Just over eleven years ago, I treated myself to a decent DSLR camera and 400mm lens. I was heading out to the Andaman Islands and South & North West India at the end of 2013 and I wanted to start photographing some of the Birds and other Wildlife on the trip. To address the problem of where to put the photos, I started this Blog and this is the 1000th Blog Post on the Blog's eleventh birthday.
A big reason to create the Blog was to have somewhere that I could easily look back on my photos & remember Birding trips. I have an offline back of all the Blog Posts in word documents and recently, I've been flicking through these Word documents as I stared to prepare to write this milestone Blog Post. There is an excellent range of Blog Posts covering a lot of UK and overseas Birds, Cetaceans and other Wildlife especially, Mammals, Butterflies & Dragonflies. There are a lot of surprisingly OK photos in these Blog Posts, with plenty of useful ID tips thrown in along the way. In the last eleven years I've travelled to:
- Holland (2013)
- The Andaman Islands and India (2013/14)
- Morocco & Western Sahara (2014)
- Israel (2014)
- Croatia (2014)
- Pitcairn, Henderson Island & French Polynesia (2014)
- California (2014)
- Turkey (2015)
- Finland (2016)
- Ireland (2016, 2022 & 2024)
- Colombia (2018)
- Chile (2018)
- Argentina, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension Island, Cape Verde to Holland (2018)
- Indonesian: Banda Sea, the Moluccas, Bali & Java (2022)
- Argentina, the Falklands, South Georgia & Antarctica (2023)
- New Zealand, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, the Solomons & Japan (2023)
- Angola (2023)
- Tenerife, the Lesser Antilles and Spain (2024)
- Plus, many ORCA survey trips to France and Spain.
I've still got over fifty thousand photos (& four hundred GBs) of photos to still to sort out. This could easily keep me going for a year or two until I've finally cleared that backlog. Therefore, there are still lots of interesting Blog Posts still to write. For now, I will look to the start of the next thousand Blog Posts with a few tasters of photos to come: I hope you enjoy them. So, instead of looking back on the first 999 Blog Posts, I will look back on some of the recent foreign trips and look forward to some of the species coming in the next thousand Blog Posts.
Firstly, I've written up the Blog Posts for the fantastic Bird Tour Asia trip to the Banda Sea. This was an excellent run trip with lots of happy memories. The trip started as I arrived in Indonesia and headed East to meet the others in the Tanimbar Islands. After a clean-up of the Tanimbar endemics, we boarded the Lady Denok to travel through the ultra-remote Banda Sea islands with many superb Birds and Cetaceans, Flying Fish and a few Sea Turtles. There are too many excellent species to mention, so you will just have to read the Blog Posts.
I had an overnight trip to Kuala Lumpur which allowed me to renew my visa before flying out to Ternate for the start of the second of my back to back Bird Tour Asia trips. This was their Remote Moluccas tour. The only major island we didn't go Birding on was Halmahera, which wasn't a problem as I had previously visited Halmahera back in 1991. This was an excellent run trip with lots of happy memories. I still need to start sorting the photos from this tour, but I will leave you with a couple of photos. I can thoroughly recommend using Bird Tour Asia for Birding tours in Asia.
I had some unfinished locations from the 1991 trips to Indonesia where Keith Turner & I visited all the main islands across the archipelago, as well as, parts of West Papua. But we were foiled in North Bali where Bali Starling was critically threatened with extinction & the Bali Barat National Park was closed. Fortunately, the population is looking a lot more healthy now and it is possible to visit the area and Bali Myna and Javan Banded Pitta can be seen.
My first day of Birding was so successful, that we rejigged the plans and spent the second day of private guiding enjoying a bonus visit to see White-faced Partridge in Java. A great way to end the seven weeks of Birding in Indonesia and with no major food problems. That was until an eight day bout of salmonella kicked when the flight was about three hours out of Heathrow. After getting over the salmonella, I had about three weeks before I was off again in early Jan 2023. This time to Argentina and a trip to my final continent, Antarctica. I've already written the Blog Posts for a few days of Birding in Argentina and the Falklands.
I still need to sorting the photos from South Georgia and Antarctica. This was one of my most enjoyable foreign trips with some great company and wildlife. I still need to sort out most of the photos, but these King Penguins are one of my all-time favourite photos.
Only a few weeks after I got back from Antarctica, I was on the move again. This time on my third trip to New Zealand. There were very few Ticks left for me on the main islands, but three of them were Kiwis: South Island Brown Kiwi on Stewart Island, Okarito Brown Kiwi and Great Spotted Kiwi. They varied from easy, a good chance of seeing them if the weather was OK to very difficult, respectively. I got lucky after checking out a rustling just off the track which I stumbled on what proved to be my final Kiwi species. Overall, my favourite sighting in New Zealand were my second views of the gorgeous and friendly Hector's Dolphins in South Island's Marlborough Sound.
Next, it was on to Auckland for the Heritage Expeditions West Pacific Odyssey from New Zealand to Japan. I was looking forward to this expedition ship, but I had been forewarned about the likely problems with this company by a mate who had travelled with them pre-covid, where promised landings in Japan were cancelled as they hadn't arranged landing permissions. The company refused to refund the landing fees or compensate for these problems. I will go into the full details of the problems we experienced with Heritage Expeditions & how they tried to cover up C19 on the ship when I write the Blog Posts. They failed to manage it once news was out about the cover up, whilst allowing landings to continue in the Solomons, despite not testing the passengers for C19 and thus exposing the islanders to risks of infection. The same had happened in New Caledonia, but the passengers weren't aware of the cover up at that stage and no precautions were in place. Heritage Expeditions failure to tackle & control C19, meant we were not allowed to land on Truk in Micronesia, which was one of the main reasons I signed up for the trip. Following on from this we were banned from all the Japanese island landings by our C19 status. To compensate for all these cockups, Heritage Expeditions refunded two hundred US dollars, which was only part of the landing fees we had paid for Truk and the Japanese islands, pretended it was a goodwill gesture and then told us we had to spend it on the ship before we left or we would lose it. Heritage Expeditions refused to compensate the passengers for all the problems of the ship, other than to offer us the chance on another cruise with them. I am one of a number of passengers who wouldn't touch this company again with a bargepole. I certainly wouldn't recommend anybody else booking with them, which is a shame as I have good memories of travelling with Rodney Russ in 2001 to the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands. But the current company management is very different to Rodney's hands on style.
While I was in New Zealand, I got offered a place with mates Phil Hansbro and Richard Carden on a private tour of Angola run by their pal Niall Perrins in June 23. This was a great trip where we saw all the Angolan endemic species. I've already written up all of this trip on the Blog starting with the first day and ending at the stunning scenery on the Tundavala Escarpment.
Since I got back from Angola, I've been focusing on a building project on my cottage, with lots of local Birding and ferry survey trips for ORCA and Marinelife to France, Spain and the Channel Isles. But I also was offered a place in a team of four ORCA surveyors on a Saga cruise from Pompey to Tenerife, eight landings in the Lesser Antilles and North Spain. This was a working trip where we were surveying every day for the full time at sea, except for meal breaks. In addition to the surveying, there was a lot of passenger engagement with the delightful passengers on the ship who would spent part of each day on the top deck with us, enjoying the Cetaceans, Seabirds, Flying Fish and a few elusive Sea Turtles.
Once we got to the Lesser Antilles, we enjoyed daily runs ashore on Grenada, Barbados, Martinique, St Lucia, Bequia, Dominique, Nevis and Antigua. When there were Ticks for me on the islands, I headed out in chartered taxis where I managed to see most of the potential Ticks. I will start posting the Blog Posts for this trip in the near future.
Hopefully there will be plenty of other interesting Blog Posts from local Birding, survey trips with ORCA and Marinelife, as well as, hopefully more ORCA surveying trips on Saga cruises and some future foreign trips that I still want to do. It should be an interesting next thousand Blog Posts. I hope you continue to enjoy reading these Blog Posts.