For an entire week of travel in Africa, we had heard nothing other than how the wildebeest migration wasn’t happening. Rains had come to the south, grasses were dry in the north, and prescribed burns in Tanzania were said to be dissuading these famed antelope...
Let’s face it, birders can be a serious bunch. There are both written and unspoken rules that garner more than just glares if broken - God forbid you point or wear white boots. I’m pretty sure laughter is generally frowned upon as well. Yet it...
It was my second day gorilla trekking in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and I thought I knew the gig. My first hike, in the medium difficulty category, had been an easy stroll through bamboo and montane forest into an open glade where our assigned gorilla...
I wanted to visit Dry Tortugas National Park long before I understood what or where it was. It sounded exciting - a tropical island far removed from the rest of the Florida Keys and an oasis for marine and bird life. It sounded like my...
Our goal was to see 100 bird species in and around Everglades National Park by the end of the day - The Fifth Everglades Century Day by a core team of Floridians and Marylanders. We’d succeeded on our last venture, eking out a couple of...
I’m not sure what caused me to glance up at that moment, nor how I noticed the writhing gray amidst the foliage but it stopped me in my tracks. I watched as tiny wings coated in fluff beat vigorously, but the bird went nowhere. Talons...
I couldn’t get over how dense and sprawling Paris was as I stared down from the Eiffel Tower at the maze of buildings packed onto Medieval-sized streets below. It was Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III who widened some of the streets to create today’s grand...
“New” seems to be a relative term in England and in the case of the New Forest, “new” dates back to 1079 when newly arrived William the Conqueror designated the land as a royal forest for his deer hunts. As a non-Brit, 1079 sounded ancient...
Pineland gave way to rolling dunes, dunes so expansive that the ocean beyond went nearly forgotten. It was low tide and the waves were so far out that there were no crashing sounds to remind me I was seaside. Burrows riddled the hillside and I...
Marsh Harrier in flight. A pile of whipped cream and strawberries sat before me as word rippled through lunch at the lovely Victoria Inn restaurant that a pair of Eurasian spoonbills was courting at one of the neighboring bird blinds. I shoveled my ‘Eton Mess’ into...