I have some new trips coming up - look for details under Tours

Amazon Adventure.  August 2-14, 2010. Please check for details, under Tours. We will take a boat tour up the Solimoes and Rio Negro, searching for wildlife and learning about the great rivers.  Our boat is an ideal base for exploration, and the forests and rivers provide tremendous inspiration. SORRY -SOLD OUT!

Argentina and Chile. November 1- 16, 2010. All new Tour! We’ll visit the pampas in northern Argentina, staying at an estancia in the heart of the Ibera marshes, then fly to Peninsula Valdes to see Southern Right Whales with young, Orcas, Guanacos and a host of sea and land birds. Next we head to Los Glaciares and Torres del Paine, with some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world. We’ll be tracking Puma and watching Andean Condors, along with many southern hemisphere endemic birds. SPACE FOR ONE SINGLE WOMAN (SHARED ROOM).

Costa Rica. Feb 11-24, 2011.  All new tour! We’ll visit the dry northwest, the Atlantic lowlands, Arenal Volcano, and the highland oak forest. This is a fabulous trip, with an amazing diversity of habitats, birds, mammals and other wildlife, big and small. SPACE FOR ONE SINGLE MALE (SHARED ROOM).

Natural History Illustration Workshops. Sophie Webb, illustrator of Birds of Mexico and northern Central America, and I are planning several wildlife-watching tours that will also explore the world of nature illustration, with demonstrations and time for participants to practice their own work. We plan to take groups to Trinidad, Chile and Ecuador in the future. Ask for more details.

Please contact me for further information.

I just got back from a tour of Tasmania (January 25 to February 7). I led the trip with Mark Hanger from Naturequest New Zealand, and we took 10 enthusiastic participants. What a great country! We saw far more mammals than I expected, even though I had set out with high hopes. We even saw wild Tasmanian Devils!

This one is a captive, I must admit. The views we had of the 4 wild individuals the group as a whole saw were short and sweet.

We saw a lot of wallabies and their smaller relatives, pademelons, plus the wonderfully named Long-nosed Potoroo. Eastern Quolls were sighted at three different reserves, and we watched one out hunting at Cradle Mountain. Duck-billed Platypus, a ton of wombats, all the endemic birds, and an assortment of herps rounded out the trip.

 This is a Bennett’s Wallaby

One of my trip favorites was the Echidna (shown below) - and we saw a total of 12 individuals! You can get right up to them when they are feeding, shoving their narrow snout into the ground and spinning it like a jackhammer in search of ants.

 I’m planning to return to Tasmania with mammals uppermost on the agenda. Let me know if you are interested in coming along!

I was really fortunate in being invited to colead (with Merlin Tuttle and Geoffrey Gomes) a Bat Conservation International Founder’s Circle Tour to Trinidad in January. It was an amazing trip! We stayed at Asa Wright Nature Centre the entire time, and went out visiting bat and bird areas throughout the island.

There is a second trip in May - contact BCI (www.batcon.org) for details. In May we will also see breeding leatherback turtles!

Here are some of my favorite images from the trip:

Silky Anteater - fantastic!

Jamaican Fruit-eating Bats in a tent

Bats exiting Tamana Hill Bat Cave

Green Honeycreeper - one of many fabulous birds seen

Special thanks to George Jett and Gwen Brewer (shown below) for letting me use their wonderful photos. I took the Silky Anteater image, they took the rest. Gwen has a Davy’s Naked-backed Bat flying over her head!