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Catch up on the latest news from Victor Emanuel Nature Tours by reading the latest VENTFLASH.
Washington: September Migration, the Pacific Northwest
Bob Sundstrom: Oct 03, 08
Our September Pacific Northwest tour takes advantage of nature's timing, as early September concentrates bird migrants along the Northwest's forest edges, bays, coastal shorelines, and over the ocean itself. During our 2008 tour we enjoyed superb weather and an admirable list of birds, plus great food and a memorable journey through the scenic Northwest, as we birded the region from Willapa Bay in southwest Washington to Boundary Bay in southeast British Columbia.The first morning was...
Texas: Cibolo Creek Workshop
Barry Zimmer: Sep 25, 08
Our second Cibolo Creek tour was a huge success, even topping the inaugural trip of last year. We started out with some difficulties, as unprecedented flooding in the vicinity of Presidio had caused the creek to rise enough so that access to the ranch was temporarily prohibited. A one-night stay in a historic hotel in Marfa solved that problem and put us in closer proximity to the Davis Mountains for our day of birding there. We tallied an impressive number of migrants during the trip, as wel...
Grand California
Jeri Langham: Sep 25, 08
Whenever someone asks if I get tired of leading our Grand California tour, I laugh and say, "Picture San Francisco, Point Reyes, Bodega Bay, the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, the White Mountains, Yosemite National Park, Monterey, and the Big Sur coastline. Now tell me you could ever get tired of the scenery, not to mention the array of possible birds, plants, and other animals." Our endemic Yellow-billed Magpie is much more difficult to see due to decimation by the West Nile...
Summer at El Valle's Canopy Lodge
Michael O'Brien: Sep 22, 08
Nestled in the crater of an extinct volcano and at an elevation of nearly 2,000 feet, El Valle is both picturesque and refreshingly cooler than the lowlands of Panama. It also has a great diversity of birds, including many species not found around the Canopy Tower. Run by the same owner as Canopy Tower, the food here is just as exquisite and the accommodations are very comfortable.At the conclusion of our Canopy Tower tour, those of us continuing on to El Valle enjoyed a final delightful morn...
Summer at Panama's Canopy Tower
Michael O'Brien: Sep 22, 08
Summer in Panama is a time of incredible abundance and a frenzy of activity. Due to daily rains, the vegetation is lush, the flowers are blooming, and the birds are either nesting or feeding their recently fledged young. Abundance of resident birds reaches its peak at this season. Although the "green season" produces daily rain showers, they come in a predictable pattern, usually for an hour or two in the afternoon (during siesta time!). The result is cooler temperatures and increas...
Southwest Colorado: Birds & Butterflies
Michael O'Brien: Sep 17, 08
By Michael O’Brien and Louise ZemaitisIn Colorado one can witness some of the most breathtaking scenery in North America. During our Southwest Colorado Birds & Butterflies tour we saw much of that scenery—enhanced by a dizzying array of birds, butterflies, and wildflowers. This year's late spring with much snow caused a slight shift in the seasons, particularly at high elevation. We noticed that shift in the brood timing in the birds and butterflies. There were also specta...
Autumn Grand Manan
Barry Zimmer: Sep 15, 08
The Bay of Fundy off Grand Manan Island offers what is hands down some of the best pelagic birding anywhere in the country. With both superb quality of species and sheer quantity of birds, every boat trip is a nonstop thrill ride. This was proven once again on our recent Autumn Grand Manan tour. On our full-day boat trip, we tallied a staggering 8,000 Wilson's Storm-Petrels, 2,000 Red Phalarope, 1,500 Red-necked Phalarope, 400 Greater Shearwaters, 200 Atlantic Puffins, 150 Sooty Shearwate...
Western Turkey: Birds and History
Peter Roberts: Sep 12, 08
This was our sixth Birds & History tour in Western Turkey. Our tour was co-led by my good friend, knowledgeable historian, and great raconteur, Umit Ozaydin. The weather started out hot, but cooled down to something quite pleasant. I was glad to see good water levels at our various wetland birding sites, making for some excellent short excursions full of shorebirds and other waterbirds.We found most of the more special and hoped-for species from the start, with Syrian Woodpeckers in ...
Best of Brazil and Iguacu Falls Extension
Kevin Zimmer: Sep 12, 08
Our 2008 Best of Brazil tour got off to a rousing start, beginning with our drive from Cuiabá to Poconé, and on to the Transpantaneira, a gravel road that provides a fabulous north-south transect of the northern Pantanal. Birds were everywhere, as they typically are, and we rubbernecked from giant Jabirus and Greater Rheas to smaller, but no less interesting cacholotes and woodcreepers. At one of our first real stops, we were treated to perched and flying Hyacinth Macaws, the la...
September 2008 Birdletter
Sep 12, 08
The September 2008 issue of VENT's printed newsletter, the Birdletter, includes articles about our 2009 Bering Sea Cruise, our Amazonia at Napo Wildlife Center tour in Ecuador, an article by Victor about his and Peter Matthiessen's cougar sighting in Belize, Eastern Venezuela, the Darien Wilderness in Panama, VENT Cruises in 2008-2010, our Belize: Birds and Butterflies tour, Holiday Tours, The Philippines, our Winter Travel Deal at Panama's Canopy Tower, Short Costa Rica: Toucans ...
Mato Grosso, Brazil
Andrew Whittaker: Sep 10, 08
Once again, the Pantanal offered a nonstop series of highlights and lived up to its well-deserved reputation as one of the premier wildlife spectacles in the world! The Pantanal covers a staggering 140,000 sq km of seasonally flooded savannas and subtropical forest, making it the planet's largest wetland. Each year it's a great privilege for me to share the region's astonishing biodiversity, where daily bird lists often exceed 150 species, and where mammals and crocodilians occur ...
Namibia, Botswana and Zambia
Geoff Lockwood: Sep 09, 08
Etosha's waterholes are justifiably world-famous for the incredible game viewing they offer. Every day is different and the scene changes constantly, with animals and birds arriving and departing in an endless procession throughout each 24-hour cycle.The floodlit waterhole at Okaukeujo, Etosha's westernmost camp, is always a fantastic introduction to Africa's wildlife, and so it proved again this year. We arrived in camp late in the afternoon and, after settling everyone into thei...
Borneo
David Bishop: Sep 08, 08
I sometimes have to pinch myself to realize just how fortunate I am to return each year to this extraordinary island. VENT's tour of Borneo is without doubt one of the finest natural history trips anywhere, not least because Borneo is one of the most exciting, vibrant, and biologically diverse places on our planet. The combination of immense forests replete with a fabulous array of plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates, serviced by some of the most comfortable an...
VENTFLASH #92
Victor Emanuel: Sep 08, 08
Dear Friends,With September already upon us, I have been reflecting on all the great trips VENT operated not only this summer, but throughout this past year as well. Our tour year does not parallel the calendar year, but runs from October 1 through the end of the following September. The year that will end on September 30th has been one of the most successful in our company's 32-year history. We again offered more than 150 tours to destinations all over the world. In addition to operating...
Peru Manu: Machu Picchu Extension
Steve Hilty: Sep 04, 08
This short itinerary provides a dramatic contrast to the steamy lowlands and overwhelming biological diversity of the Manu Biosphere Reserve. This is a trip through high mountain valleys carved from powerful rushing rivers, a trip through high Andean grasslands and, most of all, a trip through history. This is, by all accounts, a region of colorful markets and of remarkable people dressed in distinctive but regionally varied clothing. Women carry babies, wrapped in bright blankets, on their b...
Peru Manu Part II: The Lowland Rainforest
Steve Hilty: Sep 04, 08
Ok, I've said it. The Manu lowlands were hot and humid on this trip, maybe more so than on some previous trips, but then, it wouldn't be an Amazonian rainforest without heat and humidity. The good news: no south polar cold fronts that bring cold temperatures and days of rain. We experienced, in short, just what one would expect in the world's largest rainforest—a couple of brief rains and some muggy weather.Mornings at the two canopy platforms provided opportunities to see s...
Peru Manu Part I: The Cloud Forest and Foothills
Steve Hilty: Sep 04, 08
Call it the year of the hummingbird. We identified 39 species of hummingbirds on this trip, including several we haven't seen for years. Two, in particular, were the lovely little Rufous-capped Thornbill and the Rufous-webbed Brilliant, the latter coming to a feeder a few times at the Hacienda Amazonia. Neither is seen frequently. Then there were the colorful or boldly-patterned ones such as Collared Inca, Long-tailed Sylph, Mountain Velvetbreast, Gould's Jewelfront (now a regular at ...
Camp Yosemite
Barry Lyon: Sep 04, 08
The first time I laid eyes on Yosemite National Park, I was a 14-year-old kid from Southern California traveling on a family vacation. Looking out at the Yosemite Valley from the park's famed viewpoint below the Wawona tunnel, I stared spellbound at the monumental rock formations and waterfalls that form one of the world's most instantly recognizable landscapes. On the left rose El Capitán, a larger-than-life 5,000-foot block of granite; on the right, Bridalveil Fall gushed ove...
Ecuador: The Southern Andes
Paul Greenfield: Aug 25, 08
Our July Ecuador's Southern Andes tour brought us diversity in all its splendor, where habitats, life-zones, ecosystems, and the birds changed from day-to-day, and even minute-by-minute! As is the norm in tropical America as a whole, the unexpected became the expected—and seeing that "unexpected" was often thrilling! We saw 40 species of hummingbirds (!!!) from the species with the world's longest beak—the bizarre Sword-billed Hummingbird—to that with the s...
Ecuador: Amazonia at Napo Wildlife Center
Paul Greenfield: Aug 22, 08
The Napo Wildlife Center (NWC) experience is truly diverse, as well as unpredictable. As we breezed downstream on the powerful current of the Rio Napo, I sensed that something was different; we weren't weaving back and forth as is customary on this two to two-and-a-half-hour journey, magically following deeper channels cut beneath the sandy-brown silt-laden waters. The water levels had risen visibly high due to the heavy rains that were falling along the eastern slopes of the Andes farthe...
