Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From Homebase in Oak Harbor (but still dreaming of Panama), Kimberly Writes: It's been quite some time since we last posted to our poor neglected blog, and we've had some pretty amazing adventures since then. For instance, we just returned from a sensational trip to Panama with our friends Jim and Cindy Beckman and their birding tour company  Cheepers! Birding on a Budget . Traveling with Jim and Cindy is like an extra insurance policy for having a great time on a trip. Their attention to detail, their fun loving spirit, and the fact that they travel along with their customers on every trip ensures a positively wonderful experience! To add to the supreme quality of this trip, our local guide in Panama was Carlos Bethancourt. We'd birded with Carlos in Texas a few years ago so we knew how great he was. We'd heard many testimonials of his skills as a guide in Panama, and now that we've birded with him on his home turf, we can testify that every great thing we heard i...

From back home in Ohio, Kenn writes: Most birding tours to Trinidad and Tobago (T & T) are planned for winter or early spring. That’s the season when you can expect the highest total number of species, because the local resident birds are joined by migrants from the north -- padding the list with birds that you could have seen back in Ohio or New Jersey during the summer. People who judge the success of a birding trip by the sheer number of species seen (we’re not among them) might see that as reason enough to go to Trinidad in winter. Winter and early spring are the seasons when most other tourists go to T & T also. Partly they go in winter to escape the cold weather up north. But another factor is that the other half of the year, June through November, is what used to be referred to as Trinidad’s rainy season. I say "used to be" because we’ve changed it. That half of the year is now known as the "Green Season." Yeah, there’s some rain. But we just spent ...

From amid a huge file of still-unprocessed photos, Kenn writes: Baby leatherback sea turtles hatch out of eggs buried in sand and start a desperate scramble down the beach toward the water, and if they make it, they may not see land again for years. During those years they are maturing from palm-sized rubber toys into enormous sea monsters. Full-grown adult leatherbacks are the world’s largest turtles, up to seven feet long and weighing up to a ton. They are also the most wide-ranging turtles on the planet, found almost throughout the world’s oceans, traveling from the tropics to the edges of the polar regions. They are also, throughout their vast range, seriously endangered. With streamlined leathery shells and powerful front flippers, the leatherbacks can fly through the depths with astonishing grace and speed, diving to more than half a mile below the sea surface and staying submerged for more than an hour. Their great size is no hindrance in the sea, where they are the most gracefu...

From the Asa Wright Nature Centre, Trinidad, Kenn writes: Birding in Trinidad is turning out to be even more fun than I’d expected. I started reading about Trinidad -- and about the Asa Wright Nature Centre -- when I was just a kid. The center was established in 1967, making it one of the first nature centers anywhere in the tropics, and I first heard about it as a place that people would go for their introduction to tropical birds. But I had my tropical-bird intro in Mexico, since (as a penniless teenager) I could hitch-hike to the border and then take the cheap buses south. Later, when I ventured deeper into the tropics, I went to Peru and Ecuador and Venezuela, not to Trinidad. Working as a professional leader of birding tours, it made more sense for me to take groups to Venezuela (with a total bird list of over 1400 species) than to the island of Trinidad, just off the Venezuelan coast (with a total bird list of fewer than 500 species). So even though I knew Trinidad was famous fo...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: The last few days were like a blur, almost, inspiring me to think of a new title: "Blur-ding with Kenn and Kim!" Friday night our band played at Mango Mama’s in Port Clinton, and it felt like one of our best performances yet, but we didn’t have time to bask in the afterglow of a rocking fine time: I had to hurry home, in most un-rockerly fashion, and sleep for a couple of hours. At 3:45 a.m. I was leaving the house to drive to the Cleveland airport so I could fly to Boise, Idaho, get into a rental car, drive three and a half hours west into Oregon, and arrive in the town of Burns in time to set up and give the Saturday evening keynote talk at the 28th annual John Scharff Migratory Bird Festival. If you’re familiar with the concept of bird festivals, that figure will have caught your eye: 28th annual? Has any bird festival been around that long? There are now hundreds of bird and nature festivals all over North America, but most of them hav...

From home base in Ohio, Kenn writes: We traveled to the Antarctic on board the Clipper Adventurer from January 7 to 25, 2009, on a birding and wildlife expedition sponsored by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Before and after the voyage we were in Argentina, starting in the capital city of Buenos Aires and joining the ship in the southern outpost city of Ushuaia. The map below will help to put these points in a world perspective. Points for reference: 1. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2. Ushuaia, Argentina. 3. Antarctic Peninsula. The vast majority of expedition cruises to Antarctica go from South America to the Antarctic Peninsula, and the map shows why. South America extends much farther south than Africa or Australia, and the Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost point of the white continent, so the crossing is feasible for many kinds of ships. There are also some expedition cruises that go south from New Zealand and take in the subantarctic islands of that country, and a few cruises tha...

From cyberspace, Kenn writes: If we're on schedule, today we'll be on the Falklands, those cold but beautiful rocky islands east of the southern tip of South America. We probably won't be able to post from out there. But for a taste of what we might be seeing, you can check out Alan Henry's blog, Birding in the Falkland Islands. Alan has lived in the Falklands since 1987 and is an expert on the birdlife there. Naturally, it's exciting for him to find birds that are rare on the islands -- including visitors that would be common for us in North America, like Barn Swallow and Lesser Yellowlegs. But he also includes photos of his everyday local birds, like Falkland Steamer Ducks and Rockhopper Penguins!

From the Time Machine, Kenn writes: If this attempt at pre-publishing actually works, this will post at 6:55 in the morning (eastern standard time) on January 1, 2009. And if all goes according to plan, at that point Kim and I will be all bleary-eyed and hot. Not as a result of partying all night, but as a result of being on a plane all night, on a nine-hour flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Buenos Aires is at the edge of the tropics, and January 1 is the height of summer there, which is where the "hot" part comes from. Or at least, most of it. We’ll be out of the country for about four weeks, with several days in northern Argentina, a couple in Tierra del Fuego, and then a long voyage by ship to the Falklands, South Georgia Island, and the Antarctic Peninsula. If possible -- if we can connect to the internet for less than a million dollars -- we’ll attempt to post some bird pix from Argentina, or maybe even from the ship, if the satellite hookup works. But it’s...

From Port Clinton, Ohio, Kenn writes: We braved the intense cold and the ice-covered roads last night to go to band practice, and then the weather socked us anyway: Sully, our lead guitar player, was called away for an emergency having to do with pipes freezing and bursting. The rest of the band spent a while working out chord progressions of new material anyway before calling it a night. At some point, messing around, I started playing the famous bassline from the hit "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen -- the same bassline that was lifted, essentially note for note, by Vanilla Ice for his hit single rap classic "Ice Ice Baby." Kim had performed this song a couple of times with her old band, Four Thorn Rose, not as a planned part of the show but to fill in time while someone changed a broken guitar string. Sure enough, as soon as I started playing the bassline, Kim jumped in with the lyric, delivering it with tons of rapper attitude: Will it ever stop, yo --...