. I am pretty sure I missed some heard only species but think I got all of the ones seen. The lifers were Black Faced Monarch, Australian Bustard and Pheasant Coucal. I got photos of the first two but the latter was heard more than once and clearly but never seen so not photographed. Doug was an excellent guide and knew the birds and their special locations well. I never would have found many if not most of the species without his special knowledge. The trailer park – they are called caravan parks in Australia – was not scenic but it was very birdy with 21 species including 12 life photos.

It took less than 15 minutes to get to the Warri Park Wetland in Port Douglas and my first life photo – an Australasian Grebe with a second life photo, Comb-crested Jacana a minute later. This was quickly followed with a stop at the Ferrero Road Wetland also in Port Douglas where we had more than 100 Magpie Geese and 35 Plumed Whistling Ducks (a life photo) and 3 Green Pygmy Geese (another life photo). I also had another really good photo of a Straw Necked Ibis – photographed previously when in Melbourne. The pace slowed down as Doug made our way to a stakeout roosting spot for a cooperative Brahminy Kite. I had previously photographed one in Sulawesi in 2023. Next up was a beautiful Black Necked Stork, a species I had last seen, and photographed, in India in 2011.

So it was a good and fast paced start, and we slowed a bit until we reached a special treat at Mary Farms Road in the Tablelands and which delighted us with a lifer displaying male Australian Bustard plus more males and a number of females. I got life photos of Tree Martin, Torresian Crow and Red-backed Fairy-Wren and nice shots of the beautiful Rainbow Bee-Eater.

Around 10:30 am we arrived at the Mt. Carbine Caravan Park. We would spend an hour and a half there – a place often birded by Doug and with some terrific birds, Doug knew many of the people at the park and many of them knew the birds. We had 21 species with photos of 17 of them of which 12 were life photos, and this is where I had my lifer Black Faced Monarch. The really special birds were Blue-winged Kookaburra, Squatter Pigeon, an Apostlebird, a Little Friarbird, a Tawny Frogmouth, Pale-headed Rosella, and a dozen Great Bowerbirds, including one in its bower. That list leaves out life photos of Pied Butcherbird, Blue-faced Honeyeater, Spangled Drongo and White Bellied Cuckooshrike. Lots of photos.

It was particularly fun to see the bowerbird in its bower. Note the various items strewn on the ground in front. The bower is not a nest. It is a stage built and decorated with those items to display the prowess of the male to nearby females. If they are impressed and approve, they will mate with the male. Later in the trip we will see the bower of the Satin Bowerbird. It is decorated only with blue items, probably connected to to the satiny feathers of the male with a bluish sheen. Bird mating rituals are amazing. Although they were seen and photographed many times during our trip, perhaps my best photos of the omnipresent Rainbow Lorikeets were at this caravan park.

After lunch we visited the Abattoir Swamp in Julatten. It produced six new life photos and two near misses. The near misses were the lifer Pheasant Coucal which was heard only and the Lovely Fairy-Wren which buried itself in foliage and darted constantly just barely in view and I was never able to get a photo – opportunities lost and probably never to be repeated, but six life photos was great.

At the end of McDougall Road also in Julatten, we kept adding species including finding a Double-eyed Fig-Parrot, the species we had unsuccessfully chased at the Cairns Esplanade. It is a tiny colorful parrot that Doug kept hearing. Eventually we found one in the open, a treat for the yes and it felt good to find one that had been missed. Altogether it was another 5 life photos.

Doug had saved a very special stop until the end. Off Mount Kooyong Road in Julatten, Doug took us to a day roost for a pair of Papuan Frogmouths – a mother and juvenile. Fabulous photo ops of these bizarre birds. Since this is the final find of the day and it is such a cool species, I am attaching several photos.

Back to Port Douglas and another good dinner. Cindy had roamed around the city and got some rest. She was ready for our next adventure – flying to Brisbane the next morning. The species list for the trip was now 190 with 33 lifers and 138 life photos – so far so good.

Virgin Airlines flight 1681 departed Melbourne at 12:50 p.m. on September 15th and arrived at Uluru at 3:40 p.m. We picked up our rental car and drove the short distance to our hotel, Sails in the Desert. Cindy had stayed there before on her Australia visit with her cousin in 2017 and really enjoyed her visit to this isolated place in Central Australia in the Australian Outback. I had not been there when I visited in 2003, remaining only on the East Coast. We would be there for only two nights, driving around Ayers Rock the next day and then going to a Sunset and Light Show that night and then flying to Cairns the next day. What a difference from Melbourne about as un-urban as you could get. I will complain here just this once and then let it go. Everything was very expensive – the flight, the hotel, the car, the food and the Sunset package. We would probably not include Uluru again, but it was an important memory for Cindy and I am glad I saw it, but just too expensive and maybe even if it would have been even more expensive, we should have stayed at least another day and explored more of the countryside.

Ayers Rock/Uluru is a 500 million year old sandstone monolith standing 1142 feet high and is one of the world’s largest monoliths. It is sacred to the Anangu aboriginal people in the area and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has many springs, caves and ancient paintings. Before the COVID pandemic about 400,000 people visited the site each. The number has dropped significantly since then but is rebounding. It is a semi-arid climate with occasional frost and highs that can reach well into the 90’s Fahrenheit with little humidity. During our visit, the days were comfortably in the low 70’s and at night it cooled into the low 50’s. We had 1 minute of rainfall!

Despite there being much more grass and more trees than I expected, birdlife was much scarcer than expected and I missed one species that I wanted as much as any on the trip and was supposed to be readily found in the area. This is a Spinifex Pigeon – a gorgeous pigeon with a very prominent crest. I picked up a lifer Yellow Throated Miner at our hotel as soon as I arrived and the following day added 6 more lifers with photos of all and another life photo as Cindy and I drove around the rock and “hiked” some short trails.

So all in all I was pleased with the birding at Uluru – especially since it was not our focus, but I really had expected to find that Spinifex Pigeon, definitely a striking bird. The photos below show its similar looking cousin a Crested Pigeon, seen everywhere on our trip including at Uluru – cool, but check out that Spinifex Pigeon not my photo, one from Ebird. Also a few photos of species seen before on the trip but maybe better here.

But as I said, birding was not our focus. Being near Ayers Rock was, and we had a beautiful morning to do so. We only had the one day and were also constrained by needing to return the rental car to the airport by 3:30 pm. It was ridiculously expensive to rent the car for an additional day and since we would be flying out the next morning and had a group event that evening, we would not get much benefit out of the additional time. There was a free shuttle between our hotel and the airport – timed to match the flight schedules, so we had to have the car back in time to catch the shuttle.

Ayers Rock is about a 20 minute drive from Sails in the Desert and to drive the entire way around the rock without stopping is about the same, but it is worth making many stops as there are many features that can only be appreciated up close. There are caves and waterholes that have been in use for centuries. You are no longer allowed to access the caves or climb the rock but there are a number of places to park and get different perspectives of the rock. These photos give a sense of this.

On earlier trips to Australia – me in 2003 and Cindy in 2018 we had each purchased art pieces directly from aboriginal artists. They are together in our foyer. Now we hoped to find another piece that we could acquire together. There were several artists sitting on the grass at a lawn gallery at the Ayers Rock resort but none of their pieces were just right. Original art was also for sale at two galleries there. The art was much more expensive when Cindy and I had bought our pieces but still reasonable. We finally found a piece we liked and bought it. We don’t have a photo of it (shame on us) and it is out being framed right now so I will come back and add it to this blog post later.

Visiting Ayers Rock, like many other places in Australia has many commercial tourism enterprises. Here they are often related to seeing sunrises or sunsets on/at the rock. In other places these opportunities focus on crocodiles, river cruises, kangaroos, koalas or reefs. We had signed up for a sunset viewing – and a field of lights. Big mistake as the sunset was behind us, not shining on the rock or highlighting it from behind. There were lights, a gigantic field of lights that were something akin to fields of flowers, but especially at this natural and sacred spot, it seemed like an intrusion of modern technology. We won’t be going back to Uluru even if we return to Australia someday, but if we do, we will pass on this program.

Time to go – back to the airport on the shuttle and then onto another Qantas flight headed for Cairns (pronounced “cans”) in Northeastern Australia. The flight was almost 4 hours – Australia is a BIG country! We would rent a car at the airport and drive north to Port Douglas and that adventure will be shared in my next blog post.

It was a short flight from Sydney to Melbourne on Qantas Airlines – about 90 minutes. We had originally planned to rent a car but changed that plan when we decided to spend much of our time in a city which everyone had raved about. So again it was an Uber from the airport to our hotel – but unfortunately we confused the Holiday Inn and the Holiday Inn Express Little Collins, an error we learned about when we arrived at the former and found that they had no reservation for us. Fortunately they did at the latter, and while it meant some lost time and yet another Uber ride, it turned out to be a great location within walking distance of several places we wanted to see and also convenient to Melbourne’s excellent tram system. Not fancy but comfortable and quiet with a “free” breakfast that was adequate, if basic. We had dinner that first night at “The Bank on Collins” – cavernous, convenient and ok food.

There was a giant surprise awaiting us in Melbourne. When we planned our trip the NFL had not yet finalized its 2026 schedule. Surprise – the day after our arrival the hated Rams and hated 49ers (we are solid Seahawks fans) were going to play in Melbourne and the city was full of fans in NFL jerseys and hats – more SF than LA but with many fans of other NFL teams as well including Seattle. Many fans had come over from the US but many were Australians who were fans of “American footie” as well. We were almost constantly among some of the fans – restaurants, parks, trams, everywhere. Everyone asked if we were there for the game and we always responded that we were not, that we had not even known about it when we made our plans, that we were Seahawks fans and that we wanted both teams to lose (which would mean a tie) but if we had to choose, we wanted the Rams to lose more. It was a very fun environment. We later watched a few moments of the game on a screen at a restaurant that was visible from outside. Rams were losing – good!

There were three things that were definitely on our Melbourne agenda. One was that we were going to rent a car for one day and drive at least part of the famous Great Ocean Road. Another was that I had arranged a day of birding with a local bird guide, Christian Doerig, originally concentrating on the Werribee Water Treatment Plant, but unfortunately access was closed due to an Avian flu scare, so it would be elsewhere. The third key item on our to-do list was to drink coffee. As said before, everyone who had been there told us that Melbourne was a fantastic city, one of if not the best they had visited. And they almost always put coffee at the top of their list of its assets.

After those three “gottas”, we wanted to be part of the city, taking in a museum or two, a park or two and some of Melbourne’s funky/arty/cool neighborhoods. On our first morning in Melbourne after breakfast at the hotel, we visited a cafe/restaurant that several people told us had the best coffee in Melbourne – Brunetti’s – officially Brunetti Oro – an Italian Pasticceria founded by Giorgio Angele in 1991. It surpassed our very high expectations and may rank as our favorite food experience anywhere, anytime. Not only was the coffee totally exceptional, so too were the desserts, the pastries, the pizzas, the cakes, the cheeses, the cornetti, the wine, the cannoli’s, the everything!!! And it is beautiful!! Their coffee is a special Brunetti/Lavazza blend and their espresso drinks – we favored the lattes – were different than anything we had ever tasted – although many of the coffee drinks in Melbourne and Sydney were similar and extraordinary – rich, thick, frothy, blended, strong, smooth and many other adjectives. I admit being a great fan of pastries and particularly almond filled croissants. The problem here was that while the croissants looked amazing, so did a multitude of other pastries and cakes. If I lived in Melbourne I would visit every day and gain many many pounds.

Our next stop was close by – Federation Square which is described as a major cultural and civic center. Among other things it is home to the ACMI, Australian Center for Moving Image and the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. We visited the latter, the world’s firs museum dedicated exclusively to Australian Art. It has a wonderful collection including some wonderful aboriginal art.

Time again for food and we found a cool restaurant offering “American Food” which fortunately included tacos which we ordered and enjoyed. Melbourne is a very foodie place and we saw restaurants offering food from – well, anywhere and everywhere. Fancy and not – fast food and formal. The architecture was also wonderful with super modern buildings, solid edifices from the “colonial or Victorian period” and artsy touches that made our visit much fun. This was enhanced on this day by the enormous number of football fans that seemed to be everywhere, often 49er and Ram fans in the same crowd – no fights. As was often the case, little details made parts of our visit memorable – including some pretty cool toilet paper (I have never included that in any blog post but as is befitting if you look at the photo – Who gives a crap!!).

After lunch we visited two beautiful shopping arcades with splendid mostly high-end stores and architectural touches that were feasts for the eyes. The Royal Arcade, dating back to 1870, was the first shopping arcade/mall in the City. The Royal Arcade was grand, but The Block Arcade was grander – with marvelous detailing including fabulous floors. Interesting that the website for the Royal Arcade has a listing of “our stores” while The Block Arcade website lists “our boutiques”. Both had lovely retail shops with mostly expensive options interestingly including a men’s shop with an onsite barber and “shaving products” (Royal) and Truefitt & Hill – advertised as the world’s oldest barbershop (The Block) among many jewelers, food options, chocolates and spices.

Our day had provided a great mélange of urban delights but it was time for some birds. Ebird research suggested that a visit to Albert Park with a large lake might be good. Uber time again, and again a bit of a mix-up. Just as we had the wrong Holiday Inn to start our visit, we also had Uber go to the wrong Albert Lake location – a neighborhood rather than the intended park. Our driver added a new route and we finally arrived around 3:30 p.m. I only added three new birds for the trip: Little Raven, Long Billed Corella, and Red Wattlebird, but all were both lifers and life photos. I also got life photos of Black Swan, Crested Pigeon, Australasian Swamphen, Little Pied Cormorant, and Red Rumped Parrot. We misjudged some distances and ended up walking several miles – but worth it for the birds and good exercise to work off our caloric intake. Dinner was at the Doju Restaurant in Melbourne – nice atmosphere, good Korean-style food – pricey.

Our second full day in Melbourne was our day to travel the Great Ocean Road, an Australian National Heritage-listed 240-kilometre (150 mi) stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia, between the Victorian towns of Torquay and Allansford. Torquay is more than an hour from downtown Melbourne. Built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932, and dedicated to soldiers killed during World War I, the road is the world’s largest war memorial. It provides incredible ocean views, swimming and surfing beaches, and some curvy two lane roads. To do it justice from start to end requires at least a full day (not including return) to cover it all. We knew we would only be able to experience maybe half the road, but with yet more good weather, it was a can’t miss opportunity that would provide beautiful scenery, birding opportunities, good food and some off-road attractions that might provide opportunities to see wildlife like kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas. We found a car rental not far from our hotel and after breakfast were on the road – my first driving experience on the left side of the road since my last visit to Australia in 2003, when I was admittedly somewhat younger. It took some serious concentration and it was particularly hard on Cindy as passenger as we were on very narrow roads with no aprons and some challenging spots. But we persevered and had a great trip – despite some GPS challenges.

In addition to the many scenic spots, surfer views, nice restaurants and great weather, there were also super birds and without really trying too hard, we had 38 species including 4 lifers and 21 life photos. Cindy found a “kangaroo tour” at the Anglesea Golf Club. We took a chance and arrived before the next scheduled group tour and got a private tour for just the two of us. Kangaroos were plentiful and not the least bit bothered by tourists which enabled us to get up very close even to females with joeys in their pouches.

Day 3 in Melbourne was again an urban day with just a little bit of birding at one city park – Carlton Gardens. On that day we braved travel in the City on the tram system. It is free within a central area and then pretty inexpensive for further travel. We learned from Melbourne riders that it was common practice to add a couple of stops onto the “free area” without payment. We happily obliged and travel was easy. Our main objective was to visit the Fitzroy neighborhood – actually a bohemian inner-city suburb of Melbourne full of artsy shops, many restaurants, tattoo clad denizens and a very chic trendy vibe. Melbourne is a big city (population over 5 million) and in the CBD and downtown retails areas, it certainly felt that way with crowds on every street. Fitzroy was less hectic but exciting and we were not even there at night. We had a good lunch at a Colombian restaurant and also visited Carlton Gardens which was fairly close by and contains the imposing and stately Royal Exhibition Building. I added a life photo of a Chestnut Teal at one of the ponds, but replaced it with a much better photo the next day.

When I knew I was going to visit Melbourne, I was excited for many reasons. I had heard over and over how it was just a great urban place and I also knew that it was new habitat for me – for new birds and new photos. A birding friend, Bruce Berman, said that I had to visit the Werribee Western Treatment Plant – a can’t miss place. Birders are often attracted to STP’s (sewage treatment plants) mostly for water related birds – waders, ducks, shorebirds etc. But my research showed that this location offered more than water birds and it quickly got to the top of my list. Our initial plan was to rent a car for the entire time there so that we could drive the Great Ocean Road and also bird places like Werribee among others. But as much as I enjoy birding on my own, I have learned that it is not as productive as birding with a guide who knows the area and the local birds and where to find them – specifically not generally, so I reached out to find a guide. I had success contacting Simon Starr at Firetail Birdwatching Tours https://www.birdingvictoria.com.au/melboure-birdwatching-tours who hooked me up with Christian Doerig for September 14th, the last day we would be in Melbourne. Christian was a great communicator and turned out to be not just a great guide but also great company. As our trip approached, Christian told us that unfortunately access to Werribee was closed but assured us that we would have good birding near the plant and elsewhere along a route that would include some repetition of our own Ocean Road travels.

Our day with Christian was great in every way even though there were gray skies around Werribee in the early morning. He picked us up at our hotel at 6:15 a.m. and we were at the Werribee WTP around 7 a.m. and started seeing birds – not as close as if we had full access and the gray skies hindered some photo ops, but we were getting new birds. I could not tell the areas apart but we were also at Avalon Beach and I am combining those two areas here. In about an hour and a half, we had 59 species – 5 lifers and 20 life photos. The temptation is to include photos of them all but I am going to restrain myself and just include faves or special ones – still alot.

Our next stop was at Coogoorah Park near the Anglesea Golf Course that we had visited two days earlier on our Great Ocean Road sojourn. In addition to some species we had seen on our earlier visit, we added a super new lifer Blue Winged Parrot – which came in to a very specific nesting location known by Christian and we also got life photos of Fan-tailed Cuckoo, Gray Teal and the lovely little Spotted Pardalote.

Our next stop was very special as we went onto the beach at Point Roadknight, a beautiful spot, and by the time we had reached the coast, the gray skies had been replaced by blue skies and with the surf coming in, it was glorious. And so were the birds which were found only due to Christian’s knowledge and diligence. Christian thought there was a chance to find the quite uncommon Hooded Plover, a South Australian endemic. At first we found nothing on the beach but did see a very distant white spot on the ocean that turned out to be a White-Capped Albatross, a bird I had seen and photographed on a Capetown pelagic trip in 2014. Undaunted we crossed some rocks on the beach and moved to a different spot where Christian pointed out three more dots – this time on the beach and they were the Hooded Plovers, gorgeous little black, white, and brown plovers about the size of our Semipalmated Plovers and with a red eye ring and a mostly red bill. We were able to get quite close and got great photos. Further along the beach we had distant views of two more lifers, Pacific Gull and Sooty Oystercatchers and in shrubs near the beach, we found a lifer Singing Honeyeater. What a collection!

One more great bird before lunch – at Split Point, where there is a famous lighthouse, Christian knew that a Rufous Bristlebird was a good possibility. We heard it and then coaxing in with some brief playback – Bingo! We had struck up a conversation and the Bristlebird ran along a driveway with a gate. It went back and forth several times giving a chance for a crappy photo and then it finally perched on a branch in the open and serenaded us – a much better photo op for this uncommon skulking endemic lifer.

Continuing on just off the Great Ocean Road we ventured onto the Iron Bark Drive Nature Trail in the Great Otway National Park where we ate the sandwiches we had picked up for lunch and I added three life photos – White Throated Treecreeper, Eastern Yellow Robin and one of my favorites, an Eastern Spinebill. I also got a much better photo of the beautiful Crimson Rosella.

There would be two more stops – each with a water feature. At the Aireys Inlet Water Reclamation Facility. I had a lifer Australian Shelduck and at Lake Lorne, I got a lifer Blue Billed Duck, really good photos of two other ducks, Hardhead and Chestnut Teal and the Royal Spoonbill, and a lifer photo of the strange looking Pink Eared Duck.

That was it for the day, and quite a day it was: 11 hours with 9 stops, 97 species, 14 lifers and 37 life photos. Christian had a good time and we could not have asked for more. Below is a picture Cindy took of Christian and me perched precariously on some rocks watching the Pacific Gull and Sooty Oystercatchers. And I know I have posted a photo of the Superb Fairywren from two days earlier but I want to include a fun photo of one for this wonderful day, too.

The next morning we would be flying off to Uluru in the Australian Outback. We truly loved Melbourne and environs for food, people, birds, and its fun vibe. Being there for the first NFL game in Australia was a weird but fun bonus – especially since the L.A. Rams were throttled. We highly recommend Melbourne to all Australia visitors and would definitely include a visit on any return trip. We met many young people from other countries during our visits – mostly wait staff at restaurants there on short term work visas as there is a shortage of workers in many areas and many fields. Many liked Melbourne but we often heard that it was just too cold there – it is in the South (equivalent to our North), but we had great weather (sweaters a couple of days/nights) and think its weather is most like San Francisco which is similar in many other ways as well. Birding was fun and excellent: 108 species, 22 lifers and 67 life photos. The trip list was at 110 species and we were barely a third into it…many more birds, and much else to come.

On September 5, 2003, after very long flights – first from Seattle to Los Angeles and then from Los Angeles to Sydney, I was ready to do some birding. This would be my first international trip devoted entirely to birding since a trip with friends to Trinidad and Tobago in May 1978. I had set up every detail on my own online which in 2003 was not as omnipresent in our lives as it is today. The plan was to spend some time in Sydney, then fly to Brisbane where I would meet the only guide I had arranged during the trip, then go further north to Cairns and then return to Sydney. Including travel time, the trip would be for 22 days with much of it being by car – my first experience driving on the left side of the road. It was a great trip without any mishaps. At the start of the trip, my world life list was 987 species and I had photos of only a single species, a Black-necked Swan that I had taken while on what was primarily a fishing trip to Argentina in March 1989. It is a poor photo at best but I include it as a good comparative starting place.

I had a basic point and shoot camera on this Australia trip, but I was not interested in taking bird photos and was just becoming interested in building a life list. Australia would be a great place for this new interest since most of the birds were very different from ones I had seen anywhere else. That proved to be true as evidenced by the fact that I saw 271 species on that trip and 256 were new lifers – the only overlap with previous observations being mostly waders and shorebirds and “junk birds” like House Sparrow, European Starling and Rock Pigeon. I did take some bird photos – seven to be exact – and that is the segue to the purpose of this blog post – the first with more to come about my return to Australia – again after very long flights – this time from Seattle to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo arriving in Sydney on September 8th. Unlike in 2003, I was not alone, now accompanied by wife Cindy, and although she enjoys birding and is very supportive of this passion of mine, also unlike 2003, this trip would include some birding but would also savor other offerings from “Down Under”.

After the two long flights, we took an Uber to the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth which would be home for two nights and which thankfully allowed us to check in many hours early – a welcomed pleasure after those long mostly sleepless flights. It was a great hotel at a great location, essentially across the street from the Royal Botanic Gardens, my first birding stop in 2003 as it would be again on this trip. It is a great park with ponds and birds and incredible plants and full of people enjoying its beauty, and a break from the busy life of the City. In 2003 the first two species I encountered at the park were an Australian Ibis and a Rainbow Lorikeet, both lifers of course. I have no memory as to why but I also took pictures of those first two birds – life pictures #2 and #3. Maybe it is a reflection of my skill as a birder, or of jet lag, or from changes at the Gardens between 2003 and 2026, but I only had 7 other species on my Ebird report for that visit. And to be accurate, I was not using Ebird at the time, as it had only been introduced the year before and was not generally in use. I kept paper lists and only later would I enter that data into Ebird. One of the other species seen in 2003 was a Pied Currawong, another lifer, highlighted because it will be an important species for my 2026 return to the Garden.

Cindy and I went to the Gardens after a short rest at the hotel. Just outside of the park, just before entering, we saw two species – an Australian Ibis and a Rainbow Lorikeet – immediately building a bridge to my first visit almost exactly 23 years earlier. Now, taking pictures (sometimes of sufficient quality to be considered “photographs”) is important to me and while I did not necessarily expect many new life species on this trip, a major goal was to get photos of as many of the species seen but not photographed in 2003 as I could. Since somehow I had taken pictures of these two in 2003, they would not be life photos, but although common and would be seen again and again on our trip, they are pretty spectacular birds and made for good first photos for this trip.

It was a lovely day with temperatures in the low 60’s (Fahrenheit not Celsius as used in Australia and almost everywhere except the U.S.) and we spent a long while exploring the Gardens with binoculars, and now cameras, at the ready for new species and new photos. I quickly added a photo of an Australian Magpie followed by an important photo of a Pied Currawong. It was important because the photos of the Magpie was life photo #2999, so it became a milestone photo #3000 – a goal I had set two years ago and just missed reaching it in Vietnam earlier this year.

Other species seen and all photographed were Maned and Pacific Black Ducks, Dusky Moorhen, Australasian Figbird, Noisy Miner, Masked Lapwing, Silver Gull, Little Black Cormorant, Welcome Swallow and last but not least, an iconic species of Australia, the Laughing Kookaburra. None were life species, but all except the Pacific Black Duck and Dusky Moorhen were life photos – a pattern of getting photos of most species seen, that would hold true through most of the trip.

The visit to the Royal Botanical Garden had been a good start to the visit and a good start for my birding, but despite our bodies being confused by the long flight and time difference, we thought it best to try to set some kind of schedule so we grabbed lunch at the Grand Cafe Eatery which was on the ground floor of the Chifley Office building just across from both our hotel and the Royal Botanic Gardens It was also an easy and excellent place for coffee and breakfast and we had a breakfast of coffee and croissants there on each morning we were in Sydney. We were tired and needed some sleep so we returned to the comfort of the hotel and closed our eyes for some rest.

A recurring problem during our visit was the challenge of finding good places for dinner. Many would be choices were fully booked with reservations until after 8 pm – late for us. With our pretty loose schedules it was hard to get reservations. Also many of the restaurants were more expensive than we wished – not necessarily overpriced, but with only large heavy choices. On our first night in Sydney we ran into the reservation problem and ended up having hamburgers and fries at the Luca Pub.

I returned to the Royal Botanic Garden early on the morning of September 9th and added 3 new species to both my life list and life photo list. The most charismatic of the three was a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. Australia is home to more than 55 species of parrots and cockatoos, many quite spectacular. By the end of this trip I will have seen 19 of these species, so there is definitely incentive tor make a return visit someday. Again no lifers but it was gratifying to keep adding new life photos.

Cindy joined me for breakfast at the Grand Cafe. Two matters of note: first, the coffee there (and stay tuned for more about coffee) and almost everywhere in Australia, was excellent; second, we were struck by the dressiness of the patrons, ourselves excluded, men in suits and sport jackets, although not necessarily with ties and the women also in business attire – few in slacks and definitely none in jeans. By comparison, these folks, who we called the “black and whites”, were the dressiest we saw in Australia and also the least friendly. Not negative but unlike people almost everywhere else, just not engaging with us, caught up in their own stories and the arc of their careers.

Cindy and I had each visited Sydney on our earlier separate trips to Australia and were not focused on activities here for this trip, so we did not have a specific “to do” list and thus did not include a visit to its world famous and iconic Sydney Opera House, admittedly an architectural landmark. After our coffee, we headed off to “the Rocks” a Sydney neighborhood adjacent to the Harbor with fun shops, galleries and restaurants. It was where the first immigrant and criminal “visitors” to Australia first landed and then settled. No longer rundown, and with a view of the Sydney Opera House, it is very appealing. It is also the mooring spot for the hard to miss enormous cruise ship docked there. It was the Carnival “Splendor” which has 13 passenger decks, a crew of 1,150 and up to 3,012 passengers and is almost 1,000 feet long. Surprisingly when we asked shops about tourist business from the cruise ships, we heard that most of them boarded buses for excursions and did not shop in the area. Nonetheless the restaurants were busy and we enjoyed the shops without hordes of cruisers. Australia is famous for its opals and several shops featured this gemstone. We resisted even going in to those shops but found some interested earrings for Cindy and a pork pie style hat for me.

We had lunch at one of the many restaurants at the Rocks which offer seating both inside and out. It was the Fortune of War Pub, established in 1828 and described as the Oldest Pub in Sydney. It was noisy and crowded inside but we were happy with seats outdoors. Not haute cuisine but good for lunch.

We returned to our room and Cindy got to work finding a restaurant for dinner. She hit a home run finding the Song Kitchen  a unique, profit-for-purpose restaurant in Sydney’s CBD, owned by YWCA Australia, dedicated to supporting women and children affected by domestic violence. It is a small and comfortable place and we had a nice table in a small room downstairs from the entry. At the table next to us was a very interesting looking man with a full white beard and a gentle smile. It was not until after we finished our dinner and I don’t know how it started but we then spent a lovely 20 minutes or so in a fascinating conversation. He was a retired professor from Tasmania who favored this restaurant often. After apologizing for the recent behavior of our country, and being told both that it was unnecessary to do so and he sympathized with our agony, we had a far ranging talk that included politics, history, philosophy and travels. We had variations of this kind of interaction throughout our Australian visit – connecting with kind and thoughtful people who were interested in America and in us and our visit.

It was back to the Grand Cafe in the morning and then an Uber to the Sydney Airport for an 11:45 A.M. flight on Qantas Airlines to Melbourne. We would have several interior flights during our stay – some with Qantas and Some with Virgin Airlines. Fortunately none were before 10:00 A.M. which made mornings easier. In general we found the airports and airlines manageable although there were some complications with carry-on luggage regulations. It also seemed like there is much more technology utilized for ticketing, check-in, baggage checking and even security. Once your passport is on file, face recognition basically handled everything.

After Sydney: Species seen:\ 18, Lifers: 0, Life Photos 13

I spent the summer of 1967 in Europe – a track meet in England, 2 months working for a newspaper in Glasgow, Scotland, and a week or two “on the continent” – Paris, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Amsterdam. Those were days before any interest in birds and no camera. Lots of good memories – some of which may actually have happened – but despite I am sure having seen many birds in Scotland – not a single one is on my current World Life List as I had no interest back then. And although there have been a few return visits to Europe in the intervening almost 50 years including a return to England and Scotland, a trip to Spain and single visits to Italy, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic all at times when birding mattered to me, there was little to no birding on those trips and my Continental Europe life list was a barely pathetic 87 species. It mostly reflected 55 species seen on a single day in Hungary where I hired a guide and then another 32 species incidentally on a Walk About Italy Tour in October 2023.

In September this year (2025), Cindy and I visited Amsterdam for a week before then visiting family in Massachusetts. I arranged for a single day of birding with a local guide, Wouter Rohde, but otherwise this was going to be a vacation to experience the city life of Amsterdam, visit museums, eat good food – and walk many miles. Brief Ebird research indicated that there were some opportunities for new life birds and/or new life photos. I decided to not take my good camera with its big heavy lens and instead only took an old Canon SX70 zoom point and shoot which I had used when picture taking was not all that important to me. That experience quickly reminded me why I abandoned that camera years ago and improved my photographic resources. Still I was able to see some nice birds, get some photos and add some “ticks” to life and life photo lists. This blog covers only the birding from the trip.

Netherlands Birding

My Ebird research indicated that there were possibly 35 species seen in “North Holland” during the approximate time I would be visiting that would be world lifers for me. But “approximate time” is key as some were much more likely to be seen either a couple of weeks earlier or later as they were migrating through or to the area. Also to see some would require going to more remote areas, so a much more realistic target number was probably closer to a dozen lifers and especially since I was not taking the better camera, perhaps the same total new life photos. As it turned out I saw a total of 67 species in the Netherlands and as we missed a few of the more likely targets, I ended up with 10 new lifers and 10 new life photos.

The first species added to my list was a recent split with the American Herring Gull, an European Herring Gull which I found swimming in the Singel Canal in front of our hotel. I am terrible at gull identification and maybe there is a notable distinction between the two species, but not discernible by me. I was just happy that the gull was easily identified compared to other local gulls due to its size and that very evident pale eye.

I saw a number of birds in our walks around the city including a couple of hours that I spent in Vondelpark on my own. In addition to the numerous Rock Pigeons and many more European Herring Gulls, there were numerous Eurasian Jackdaws, Carrion Crows, Eurasian Coots (common in the canals), Eurasian Moorhens (seen in the park), European Starlings and Black Headed Gulls. Another fairly common species, a surprise to me, was Rose Ringed Parakeet often heard first and then seen flying quickly overhead. I had seen it 14 years earlier in India.

Vondelpark is one of a number of large parks in Amsterdam. It was less than a mile from our hotel and with wonderful weather, I went there for a couple of hours while Cindy caught up on some lost sleep from the long flight from Seattle. It is a beautiful and busy park with hundreds of walkers, joggers, bike riders (like everywhere else in Amsterdam) and on this day, only a single birdwatcher – me. I had hoped to see other birders there who would lead me to special spots and targeted species but it was not to be. I only had 14 species there, most seen elsewhere earlier or later but I was able to find a lifer Eurasian Wren in thick brush after first hearing it. The only other lifer was a life photo of a Eurasian Jay – perfect focus – but only of small part of its body as it remained buried in leaves. I had missed a photo of this species in Italy and would again later in the Netherlands as it is much shyer than expected. At least I captured some wing detail confirming the ID.

Other species at the Park included Eurasian Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Eurasian Moorhen, Common Wood Pigeon and Gray Heron – all of which I had seen in Italy. I heard Eurasian Nuthatch and European Robin but never saw them. I used the Sound ID part of the Merlin App hoping to be led to small forest birds. It heard Goldcrest, which could have been a life photo, but I never found it. A big disappointment was that it did not hear any other forest species.

Amsterdam of course is famous for its many canals. Our hotel, Hotel Estherea was located on the Singel Canal and as indicated above, gave me my first lifer, the European Herring Gull. High on our list of activities during the visit was a canal cruise. These are very popular tourist activities and there are dozens of operators offering cruises of varying lengths and added attractions like beer, wine, cheese and other goodies. Cindy found what we felt was the perfect option for us – a small open boat cruise lasting 90 minutes. Our “captain” was a very interesting and entertaining young man who had lived in New York City and Berlin among other places and was now enjoying Amsterdam and sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge as we motored through several canals. Possibly more on that later but for this “birding section” I include two species seen on the cruise – a Great Cormorant and a Mute Swan. I had seen both and photographed both in the United States, but the Mute Swans in the U.S. are not native, so this Amsterdam version turned out to be a lifer at least under the Ebird rules.

When I knew that Cindy and I would be visiting Amsterdam, I tried to find a local guide to take me or us out birding. Some of the leads I had took me to people or companies that were no longer in business and others took me to people or companies who were not interested in a single day of guiding. Finally I found birdingnetherlands.com a local company that thought one of its guides might be available. After some spotty communication, I arranged a full day of guided birding with Wouther Rohde who would pick Cindy and me up at our hotel and visit a few good spots within an hour or so from the hotel. It worked out well and both Cindy and I enjoyed the day with Wouter. As is always the case, sure it would have been nice to find more species, but it simply was not possible to visit enough diverse areas to add much to our list for the day. We had 63 species including 7 lifers with photos of 6 of them. We also saw two of the lifers I had seen previously and had photos of many other species.

The first place we visited was a coastal area where in addition to some other species, Wouter hoped we would see a Rock Pipit. It may have been a bit early for that pipit but we immediately found a lifer Meadow Pipit, followed quickly by mu lifer Eurasian Oystercatcher. The pipit was one of those “little brown jobs” that was not of interest to Cindy, but she was happy to see the many Eurasian Oystercatchers as the Black Oystercatcher we saw at Semiahmoo early on in our relationship was her “spark bird”.

Although the first location was by the water, we did not have views of the ocean itself and Wouter had indicated that it was not likely that we would see several species on my targets list: European Shag, Common Scoter and Velvet Scoter – just too far to chase. So we settled for some other shorebirds and some smaller “land” birds including Northern Wheatear, a lifer Dunnock and a White Wagtail. A comment about my photos. Although all photos were seen well and clearly “in my camera”, it turned out that the SD card had some problems and I could not download them onto my computer for processing. I had to use a special recovery program to try to be able to work with the photos – it worked for many of the photos but almost half could not be recovered so some of my photos are back of the camera photos – much lower quality – such as this Dunnock photo.

Wouter kept track of the birds we saw and entered them on Ebird, but I learned later that he had consolidated all of the lists into one, so looking back I am not able to identify each place that we visited and the birds seen. Thus I am forced to just combine all of the sightings and photos without a specific area. There were mixed habitats including some forest areas and some shoreline areas along a dyke and a couple of freshwater ponds/lakes. Here are the best birds and photos from the rest of the day.

Although I got pictures of all of them, they unfortunately did not make it through recovery: Ruff (many), Pied Avocet (many), Common Ringed Plover, Northern Lapwing (many), Common Snipe, and Common Sandpiper. There was one lifer heard – clearly and at least three times – a Water Rail which is very similar to our Virginia Rail. And three species heard only and never seen but could have been life photos were Cetti’s Warbler (heard often) and both Common Chaffinch and Common Chiffchaff.

Although I “only” added ten lifers and ten life photos, those additions move me closer to my current “goals” for each and possibly within reach with an upcoming trip leaving next week for Brazil and then another trip to Costa Rica with Cindy and guide Greg Homel in December. The life list is now at 3845 and my goal is 4000. My Brazil lifer target list from this same trip last year is 198 so if I get 90% of the targets (178 species), I will get there. I usually expect to see 90 to 95 percent of my targets from an actual triplist of past tours. Getting to my life photo target list of 3000 will be much harder. After the Netherlands trip that photo list is now 2592 so I need another 408. In addition to the lifer targets in Brazil, there are another 37 potential life photos. Each new lifer is also a potential life photo so together there are 236 potential photos in Brazil but if I see 90% of them and get photos of 65% of them, that is only 138 or so which would only get me to 2730. But it is possible to add another 150 life photos in Costa Rica which would get me to 2880 and I have an ace in the hole, as I am going to species rich Thailand in January. There is a reasonable expectation to add 240+ lifers on that trip with the potential for another 80+ life photos of non-lifer species. Altogether then, that could get me another 200+ life photos – and should clearly get me at least 150 which then gets me over 3000. Of course it is much easier to add species speculating or even calculating for a blog and the experience in the field could be very different. If so – find another trip. Don’t have one planned yet but I am sure there will be more in 2026..

Background – Early Trips and Life List and Photo List Targets

In October 2025 I traveled to Brazil to join a tour called Spectacular Southeast Brazil Part I: North of the Tropic offered by Field Guides Birding Tours and led by Bret Whitney. It would be my second visit to Brazil. The first was a three week trip on my own without a guide combining birding and general tourism in September 2005. Birding on that first trip was briefly in Rio de Janeiro and at Iguassu Falls and then longer stays in the Pantanal and in the Amazon. I saw 282 species on that trip and it being the first time I had taken any photos, that included photos of 62 species. I had started birding in 1970 while still in law school taking many years off while raising a family. I had squeezed in some mostly non-guided international birding on my own during family or business trips, mostly a day or even just part of a day with my first multi-day trip being to Eastern Australia, again on my own and mixing general tourism with birding and with a guide for only a few days in 2003 – 267 species with photos of 7 using a simple low end point and shoot camera. Before the 2005 trip to Brazil my world life list was 1242 species with just those 7 photos. Afterwards, it was 1442 and 69 photos.

After that first Brazil trip I had my first group tour with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours to Kenya in 2007, a fantastic trip with many birds (516 species) and many mammals, but otherwise those were years when business was very hectic then which left no time for birding. There was a brief fishing/birding visit to Belize and then contemplating my first surgery (a complete shoulder replacement) in 2011, for the first time I acknowledged that there was no guarantee that there would be time to do things that I had put off and wanted to do. Seeing a tiger in the wild in India was at the top of my bucket list, so I signed on to another Victor Emanuel Tour – for Tigers, Birds and the Taj Mahal. It was another great trip with several tigers, the incredible Taj Mahal and 278 bird species. Unfortunately the surgery did not go well and it had to be repeated in 2012, a big year in my life as in addition to the surgery, I divorced, moved from Seattle to Edmonds, Washington and began to finalize work projects and move towards retirement. I started getting back into birding in Washington in 2011 and more so in 2012, the local focus probably a result of not wanting to travel as I recovered from the two surgeries. However, by 2013, I was fully recovered, almost fully retired, settled into a new home, and birding became my escape from the stress of the last few years and I did a Big Year in Washington and also managed a trip to Peru, my introduction to Field Guides Birding Tours.

That is all background to this return to Brazil. Starting with that trip to Peru with 414 species and the search for more and more species during my Washington Big Year, I became more and more interested in adding to my Washington, ABA and World Life Lists and in adding photographs when I could, building a world photo list as well. After that Peru trip my World List had grown to almost 2500 species but I had photos of fewer than 450, mostly from those trips to Brazil, Kenya and India. Fast forward to September 2025, just before this second trip to Brazil. In the years following the Peru trip I had birded in all 50 U.S. States, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Italy, the Netherlands, Tanzania, Uganda, Ecuador (twice), Colombia, Japan, Chile, Argentina and Indonesia. My World Life list had grown to 3855 species and I had photos of 2586 species. I had added to both lists significantly in 2024 with those trips to Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Uganda and trips already in 2025 with trips to Japan, the Netherlands, and Colombia. That had been a lot of travel and as I looked ahead, recognizing both that I was getting older and that there would be more non-birding trips with spouse Cindy, I set my sights on reaching two goals: 4000 species for my World Life List with photos of 3000 of them. The trip to Southeastern Brazil would provide chances for many new life species (getting harder and harder to get especially in the Western Hemisphere) almost assuring me of reaching 4000 and a chance to get much closer to 3000 photos. Looking back I knew that if I had taken photos of earlier trips before 2005, I would most likely be well over 3000 photos. I felt one more trip to a new place after Brazil would get me there or maybe revisiting Costa Rica and/or Australia could as well. So Brazil was important first to get to my magical 4000 lifers and to put me on the cusp of 3000 species.

I left Seattle around noon on October 16th and arrived in Atlanta at 7:45 PM. The next flight left Atlanta at 10:20 PM and arrived in Sao Paulo at 9:00 AM on October 17th. Not the greatest red-eye but I managed a couple hours of sleep. After more than 3 hours at the surprisingly nice Sao Paulo Airport, I left there at 12:20 PM and arrived at our starting point Vitoria, Brazil at 1:45 PM along with Mike Barkwell, a birder from Calgary, Canada, one of the three others who were on the trip. There was a short moment of worry until we saw someone with a sign reading “Field Guides” who then took us to our hotel not far from the airport. A brief comment about Sao Paulo. I had flown into Sao Paulo on my earlier trip and was stunned by the size of the city and especially the number of tall buildings – primarily residential across the sprawling area. I think the population of the metropolitan area then was about 12 Million, but today Sao Paulo is one of the largest in the world with a population of around 23 million, making it the 6th most populous in the world. One source says there are more than 10,000 buildings in Sao Paulo over 150 feet tall – yikes. I would be returning to Sao Paulo for my return flight in November.

Day 1, October 18: Surprisingly there would only be four of us on the trip together with guide Bret Stephens: myself, the aforementioned Mike Barkwell from Calgary, Doug MacNeil from New Jersey, and Francois Grenon, also from Canada. The group was compatible, all good birders and our small size made logistics easy. Our first official day included some birding north of Vitoria to a variety of habitats ending with a drive along some of the Vitoria coastline. We saw 63 species that day which included 5 lifers for me, the coolest of which was a Pygmy Nightjar. Another was a Chestnut-vented Conebill, one of two Conebills seen that day. The second was a Bicolored Conebill which was a life photo. Other life photos were Blond Crested Woodpecker, Red-legged Seriema, and Violaceous Euphonia. These were all important to me because a goal for me has been to get photos of birds seen on past trips but not photographed, either because I wasn’t taking photos then or I had just missed them.

They weren’t lifers or life photos, or even new for Brazil, but on our return to the hotel, we found a group of Burrowing Owls with a nice chance for a photo of two young owlets. Their range is quite impressive from Canada to Argentina. I have seen them in six states and four countries – and they are a treat everywhere.

Day 2, October 19: Even though it was cold and windy with some rain squalls this would be a good birding day with 69 species and 35 photos including lots of lifers (26) and life photos (20) and with 5 species of hummingbirds (all lifers) and 12 species of Tanagers – half of which were lifers. Our birding was all in Espirito Santo and that night we would be at the Natureza Eco Lodge – a bird rich location.

Day 3 – October 20: For the day 67 species and 11 photos with 29 lifers but only 8 life photos. After some early morning birding around the hotel which included a lifer Scale Throated Hermit without a photo, we visited the Reserva Kaetes where we would spend most of the rest of the day in less than perfect weather. Of the 51 species seen there, almost half – 25 – were lifers for me. Due to the combination of challenging forest birding and the weather I only got photos of 7 of these lifers but later in our trip got photos of another 14 more of them. Perhaps the most sought after bird on the entire trip was the main target at the Kaetes Reserve, but unfortunately despite an intensive search we never found a Cherry Throated Tanager. Researchers at the reserve said that one and possibly two had been reported four days before our visit but there was concern that they would disappear completely.

Back at the hotel. I added a Swallow-tailed Cotinga and a Wing-banded Hornero to my life list and got a decent photo of the latter. The Cotinga was on a nest but somehow I missed the photo – which would be remedied the next day. The original plan was to go to a nearby marsh to look for a Giant Snipe but the weather continued to be problematic and we called it off.

Day 4, October 21: Numbers for the previous day were impressive. Numbers on this day would be even better despite poor weather again and photos were tough in the dark forest in which we were birding. The summary is that we had 106 species with photos of 31. This included 29 lifers with life photos of 21 species. I only had photos of 11 of the new life species but would get photos of 12 additional ones later. One more positive, I got life photos of 7 species I had seen previously but not photographed. This is a good place to expand on the photography issues. First I have to acknowledge that my skill at finding birds in foliage leaves a lot to be desired. There were too many times when despite great direction by our guide, I just could not find the bird looking through my camera. Additionally there were times when although I could see “the bird”, it just was not possible to get a shot of it as it was flitting around in distant trees or high in the canopy or almost entirely obscured by foliage. And lastly there were some times when nobody actually saw the bird relying on very precise hearing of songs or call notes. Adding that the weather didn’t help when the birders were hindered by wind or rain or both. But yes fortunately there were times when everything worked perfectly and a photo was possible.

Photo opportunities are especially good, and very welcomed, when there are feeders as is often the case at lodges and many restaurants. The feeders attract hummingbirds and tanagers in addition to many other species. Photography is especially good when there are plants, bushes, trees, twigs etc. behind the feeders providing natural settings compared to the usually bright red hummingbird feeders, often mobbed by several hummers. In the afternoon we had a great time at the feeders at Sítio Vita Verde.

Life photos of species seen the previous day included Scale-throated Hermit, Versicolored Emerald, Pin-tailed Manakin, and Cinnamon-vented Piha. Returning to the hotel in the afternoon, this time I managed a photo of the Swallow-tailed Cotinga on its nest. I was also happy to get life photos of two species I had seen previously: Euler’s Flycatcher in Colombia and Creamy-bellied Thrush in Argentina.

Day 5, October 22: As should be obvious from the preceding descriptions, we were in a very bird rich area in a very bird rich country. Reports vary but with around 1900 species, Brazil is generally considered to be the country with the second most species just behind Colombia. This day would be another day with more than 100 species (108) of which 22 were lifers for me and with photos of 41 of the total species, of which 23 were life photos – 9 of the lifers added that day and the remaining 14 were life photos of species seen previously. Additionally another 5 of the lifers would be photographed later. Most of the birding (first in the morning and last at the end of the day) was at the Reserva Biológica Augusto Ruschi.

Day 6, October 23: In the morning we returned to Reserva Biológica Augusto Ruschi and birded there for over an hour with 35 species of which only 2 were lifers – Gray-hooded Attila and Pileated Parrot. I got photos of neither but did get life photos of previously seen Sharpbill and Yellow-eared Woodpecker. I would get a photo of the Gray-hooded Attila later in the trip but the Pileated Parrot remains as seen only.

After a several hour drive and lunch at one of the buffet style Quilho restaurants favored by our guide because of the variety of food and speed of service, we arrived at our next birding destination, Linhares–Reserva Natural Vale, still in Espírito Santo. We probably had lunches at the Quilho (as in “kilo for kilogram”) restaurants at least 60 or 75 percent of the time. They were all similar, conveniently located on main routes with a similar variety of food which you served yourself onto a plate that was later weighed and your bill was determined by the number or percentage of kilos by weight. There was always a mix of various meats – beef, pork, chicken, often fish, soups, vegetables, beans and starches. Desserts were available separately. Passable if not great food and very hard to count calories – a problem on most trips.

At Linhares–Reserva Natural Vale, we had 40 species including 9 lifers and 5 life photos including of two of those lifers: Red Stained Woodpecker and Least Pygmy Owl. Unfortunately my lifer Black-capped Screech Owl, Ocellated Poorwill and Great Potoo were heard only. Two lifer parrot species were very frustrating. More often than not parrots and related species (parakeets and parrotlets) were first heard and then seen very briefly as they speedily flew overhead and disappeared – no time for a phot. Such was the case with Red-browed Amazons and Maroon-faced Parakeets, both lifers at Linhares. Just no photo ops. These misses would be repeated the following day. I thought I had gotten photos of the Maroon-faced Parakeets but never found them. Another miss both days was another lifer, Black-necked Aracari. heard only. The only additional life photo was a very poor one of a White-flanked Antwren.

Day 7 – October 24: we had an early start (5:40 a.m.) still at the Reserva Natural Vale where we had birded the previous afternoon and we birded there all day with two separate checklists. Altogether we had 78 species with only 12 lifers and only 6 life photos one of which was of the striking Red-billed Curassow, one of the main targets for the reserve. Almost equally striking (“fancy”?) was the lifer Rusty-margined Guan. Guans, curassows and chachalacas are members of the family Cracidae. With the species added on this Brazil trip I felt pretty good as I had seen 20 species from this family (and photographed 14). Then I researched it a bit further and found that there are 57 species in the group – so I guess I have a long way to go.

I was able to get photos of both lifer hummingbirds and missed lifer photos of two lifer parrot-like species, but would get photos of them later in the trip. Two of the other lifers remain a mystery to me. I was sure I had photos of both the Black-headed Berryeater and Cinereous Mourner but still have not found them. I was unhappy to miss a photo of a very cool bird, Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo – unfortunately heard only. Not a great photo – but a photo of any tanager is great, so I was happy to get any photo of a briefly seen White-bellied Tanager. I also got photos of two lovely woodpecker species I had photographed previously Cream-colored Woodpecker (Ecuador) and Ringed Woodpecker (first trip to Brazil in 2005).

This concludes the first blog post for this trip and the first week, including the arrival day which was not officially part of the tour. Altogether I had 284 species of which 134 were lifers which got me very close to my goal of 4000 species as the total had reached 3989. I had photos of 143 of the species reported – 91 of them life photos. I got photos of another 31 of the lifers later. My goal is to get photos of 80% of the lifers for any trip, so being over 90% was quite good. Especially since many of the lifers were small forest birds, mostly “ant” birds and flycatchers, it was a success at least on the numbers side. I acknowledge regrettably that there was lots of room to improve on the quality.

I hope to get to a second blog post soon to cover the last 9 days of the trip.

It was December 10th – half way though the tour and we were at Laguna Del Lagarto Lodge maybe our favorite lodge on the tour with Greg Homel and Natural Encounters Birding Tours. This was going to be an extraordinary day. A prime attraction at Laguna Del Lagarto is a blind where on a good day visitors can view the spectacular King Vultures up close as they are drawn in my cow or pig heads placed in front of a photo blind. They are almost guaranteed if the weather cooperated. There is a great viewing deck at the lodge and that is where we started our morning waiting for the vultures to arrive at the blind a short drive away. If there had been no King Vultures, our early morning at the deck would have made for a great day. Since we returned to the deck after several hours watching the King Vultures and I did not separate the lists, I am combining them here. Altogether we had 41 species with photos of 27. I am including many of them here.

Perhaps the best of the species seen early from the deck were the Great Curassows – both sexes being spectacular and with the “tiger” form of the female especially so. These are large charismatic birds with strong sexual dimorphism. I had just recently added Red Billed Curassow to my life list in Brazil. That was a cool bird but these Great Curassows were better yet.

If I had to choose a kind of bird that best says “tropics”, it would most likely be the toucan maybe adding in the toucanets and aracaris. If so then this was a great morning in the tropics as two species of toucan and an aracari showed off their stuff. None were lifers or life photos, but the trip would have been less without them.

If toucans aren’t the iconic species of the tropics, maybe parrots including Macaws and parakeets might be and they, too, were well represented at Laguna Del Lagarto that morning with a flyby Green Macaw, several Brown Hooded Parrots, and Red Lored and Mealy Amazons. And maybe not the icon but definitely a “wow” bird is the Montezuma Oropendola – which is a must see for the name if nothing else.

Oh yeah, and then there are the tanagers, another group of iconic tropical birds. Including the honeycreepers, there were 9 species that morning including a lifer Plain Colored Tanager.

I have seen Buff Throated Saltators more than 20 times, in 6 different countries, with many photos, but this is the first time I got a photo actually showing that buff breast. And a last photo before moving on to those King Vultures, the reason we were at this lodge, after all. That last photo is of a failure -not mine but of a pair of Russet Naped Wood Rails that tried to pair up and apparently did not have enough experience, because it just didn’t work.

I first saw a King Vulture in Belize in 2010. Distant – no photograph. I saw another in Peru in 2013 – distant – no photograph. I saw one in Ecuador in 2022 and again in 2024 – distant – no photograph. Earlier this year in Colombia I saw one and finally got a photo – distant but yes a photo. When Greg sent promotional material about this trip to Costa Rica, a fabulous photo of a King Vulture was one of the featured images – and there was essentially a guarantee that we would get close up views and great photo opportunities. December 10th was to be the day. We drove a short distance from the Lodge and walked 100 feet or so to a blind together with many other birders with expensive cameras and even more expensive lenses. In front of us were vultures – lots of vultures – mostly Black Vultures but as promised, as guaranteed, there were King Vultures as well. They were there because pig or cow heads had been strategically placed in small pits – drawing in the vultures from afar – endless photo ops for those of us fortunate enough to have paid the entrance fee to take in this natural/unnatural spectacle.

At about 2.5 feet tall and weighing up to 8 lbs. with a wingspan up to 6 feet, the King Vulture is a medium sized vulture, larger than the far more common Black and Turkey Vultures but significantly smaller than the American and Andean Condors and smaller than many of the African vultures. It is however the most colorful of the vultures and is very impressive in appearance. King Vultures dominate their smaller Western Hemisphere cousins but at this gathering place, they seemed to get along well. Photo ops of even the Black Vultures were great but without question, the King Vultures were the royalty at the show.

Given that it is very unlikely that I will ever have opportunities to see King Vultures this close and as well again, my comment that I would have been just as happy leaving a little earlier may be misunderstood, but the dozen or so King Vultures we saw were almost an overload and the photo ops were so numerous and constant that at the time, I thought more time looking for additional species would have been welcome.

That afternoon we birded on the grounds of the lodge and were stymied by a lot of heavy rain that made much more birding impossible. A few more species were added and these included reminders that many of the species that migrate to North America to breed in our spring and summer spend their winters in Central and South America. During our tour we would see several North American warblers. Most plentiful were Chestnut Sided, Tennessee, Prothonotary and Wilson’s Warblers and Northern Waterthrushes – heard often but seen only at Laguna Del Lagarto. Baltimore Orioles were also commonplace.

My last two photos to include from Laguna Del Lagarto are of “wood” species – a woodcreeper and a woodpecker. There are dozens of woodcreeper species in Central and South America, but we had only two species – Streak Headed and Cocoa. We did a little better with woodpeckers – with six species – all except Hoffman’s being photographed before.

Two more lodges remained on our itinerary – Tortuguero and Arenal. It was another long drive from Laguna Del Lagarto to Tortuguero National Park – normally 3.5 hours but longer for us due to a bridge closure, a wrong turn and again lots of traffic. Along the way, however, we had a lucky view of a pair of Great Green Macaws providing an opportunity for a life photo. The pair were distant and high in a tree and I was pleased and surprised to get the photos that I did. Once at the park, there was still a long way to go as we parked our car, transferred everything to a boat that would take us to our lodge 45 minutes away. With a late arrival, we birded a bit on the grounds of the lodge and walked out to the beach. Greg said we would return the next morning to find birds in the trees bordering the beach. There were none that afternoon and unfortunately none the next morning either.

On the morning of December 12th Cindy, Greg and I boarded a small motorized boat with local boatman, Jose for a long trip on the canals running through Tortuguero National Park. Unlike our boat rides on the Tarcoles River that started our trip, there were lots of other boats on the river/canals. They never interfered with our birding, but the feeling was quite different – an awareness that Costa Rica is a very popular eco-tourism area. The highlight of the trip on the water was probably our first sloth on the tour – a Two Toed Sloth. A highlight only because they are such unique animals, but definitely boring as we watched for many minutes as it basically hung upside down, mostly obscured by the leaves it was eating. We had 41 species with the only lifer being an Olive Crowned Yellowthroat that was a source of great frustration as it essentially remained hidden in tall grass with intermittent quick flights from one invisible spot to another. I got a picture, but it is so poor that I am too embarrassed to include it. A number of the species were heard only in the distance in the forest impossible to see from the water which was disappointing because several could have been life photos. The only worthwhile photos in addition to the Two Toed Sloth were of a Boat Billed Heron, a Northern Jacana that was so close to the boat that it was impossible to focus on it until it moved a bit away, and two distant Green Ibises in the canopy, the only ones I saw on the trip.

The boat trip was – pleasant – but from a wildlife and birding perspective quite disappointing. Back at the lodge, there was a lot of rain and no more birding. We would leave early the next morning on the same boat we had used the previous day – with all flaps up to protect us from the continuing rain. No birding or sightseeing along the way. We loaded back onto the car, a very nice and comfortable 4WD diesel that Greg had rented for the trip and then we were on our way to Arenal Observatory Lodge, our final lodge for the tour and one that I had been looking forward to both because I had visited it in 1997 and also because it had a very extensive bird list.

Maybe under better weather conditions it could have been otherwise, but to be honest, I felt that our visit to Tortuguero was a waste of time – precious time. It took far too many hours to get there on tough roads and the boat trip – taking a lot of time both ways – was merely a means of transportation – nothing more. And the birds were far too few, far too distant, far too “already seen” and far too “heard only”. The visit essentially consumed two days which I wish had been spent either at a different location or maybe allocated to more time at Arenal. The numbers tell the story. We essentially spent about 18% of our time there or getting to or from there. Our bird list for that time included only 16 new species, half of which were heard only and there was only the one lifer Olive Crowned Yellowthroat with the barely identifiable photo. The lodge accommodations were fine and my time there was at least somewhat productive as I was able to work on photos for several hours – where the rain did not matter. All trips have stops that are better or worse than others, but this one really ranked low on my “life list”.

We arrived at the Arenal Observatory Lodge midafternoon on December 13th and immediately had a problem. The Lodge is highly regarded, very popular, very birdy, with a good restaurant and beautiful grounds. It is not inexpensive. Our room was at the end of the hall on the second floor of the building that included the reception area. Our view was of the restaurant building with an ugly metal roof, some utility poles, a garbage area and a mess of “whatever”. It was the worst view of any at the lodge and frankly the worst view from any room I had been in any respectable lodge. And, another thing, one of the towels (there were only two) looked like it had been there since the lodge’s first days (well over 30 years ago) – frayed and worn. It took some doing and some added payment but Greg got us transferred to a lovely room in a well situated building located maybe a quarter mile from the main building. It had a beautiful view of the hummingbird garden and of the Arenal volcano (assuming the clouds parted to make it visible). After our relocation, we came back to the main building with the restaurant and a great viewing deck and birded for awhile adding some nice species and photos.

These included two lifers – Chestnut Headed Oropendola and Emerald Tanager and two life photos of species on the heard only list from the previous day, but now added as life photos – Gray Headed Chachalaca and White Collared Manakin. Not new by any means but one of the best photos and experiences of the whole tour was watching and photographing a Great Kiskadee catching and then consuming a gecko that I would have thought far too big for it to eat.

There was one other species of note that afternoon – a Brown Jay. I first saw a Brown Jay at Falcon Dam State Park in Texas in 1975. It was the only place in the United States where that was possible. No camera so no photo of course. I think the small population there remained for a few years and then there were no more until seen again in 2005, then 2010 and then again in a few places over the past few years. I would next see one with a life photo in Belize in 2010. This would be only my third observation and second photo. Certainly not new for the trip but a great photo op was of a Crested Guan very close.

Unfortunately the rain that had become a problem at Tortuguero haunted us at Arenal as well limiting our birding opportunities. On the morning of the 14th Cindy took a break and Greg and I searched for birds on the grounds at Arenal moving a little deeper into the forest drawn in by calls from a Thicket Antpitta, a lifer that we never could coax out of the “thicket”. We had better luck with a lifer Black Throated Wren that played hide and seek and never came completely into the open but at least gave us a peek and an OK photo. But other wrens were being little bastards as we also heard Band Backed Wren, Nightingale Wren and Stripe Breasted Wren, the latter two lifers and the first a potential life photo. We had better luck with a Black Cowled Oriole, one of those species that I had seen previously without a photo. At that point I was happy to get anything and even a so so photo of a lifer Dusky Antbird added to that feeling.

The final insult was a Black and Yellow Tanager another lifer that I got a quick glimpse of and thought I had gotten a photo – but I never found it. This happens in birding all the time but there is usually or at least often a consolation prize when good effort is put in. So there were some other photos repeats of ones taken earlier but at least one or two were better ones than those earlier ones – worth doing.

Rain continued to haunt us and Arenal delivered far fewer lifers and life photos than expected. With such disappointing weather maybe it would not have made any difference, but looking back the days “wasted” at Tortuguero may have produced more at Arenal. Maybe someday I will be back once more and find out. On the 15th we left Arenal and began our journey back to San Jose where we would depart on the 16th to return home. A couple more photos from Arenal – two of the hummingbirds we did see – but how I wish we could have found the Black Crested Coquette that was a possibility at Arenal

and was really hoped for.

I left Arenal Observatory Lodge with mixed feelings, at least partially a result of the poor weather which limited our birding opportunities. The bottom line was that despite having 60 species on the Ebird lists for the location, my expectations, perhaps too high had been for at least a different list – probably more species for sure – but especially for better observations since many of mine had been either heard only or barely seen. Fortunately Greg’s effort in improving our room situation was a major positive both because it was such a nice room itself and also because it got us out of the frankly awful initial room. I will be writing the Lodge expressing disappointment in that experience. The room should be turned into a storage room for the Lodge and NEVER used for any visitor – far below the standards that should be expected.

Our return to San Jose was pleasant with our first stop at the Sendero Bogarin – the Bogarin trail. We paid for entry and hung out at a small pond with some feeders near the entrance. I think the hope was that a crake would appear but that did not happen. There was also the possibility of the aforementioned Black Crested Coquette – again it did not happen. But there were a variety of birds. None were new but we had great looks at Red Legged and Green Honeycreepers, Bananaquits, Yellow Throated Euphonias and Orange Chinned Parakeets. We also had close views of several Russet Naped Wood Rails and a very interesting Bare Throated Tiger Heron which provided an exciting and suspenseful drama.

It soon became clear to us that the Bare Throated Tiger Heron was hunting. It positioned itself near the feeders that attracted as many as a dozen small birds (primarily Bananaquits, Honeycreepers and Euphonias). It would stand perfectly still with neck coiled ready to strike only to have the small birds fly off. It might then move around the pond but would return when the birds returned to the feeder. On perhaps the third time we watched it eyeing the small prey, it felt like this might be the time for action. Sure enough after a tiny visible repositioning movement it was like a lightning bolt extending its neck and grabbing a Euphonia. It then marched away with the Euphonia dangling in its bill, soon to be consumed. These photos capture some of the sequence as well as the Tiger Heron with its prize.

We continued our drive to San Jose with a very notable final stop at a very birdy “soda”. In Costa Rica these are convenient mom and pop roadside cafes serving simple homemade meals sometimes combined with souvenirs, convenience store items and most importantly bird feeders. A mirador is a lookout. Our stop was a combination of both – hence the Soda y Mirador Cinchona. It is a famous birding location in Costa Rica with well kept feeders and overlooking excellent natural forest and a view of a pretty cool waterfall.

We spent almost two hours at the Soda with a nice lunch and 20 birds coming in to show off. Included were a number of hummingbirds, most importantly for me a Black Bellied Hummingbird, my last lifer for the trip, a Coppery Headed Emerald which became a life photo, beautiful views of a Violet Sabrewing and a much improved photo of a Green Hermit. Finally there were three truly gorgeous birds – Red Headed Barbet, one of my true favorites – Prong Billed Barbet, a life photo – and Northern Emerald Toucanet – always gorgeous.

With the lifer species, the lifer photos and the gorgeous birds and the familiar down home comfort, the Soda and Mirador Cinchona was a perfect way to end our trip. We easily made it back to the Hampton Inn in San Jose and had a “Last Supper” at Denny’s. The next morning despite his staying in Costa Rica for yet more birding as he chased some special photo ops, Greg got up early to say goodbye as we caught the shuttle to the airport. This was Greg, through and through, ALWAYS accommodating, ALWAYS attentive and ALWAYS putting his clients first. I don’t know if our paths will cross again but hope there will be a chance to do so.

POSTSCRIPT: Time for a summary and reflection – some numbers, some reviews, some matters left out of these blog posts as they were written.

Numbers:

The numbers are the easiest – just pull them off of Ebird. We logged 238 species. I posted photos of 169 of them and expect I could have added maybe another 9 or so of species that either I took but ignored or did not bother taking. Those numbers are not important to me. There are three that are: New Lifers – 41; New Life Photos – 62; and 1211 – the number of species I had seen worldwide in 2025. It wasn’t important per se, but the species added on this trip brought my Costa Rica Life list to 300 – a pleasing round number.

As I expressed in the first blog post, I had hoped for both more new life photos and more lifers. My year end totals for each now stand at 4113 Lifers and 2833 Life Photos. I had already surpassed my “goal” of 4000 species on my life list after my Brazil trip in October. I knew I would not reach my goal of 3000 life photos in Costa Rica but had hoped to perhaps get to at least 2850 knowing that my planned trip to Thailand would probably produce 150 new photos. Unfortunately due to a lingering respiratory problem that came home with me from Costa Rica and still won’t admit full defeat, I have had to cancel that trip so the path to 3000 is uncertain.

It was through my quest to see more than 1000 species in a year in 2023, my first time to reach that goal, that I met Greg Homel as he led a short private tour for me in Mexico. I ended that year with 1095 species. In 2024 I beat that number seeing 1427 species and now I had passed the 1000 mark again with those 1211 species. Of course there is a lot of overlap with species seen in each of those years. I was curious how many species were seen combining the three years. That number is 2706 which is just under two-thirds of my total life list!!

Food, Lodging and Infrastructure

Cindy and I have been fortunate to have travelled to many countries in the past few years with very different approaches to food, tourism, lodging and travel in general. Without question from a culinary perspective, our “Wine and Birds Tour of Chile and Argentina” was the best and will most likely not be surpassed unless we do a similar tour to say South Africa or Portugal, both possibilities. The lodging on that trip was pretty great as well, but probably our favorite places to stay have been the lodges and camps in Africa, both Uganda and Tanzania. The room problem at Arenal aside which was vey well remedied, the lodging on this trip was just fine but a bit below the more lavish places we have stayed in Africa but also better than many of the places I have stayed on trips without Cindy elsewhere. Food ranged from pretty straightforward and good to better than that but we cannot say there was anything especially “Costa Rican” that was compelling. We had several good steaks and hamburgers and nice fish but again nothing memorable. I should stress however, that people were great everywhere, with excellent service, genuine smiles and an eagerness to interact with us foreigners. English is spoken almost everywhere within the tourism sector. We also always felt safe and as mentioned before although the roads and traffic were often abominable, we never had intersections with the Policia or road stops, which have been stressful in some other countries. The airport at San Jose was easy to use with very efficient processing at customs and immigration. We wish there had been a bigger presence of quality crafts/art either on the road or at the airport, but we saw no sense of that – lots of “pura vida” souvenirs and of course duty free shops, but we saw nothing of interest to bring home to remember the trip. I also need to say that there are many parts of the Costa Rica Eco-tourism world that were not of interest to us on this trip – no hiking, climbs, rafting, ziplining, ballooning, kayaking, swimming, beach or poolside activities. Costa Rica offers much that was just not what we were interested in but are very popular and heavily used by others.

Quality not Quantity:

With the exception of missing some very cool hummingbirds and as said earlier, maybe hoping for more species seen, the quality of birding and especially bird photography on the trip was sensational. This is Greg Homel’s forte and was part of the planning in setting the itinerary from the start. I continue to learn a lot from Greg on camera settings and details that go into higher quality bird photography. He was great with beginner Cindy as well. His choice of locations, boat trips, hiring local guides and accessing private blinds were all critical parts of the tour with wonderful results. Of course Costa Rica cooperated by showing us some truly spectacular birds: hummingbirds, tanagers, parrots and their relatives, quetzals and trogons, waders and numerous other tropical specialties. The photos from the trip have been the heart and soul of these blog posts, so readers can come to their own conclusions about quality. More related to subject matter and opportunities than to my skill in taking advantage of those opportunities, we were fortunate to get many of the photos we did.

Non-Birding Photos:

I may later go back and insert photos of people and places – mostly from Cindy’s phone – and probably should include some mammal and reptile photos taken but not used so far. But this was not a trip with many of those opportunities. We saw a couple of species of monkeys, some iguanas, crocodiles and caimans, some squirrels, a few agoutis and lots of coatimundis but no snakes, no frogs and very few butterflies or insects of note – somewhat surprisingly. There were mosquitos and some flies and I got a number of bites on my hands but no chiggers or ticks or anything serious. Tropical forests were beautiful but there was little that grabbed us from a scenery perspective – honestly not unlike much of the tropics. It was the birds that drew our attention and also delivered.

Bottom line a great trip with a great guide and great birds. It was nice to be back!

In April 1997 I visited Costa Rica with my family. The itinerary was put together by a company I had found online – in for me the early days of “online” – called Wilderness Adventures or something like that. I had been birding off and on for the past 25 years but my only bird focused international birding trip had been to Trinidad in 1978 with three Seattle area friends. I had also birded for a day in Hong Kong in 1979 and had also “seen some birds” on fishing trips to Argentina and Kiribati in 1989. This trip would not focus on birds, but Costa Rica is a very bird rich country and we would be visiting some great lodges including Monteverde, Tiskita Jungle Lodge and Arenal lodge. There would be birds.

I did not have a camera in 1997 and while I certainly paid attention to listing the species I saw, I was not really into the drive for an increased life list and there was no thought of photography and “life photos”. For at least part of the trip we had a naturalist that accompanied us and a driver that took us between places. We saw lots of scenery, mountains, a coffee plantation and frogs and butterflies in addition to birdlife and probably some mammals. I remember it as a fun trip with my wife, daughter who had just turned 13 and son who was turning 9. No real specific memories but there was a bird list that named 151 species including some pretty cool ones: 13 hummingbird species, trogons, Resplendent Quetzal, toucans, toucanets, parrots and their allies and many tanagers among others.

My next international trip would be a one day excursion in Hungary which I was visiting in 2002 with my daughter serving as a part time chaperone to the Seattle Youth Symphony. Still no camera but I was at least aware of a “life list” and after that day, that list would be nearing 1000. Next was a 3 week solo trip to Australia in 2003, not exclusively about the birds but with a definite focus and a hope to add species to my growing life list but still no photos and no camera. More than 250 species were seen on that very enjoyable trip and I was now looking forward to international birding trips as part of my birding life. When I joined a Victor Emanuel Nature Tours trip to Kenya in 2005, I was keen on listing and had bought a point and shoot zoom camera. My photo life list had begun.

I can now look back over the ensuing 20 years with more than 20 international trips with many wonderful birds and many bird photos, some wonderful and some not so wonderful. Building my life list of birds observed and also birds photographed has been a driving force in this passion/hobby providing many thousand hours of enjoyment and definitely some frustration as well. 2025 was a very busy and full year with bird focused trips to Japan, Colombia, and Brazil in addition to a day of birding in Amsterdam on a broader based visit. After Brazil, my life list had passed 4000, my goal, and I had photos of more than 2800 species – within striking distance of my self important goal of 3000 photos. If only I had taken photos on those earlier trips to Trinidad, Hungary, Australia and Costa Rica, 3000 would have easily been reached. I of course hoped to have more international trips to new places in the future, and in fact had scheduled a trip to Thailand in January 2026 (more on that later) but two photo rich opportunities from the past screamed for attention.

Return trips to Costa Rica and Australia would easily yield at least 300 new photos and both places were great places to visit. Cindy had been to Australia before meeting me and before birds were any part of her life. It requires a long stay, but we had talked about it and were interested. She had never been to Costa Rica but based on her enjoyment of a trip together to Ecuador, I was pretty sure she would enjoy it. In 2023 I had birded in Mexico with Greg Homel (Natural Encounters Birding Tours) with great birds, many photos and lots of fun. Greg had guided extensively in Costa Rica (and almost everywhere else) and was available in December, so we booked a trip. The remainder of this and subsequent blog posts covers that tour.

A cloud hung over our lives in early November. Our wonderful beautiful dog, Chica, was no longer with us. She had been going downhill for a while, losing her energy and struggling with what had been easy day to day activities. A listless and confused visit to our local dog park convinced us it was time. She was a brave girl but she was suffering. We said goodbye but were pained by the loss and both saddened and made happy by her memory. Maybe a trip would be a good distraction.

Greg Homel is an amazing naturalist, bird guide and photographer. Cindy was beginning to engage with photography and I asked Greg to design a trip that would cater to those needs. A longer trip would have included visits to more areas and brought us more birds, but we limited the trip to under two weeks and included several boat trips that would be bird and photo rich and very appealing. I of course still wanted to add species to my life list and especially to get photos of species seen but not photographed in 1997 but the emphasis would not be on numbers. We flew from Seattle to San Jose on December 3rd with a stopover in Dallas arriving very early on the morning of the 4th. We took the shuttle from the airport to the Hampton Inn San Jose and got some sleep. We would have the entirety of the 4th to acclimatize before Greg would join us that night and then we would formally start the tour on December 5th.

The Hampton Inn was actually quite pleasant, recently remodeled, definitely convenient and surrounded by some trees and landscaping. Given its location near the airport and some industrial surroundings, we were surprised by the number of birds there including lots of roosting Crimson Fronted Parrots. It did not at first sound like a positive, but there was a Denny’s just across the street. Not gourmet fare, but easy and acceptable quality, it was our lunch and dinner spot. Better than Denny’s we see in the U.S. On December 4th waiting for Greg to arrive and before our first meal at that Denny’s I wandered the grounds at the Hampton Inn and had some of those familiar birds that always seem to be there in the tropics as well as getting photos of two that I had seen many years ago on that earlier Costa Rica trip before photos were important. The familiar species were Great Kiskadee, Tropical Kingbird, White Winged Dove, Tropical Mockingbird, Rufous Collared Sparrow and Great Tailed Grackle. The new photos were of Rufous Backed Wren and Crimson Fronted Parakeet.

Before embarking on my bird trips, I make a “Targets List” which identifies potential new life birds as well as potential new life photos – which of course includes all those potential lifers as well. Since this trip to Costa Rica was chosen in large part because of photos I had missed in 1997 in my pre-camera visit, I paid particular attention to the list of species seen on that trip for which I did not have a photo. That list was of 57 species. This is a good time to point out that although I had seen 151 photo-less species on that earlier trip, as I left for this trip, I was only missing photos of 57 – the difference coming from having gotten photos of many of those species on my many later trips to the tropics from Mexico through all of South America. Since we would not be visiting the same areas I visited in 1997 I knew that many of the desired photos would be unlikely or impossible. Perhaps unrealistically, I hope to get at least 35 of those photos. A disappointment for the trip was that I only got photos of 19 of them. There were also 32 photos of new lifers, but since I doubt I will return again to Costa Rica, those misses will continue to hurt.

Greg arrived late on December 4th joining us for dinner at that nearby Denny’s. It was a reunion for me and a new friend for Cindy. We kicked around the hotel grounds at dusk fascinated by the hundreds of Crimson Fronted Parakeets coming in to roost. It would be a typical early start the next morning after a decent buffet breakfast at the hotel. We birded several spots in the morning including at a bridge over the Tarcoles River where we saw our first Crocodiles, some waders, and I got a life photo of a Hoffman’s Woodpecker, one of those seen without a photo species from 1997.

The highlight of the morning though was visiting a stakeout for some roosting Spectacled Owls. Owls are always highlights and the Spectacled Owl, a lifer, was one of the top species on my want list for the trip. It was not completely in the open, so we had to work for photos, but Cindy and I were both pleased with our results. Other great photos were our first of the spectacular Scarlet Macaw and a pair of Streak Backed Orioles.

On my birding trip in Jalisco, Mexico in 2023, highlights included two boat trips. These trips always provided great photo ops with the ability to get close to species along the route. Cindy and I had great boat trips in Uganda last year and I knew she would enjoy them in Costa Rica. Greg planned two trips on the Tarcoles River with our first on the afternoon of the 5th. It was a great trip. Barely a few minutes into our voyage, our boat pulled up next to a sand bar and we spent the next 20 minutes their reveling in a show with changing characters as our boatman brought in many species responding to fish bits that he tossed onto the land and into the water providing great changes to photograph them in flight, still and interacting. Among the species seen at this one spot were Crested and Yellow Headed Caracaras, Great Egret, Common Black Hawk, Great Blue Heron and Roseate Spoonbill. Later on the river we would add other waders: Yellow and Black Crowned Night Herons, Little Blue, Tricolored, and Boat Billed Herons, Bare Throated Tiger Heron, Wood Stork, Snowy and Western Cattle Egrets, and White Ibis.

Boat trips also provide great opportunities for seeing kingfishers – we had Amazon, American Pygmy and Ringed – and many other species including a lifer Mangrove Hummingbird, expertly located by our boatman. Not a rarity but a cool photo was of Hudsonian Whimbrels perched on a snag midstream – very different from the habitats where I generally see them.

Back at the lodge after our float we had another lifer owl expertly located just a short walk from the driveway – Pacific Screech Owl. Earlier we had heard but failed to locate a Black and White Owl, a real beauty that I had seen with Greg Homel on the first night of our trip there in 2023. As we walked towards the Pacific Screech Owl, we flushed a Pauraque, a common nightjar found in the U.S. near the Mexico border and then throughout Central America. My picture is NOT worth sharing.

The next morning we would be returning to the Tarcoles River for another boat ride. The previous day we had traveled to the mouth of the river and this time we would be venturing downstream. In the few minutes of dusk at the lodge, we added a lifer Turquoise Browed Motmot to our bird list. Given the low light and the short time it remained perched, I should be happy with any photo, but it is a real beauty and I wish the photo was better. It was the sixth lifer so far.

There wouldn’t be as many species or as many photo ops on the river this morning but without question, it was reptiles that were the show stoppers as we had vey close encounters with several large crocodiles. One was estimated to be 18 feet long with an enormous head and very sharp teeth. As we maneuvered the boat immediately alongside one that seemed in deep torpor, I was tempted to reach over and touch it. Cindy quickly talked me out of that temptation.

We again encountered many waders on the journey but unlike the previous day, we also had many shorebirds including a pair of Wilson’s Plovers, a species I first saw in Texas then amazingly in my home state of Washington and seldom otherwise. All told eight shorebird species. Towards the end of the trip we came upon a tree filled with Magnificent Frigatebirds, reminiscent of the close encounters we had in the Galapagos in 2024. The puffed out red air sacs of the males showed they were “in the mood”.

Back at the lodge in the afternoon after a brief rest following lunch, we got to see and photograph a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, had more killer looks at Scarlet Macaws and had a very cooperative Lineated Woodpecker perch on a stump just below us. I also got photos of Cinnamon Hummingbird and Stripe Headed Sparrow, a species I had only seen and photographed previously with Greg in Puerto Vallarta. Unfortunately I somehow missed a photo of a lifer Blue Vented Hummingbird.

Later that evening the local guide at the lodge who specialized in owls, located the Black and White Owl providing excellent views in the open and fairly low in its tree. It is a real beauty – seen by me only once before.

We would be moving on the next day but first had time to watch the many hummingbirds coming in to the feeders as well as a great mix of other species in and around the lodge. Hummingbirds included Lesser Violetear, Talamanca Hummingbird, Fiery Throated Hummingbird, White Throated Mountain Gem, Volcano Hummingbird, Scintillant Hummingbird, Ruby Throated Hummingbird and Green Breasted Mango. All except the Violetear and the Ruby Throated Hummingbird were lifers and/or life photos!!

Other new species were Laughing Falcon, Gartered Violaceous and Black Headed Trogons, Rose Throated and White Winged Becards, Yellow Naped Amazon, Black Crowned Tityra, Yellow Throated Euphonia and Red Crowned Woodpecker among others.

We had a long drive to get to our next lodge, Paraiso Quetzal Lodge at an elevation of over 9000 feet. Some words about driving in Costa Rica. Bottom line, it was awful. Although some roads have improved, they have not kept up with the dramatic increase in automobiles and travel times are ridiculous. It would almost always take at least an hour to go 40 kilometers, an average speed of about 25 mph. This was in large part due to the many slow trucks but was made worse by insufficient passing areas and in my opinion very poor drivers who were especially poor at passing or letting others pass. We spent far too much time on the road taking away from birding opportunities. Costa Rica is mountainous with twisting curvy roads and another problem was that far more than I remembered in other recent birding trips in Central and South America, there just weren’t good opportunities to pull off and bird along the road.

At such a high elevation, it got really cold at the lodge. Rooms had no heat. Hot water bottles were available (and well received) but the main source of warmth was many layers (4 or 5) of blankets. Bearable but I wish I had brought another warm layer. But the birding was great. The morning of December 8th was definitely a highlight of the trip as we visited a private lek where Resplendent Quetzals put on quite a show. It started dark and cold but it was a thrill when the first quetzal made an appearance not more than 10 minutes after we arrived. Lighting improved and there were many fine photo ops. If anything I felt we stayed there too long (over two hours) as Greg emphasized flight shots and the possibility that the next one would be better than the preceding one. I would have preferred moving on an hour earlier and trying for some other species. But definitely no complaint about the photos and views that we got.

Later back at the lodge I added several lifers with life photos adding to a very productive morning.

Two more lifers were found and photographed that afternoon – the spectacular Golden Browed Chlorophonia and the Black Billed Nightingale Thrush. I also heard but never got a look at a Ruddy Capped Nightingale Thrush – another lifer.

A special blind was available to hire at Quetzal Paraiso Lodge which provided views of feeders on the ground that were loaded with corn meal. The previous day we had a partial distant view of the feeders from outside the blind and saw some Buffy Crowned Wood Partridge – an exceedingly difficult species to see – usually on forest roads in the morning. Greg immediately decided to reserve some time in the blind the next morning. It was a great decision as not only did the Wood Partridge return but we earlier had a small flock of equally hard to see Spotted Wood Quail – both were lifers. We also had great looks at Yellow Thighed Brushfinch, another lifer in addition to life photos of Scarlet Rumped Tanager and Olive Backed Euphonia and more great hummingbird photo ops.

We had another long drive (4.5 hours) to get to our next lodging – Laguna del Lagarto Lodge. We arrived too late for any birding but had a very welcomed surprise as there was a known Crested Owl roost on the property. A spectacular owl, Cindy and I had seen a pair of them at Sacha Lodge in the Ecuadorean Amazon in 2023.

The owl was species #160 for the trip. We were less than half way through the adventure. This seems like a good place to end this first blog post for the trip.

It happens every year beginning in August, picking up steam in September and continuing into October. The “it” is Fall Migration, birds that came north in the Spring to breed are now returning south for their wintering grounds where the young grow up, and the adults find enough food to build up their bodies to be ready to head north again in the spring to begin the cycle again. While nonresident birds of all types participate in this spectacle, for many of us the shorebirds are the ones that are easiest and perhaps most rewarding to track, largely because as suggested in their categorized names, they congregate along the “shore” and whether that is the shore of the ocean or the shore of a river or a lake or a pond, birders know the likely spots where they will be found – shorebirding hotspots where the shorebirds return each year. It is fun to see all of the shorebirds, even if their Fall plumages are far plainer than their more colorful feathers of the Spring. But the birds that get the adrenalin flowing and get us out earlier and further from home are the less common species, especially the rarities. Now with technology enhanced communication opportunities with Ebird posts, Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and the large number of birders using all of them, word of uncommon, unusual and rare finds are almost instantly shared in the community of birders and “the chase is on”.

In my earlier birding days, come August and September, I would most often be off to the game range at Ocean Shores in Grays Harbor County, Eide Road in Snohomish County, the “Montlake Fill” in King County, Wylie Slough in Skagit County or up to Sequim in Clallam County to look for the incoming shorebirds. Not that birds do not still come to those places, albeit with major changes to some of them that have lessened their productivity; but certainly this year, in addition to many spots on the Coast, two other locations have emerged as the “go to” hotspots: Channel Drive in Skagit County and the Mouth of the Cedar River in King County. Along with a report of a trip to the Washington Pacific Ocean Coast, the remainder of this blog will share my experiences at those locations.

My Fall Migration quest for 2025 started when I visited the Coast with friends Tom St. John and Dennis Westover on August 16th looking primarily for photo opportunities as they are both excellent photographers. Our hope that there would be many shorebirds went unrealized, as maybe we were a bit ahead of the migration at least on the coast. Particularly disappointing was that we found very few species driving the open beach. At our first stop at the Hoquiam Sewage Ponds (another former great spot for shorebirds that has been changed with some of the mud no longer visible), we had only a few Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs and some Least Sandpipers. At our next stop at the Brown Point Jetty in Ocean Shores, we had distant views of a Wandering Tattler, a Surfbird and some Black Turnstones. A new for the year species for me at least in Washington was Brown Pelican as many flew by.

On the open beach we found only a few Semipalmated Plovers and some Sanderlings, a far cry qualitatively and quantitatively from our hopes and expectations. It was only noon so we had time to back track through Hoquiam and Aberdeen and head south on the Westport side of the Coast with our first stop at Tokeland.

At Tokeland we quickly found the resident Willets and the huge flock of Marbled Godwits that have also become resident there – all photo friendly. We scanned the latter hoping for a Bar Tailed Godwit, often found in the group and a rare species that Tom and I had seen there last year. No luck but I saw that one had been seen (the first time for 2025) in the flock a few days later. Denny is far more interested in photography (he is a star) than the birds themselves so this was an especially great stop for him. As a side note, Tokeland is the “go to” place for Willets in Washington. My first Washington record was of 5 Willets there in 2012. The population has expanded each year and this time we had at least 25. The most I have ever had there was 30. They seem to be thriving.

Undaunted by our disappointing open beach drive on the Ocean Shores side we then drove the open beach beginning at Cranberry Beach. We had even fewer birds, but were successful in locating a single Snowy Plover, the main target.

Our final stop was at Bottle Beach where birding can be excellent but catching the tides right is a challenge. We were pretty good on the tides but again the birds were not super cooperative. We had a good group of Marbled Godwits, a relatively small number of Black Bellied Plovers, a single uncommon Ruddy Turnstone, a handful of Least Sandpipers, a small flock of Short Billed Dowitchers and maybe 75 Western Sandpipers. I have had a good number of rarities at Bottle Beach and 15 different shorebird species altogether, so it was a bit disappointing.

Regular and common although not numerous in Fall Migration, when Baird’s and Pectoral Sandpipers are reported, they draw attention from birders, particularly those of us looking to add new species to our year lists. Both had been reported the first week of August this year at Channel Drive joining the more common Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Long and Short Billed Dowitchers and Least Sandpipers but engaged in other activities, I did not go looking for them. But I could resist only so long and finally it was time to grab my camera and head north. Unfortunately on my first of such trips, I forgot to read the tide tables and arrived to a high tide and a water covered area with no mud and no shorebirds. Lesson learned (well at least partially), a few days later I timed my visit to arrive at low tide expecting to find shorebirds or to be there for the incoming tide which would bring them to me. Wrong again. A low tide, yes, a low enough tide, no. Again almost no mud in the main ponds. A few Greater Yellowlegs, some Killdeer on the mud at the channel itself and a small group of Least Sandpipers that flew by. Nothing new for the year, nothing exciting. A stop at the Hayton Reserve also misjudged the tide – way too low, but a consolation prize was a beautiful first of the year juvenile Peregrine Falcon.

Ok, enough of Channel Drive. A “rare for the area” Red Knot was being reported at the Mouth of the Cedar River in Renton, Washington not as quite far my Edmonds home to the South as Channel Drive was to the north. So I headed south. Prior to that visit I had seen 57 species at that location including 10 shorebirds, most notably both American and Pacific Golden Plovers, Semipalmated Plover, Killdeer, Least, Western, Pectoral, Semipalmated and Spotted Sandpipers, and Greater Yellowlegs. Not surprisingly there were many birders there when I arrived, several looking at the main target, the juvenile Red Knot, and there were many other shorebirds there as well. New to me for the location in addition to the Red Knot were Short and Long Billed Dowitchers and a Baird’s Sandpiper. The Knot, the Baird’s Sandpiper and a Semipalmated Sandpiper were new for my 2025 Year List. Other shorebirds seen there were Killdeer, Semipalmated Plover, and Western and Least Sandpipers. Seen by others previously but not by me this day was what would have been a first of the year Pectoral Sandpiper.

Good reports continued for Channel Drive including for Stilt Sandpiper, regular but uncommon, so I would give it one one more try – paying attention not just to whether it was a low tide, but how low. It was now September 3rd, and I finally got the tide right. Nine shorebird species were there including my first Pectoral Sandpiper for the year but the Stilt Sandpiper failed to make an appearance.

The Stilt Sandpipers were seen again a day or two later at Channel Drive but attention for birders in Western Washington shifted back to the Mouth of the Cedar River as a young excellent birder, Eric Hope, visited every morning and in addition to continuing to report on the continuing Red Knot among others, he added Stilt Sandpipers, Sabine’s Gull and then a mega rarity, a Red Necked Stint. Time to get back to the Cedar River mouth. In my blog posts, I often refer to two cardinal rules for a chase. Rule 1 is “Go now!” That means as soon as you hear about a bird of interest, pick up your gear and go for it. Don’t wait. Rule 2 is if you fail to follow Rule 1 and you don’t get the bird, you are not allowed to whine about it, because – hey you knew Rule 1. I had seen Red Necked Stints in Washington twice and had photos so I did not go right away, but then a Ruff was found by Eric the next morning, and even though again I had seen and photographed that species in Washington on many occasions, it was quite rare and it was not possible to stay away.

I knew that friend Jon Houghton “needed” a Red Necked Stint for his life list, so he was an easy recruit to go. Unfortunately the Mouth of the Cedar River site is adjacent to a municipal airport and even though it had not done so previously in the year, on the morning we were going to go, they shot off fireworks “to scare the birds away” theoretically to prevent collisions with aircraft, even though there had been no recent issues. The Stint was seen that morning before the fireworks but not thereafter. When Jon and I got there, we quickly found the Ruff and hung around with many other birders for a couple of hours, hoping the Stint would return – no such luck. BUT in addition to the first of year Ruff, I did see a couple of Stilt Sandpipers, first for 2024. Unfortunately I was never able to get a photo with them close and with heads out of the water. Jon and I decided to chase a Solitary Sandpiper at the Redmond retention ponds, a place I have seen them twice before. Nothing when we first walked in but a few minutes later, a single shorebird flew in – and we had our target.

At the Mouth of the Cedar, the Red Knot had continued and there were a lot of other shorebirds and the hope was that the Ruff would continue as well. I called Denny and Tom and when asked if they were interested in some photo ops, we agreed to visit there the next morning. The way things were going, maybe something new would show up, and neither had seen a Ruff, so that was a great appeal. Once again, however, the airport shot off the fireworks and the Ruff was nowhere to be found. But other birds were there including the continuing Red Knot and Stilt Sandpipers, this time closer and with their heads up allowing for photos. And even though they missed the Ruff, there were many photo opportunities for Denny and Tom – and, thus for me, too. This included a very cooperative Osprey, a fly over by a Peregrine Falcon, a Pectoral Sandpiper, both Dowitchers and a close-in Wilson’s Snipe.

If that had been the end of the story, even missing the Red-Necked Stint, it would have been a great story for just one month with 14 shorebirds seen at the Mouth of the Cedar in addition to the ones seen at Channel Drive and the species seen earlier at the coast, that altogether made it 26 for the month: Marbled Godwit, Willet, Sanderling, Killdeer, Semipalmated, Black Bellied and Snowy Plovers, Ruddy and Black Turnstones, Surfbird, Wandering Tattler, Western, Least, Pectoral, Spotted, Semipalmated, Solitary, Stilt and Baird’s Sandpipers, Wilson’s Snipe, Ruff, Red Knot, Short and Long Billed Dowitchers, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs.

I have seen 50 species of shorebird in Washington that in addition to the 26 above include 9 that would be considered very rare: the aforementioned Red-Necked Stint and Hudsonian Godwit (each seen twice), Little Stint, Wilson’s Plover, Wood Sandpiper, Siberian Sand Plover, Upland and White Rumped Sandpipers, and Mountain Plover (each seen only once) and another three that are seen not as rarely but are considered very uncommon at best: Sharp Tailed Sandpiper, Bar Tailed Godwit and Buff Breasted Sandpiper. The other 12 species are regular and/or common but for the most part are found in different habitats: Black Oystercatcher (resident and seen mostly on rocky coasts), Rock Sandpiper (uncommon and also on rocky coasts in the winter), three species of Phalarope all migratory and either pelagic (Red) or mostly in Eastern Washington (Red Necked and Wilson’s), Pacific and American Golden Plover uncommon but regular in the Fall, American Avocet and Black Necked Stilt (migratory and then breeds in Eastern Washington), Long Billed Curlew (migratory and then breeds in Eastern Washington), Whimbrel (migratory found mostly in Western Washington) and Dunlin (a nonbreeder seen throughout the year and throughout the state and abundant wintering in Western Washington). So doing the math in about a month, I had seen 50% of all of the shorebirds for the state with another 24% being either rare or very rare and the others being generally found elsewhere or at another time.

If the story ended there it would be a really good story. But there is one more twist to the story. I have taken photos of all but two of those 50 species in Washington. The Wood Sandpiper is a mega-rarity that I saw in Skagit County in August 2011. That is the only record of it for Washington on Ebird. It was a go now chase and I did not even have my camera. I have seen and photographed many in Europe, Asia and Africa but the odds are slim that there will be another one in Washington. The only other photo of any of the 50 Washington shorebirds I am missing is the very rare for Washington Upland Sandpiper seen by me with Dennis Paulson as a fly over at the Game Range in Ocean Shores in 2013 and then missed by 30 minutes after a chase to Damon Point, again in Ocean Shores in 2020. So when a WhatsApp message appeared on the morning of September 10th that one was being seen – and of course it was at the Mouth of the Cedar River – I followed Rule 1, got into my car, and headed south. This time I missed it by an hour – AAARGH!!! Dozens of birders were there when I arrived or came later and it was just never seen again.

It had been a great 3 weeks, but I would have traded all of the observations and all of the other photos for a single photo of the Upland Sandpiper – even a lousy one. I have a photo of one in Maine and another of one in Texas. Maybe next year – maybe at the Mouth of the Cedar River a new favorite Hotspot.

[August 17 Addendum – I just came back to this post after visiting the Tulalip Spit in Snohomish County with Jon Houghton chasing an American Golden Plover that was being reported there. After an unsuccessful 45 minutes alone, we were joined by 8 other birders and after another 30 minutes when the tide came in and pushed the birds somewhat closer, we were successful in locating the American Golden Plover among 170+ Black Bellied Plovers. Other shorebirds were two Red Knots, a Baird’s Sandpiper and many Dowitchers. One of the many Great Blue Herons provided a nice photo op. The American Golden Plover brought my Fall 2025 shorebird count to 27 species. I leave for Amsterdam next week and unless something really special shows up, there will be no more birding in Washington before I return in early October. There is a chance to add some Eurasian shorebird species in Amsterdam as I hope to get out birding one day. Back in Washington next month, there may be another species or two to be found. I like round numbers, so maybe 30 will complete the story.]