On the wrong side of the planet ...

Time is not really on my side at the moment due to various ongoing work commitments (the fruits of which should be available to see soon at birdguides.com), but here are a few record shots of the Grey-tailed Tattler that I was fortunate enough to come across in the famous quarry at Cabo da Praia, Terceira, Azores, while leading a tour there last Friday. Unfortunately we only had an hour in the strong mid-afternoon sunshine to watch this East Asian vagrant before our early-evening flight back to São Miguel. This represents the first for the Azores and Portugal as well as being just the fifth for the Western Palearctic.

As and when time allows I hope to feed back a bit more on recent trips to Taiwan and Colombia, as well as the Azores tour.

Grey-tailed Tattler, Cabo da Praia, 7 July 2017

If you go down in the woods today...

... Ribeira da Ponte, specifically, you'd have seen a fine first-winter male American Redstart. Found mid-afternoon by Gordon Beck very close to where he found last year's Magnolia Warbler, the bird showed very well through to early evening when we left. Though it would go missing for short periods and was quite mobile, it regularly re-announced its presence with a typical wood-warbler 'tsiip' and responded very well to tape. However, in the dark ribeiras, good photos are obtained only by the professionals - a bird constantly on the move up high in the canopy makes for a difficult subject for mere mortals such as I. Views through the bins were absolutely mind-blowing though. A great start to the trip - with good (not great, but decent enough) winds forecast, hopefully a few more birds yet.