Guyana 2007

I’ve always loved swallows, and increasingly I think of that group as an exemplary one for the purposes of “birder education”: the family Hirundinidae shows a good diversity in habits and behavior, and provides excellent illustrations of a variety of identification features, from plumage characters to flight habit. Name a topic birders are interested in, [...]

The rivers of Guyana left this boy from the prairies, one who has ended up in the desert, with his mouth agape and his eyes disbelieving. Our boat travel along the Essequibo took us to several stretches where the river was 5 kilometers or more across, the opposite shore a green blur on the horizon; [...]

If you ask me, any place with jacamars is mighty close to paradise!

I don’t like the term and I certainly don’t like the idea: there really are no “trash birds” if you’re a real birder. But in Guyana in November, Great Kiskadee, hardly a trash bird by any reckoning here in the US, nearly attained that status: not by virtue of its abundance, but by virtue of [...]

One of my favorite spots on our Guyana tour was the Atta Canopy Walkway, a series of sturdy platforms connected by stable walkways 100 feet above the forest floor. The view down was dizzying,

but the whole structure is supported by some tremendous rainforest giants. The duct tape inspired confidence, too.

But we weren’t there to be [...]