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Greetings, birding friends! Welcome to our January emailing!
As the first few weeks of the year find their stride, we hope your 2026 has gotten off to a great start with plenty of good birds to kick things off. For many of you currently navigating the mid-winter chill or digging out from the latest snow, those hardy visitors at your backyard feeders certainly make the short days feel a little brighter. Whether you’re braving the frost for a rare winter sighting or scouting from the warmth of your kitchen window, it’s a wonderful time to appreciate the resilience of the birds right outside our doors.
Speaking of being afield, as you read this we have groups currently exploring the bird-rich habitats of Thailand, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico. Whether our groups are tracking down endemics in the Amazon basin or birding the varied landscapes of Central America and Asia, it is a fine time to be on a birding adventure, and we’re grateful to be a part of these journeys with you.
Reflecting on 2025, it was a remarkable year of birding travel. Collectively, our groups spent 1,690 days in the field across 133 different tours to all continents, and we are deeply grateful to those of you who were able to join us, whether it was for a single tour or on multiple ones. Thank you for choosing to spend your time in the field with Field Guides!
Beyond the tours themselves, 2025 brought some exciting new connections. For the first time in many years, we had a strong presence at two birding events—the San Diego Bird Festival and the New York State Ornithological Association (NYSOA) conference in Ithaca—where we enjoyed leading bird walks and meeting many of you at our information tables. We also rolled out a new payment platform which, to the delight of many, has been a hit right off the bat.
In this month’s emailing, you’ll find a mix of our regular features alongside an extra one. In addition to our monthly Recent Photos gallery, we are excited to share our Best of 2025 collection—a curated look at our favorite images from the past year.
Finally, we have 15 reports from recent tours, eight fresh itineraries, two new trip videos, and a list of the next six months' tours that have space available.
Many thanks to tour participant Jason Leifester for the photo above of a Slaty Vireo taken on one of our Oaxaca tours. We have our Mexico: Oaxaca's Atlantic & Pacific Slopes tour coming up March 8-19, and it has three guides assigned to it: Dan Lane, Bret Whitney, and Alex Sundvall. It should be a great tour with all that bird-finding talent!
Our thanks as well to tour participant Randy Beaton for the photo below of our group birding in a dry wadi during last year's Morocco tour.
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We are pleased to share our Best of 2025 Gallery, a collection of our favorite images pulled from a full year of on-tour photography by participants and guides. This isn’t a judged competition, but rather a subjective 'curator’s choice'—a gathering of the photos that, for one reason or another, stood out as particularly memorable. We hope you enjoy this look at some of our favorite shots from a spectacular year in the field.
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Guide Dan Lane has written a short pitch to sway you into joining him this summer for a fantastic adventure in Peru.
The Amazon is often thought of as a single, uniform place, but a closer look reveals a region shaped by striking variation in flooding regimes, soil types, seasonality, and makeup of microhabitats. The forests around Manaus, Brazil, for example, have a very different character from those that lie against the Andes. In southwestern Amazonia, pronounced seasonality has given rise to extensive bamboo stands and an especially rich diversity of birds and other terrestrial life.
This is also a region famous for its clay licks—locally known as "ccolpas" or "collpas"—where large concentrations of parrots gather to seek “antacids” to soothe their little tummies of the toxins in seeds they eat. The Tambopata region hosts one of the best-known of these ccolpas, drawing spectacular species such as Blue-and-yellow and Red-and-green macaws, and the more range-restricted Blue-headed Macaw, along with numerous other amazons, parrots, and parakeets (more than 15 species of psittacids are possible). Beyond parrots, the area is also home to an impressive selection of quintessentially Neotropical bird families, including antbirds (30+ species), tanagers (20+ species), and tyrant flycatchers (30+ species). It’s a place where you can listen to the musical arias of songsters such as Musician Wren or Lawrence’s Thrush, the bubbling of a Striated Antthrush, or the loud outbursts of Screaming Pihas. One of the most diverse avifaunas on Earth awaits—join me in experiencing it first-hand.
For more information, please contact our office and we'll be happy to assist.
(Photo of Red-and-green Macaws at a clay lick courtesy of participant Bill Byers.)
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Dan Lane brings an extraordinary depth of experience to our tours. Over the course of his career, he has played a role in the description of eight bird species new to science—with more still waiting in the wings. That kind of discovery only comes from long familiarity with a place, and Dan estimates he has spent more than seven cumulative years in Peru as a researcher and guide. Along the way, he has recorded roughly 1,680 species in Peru. Somewhere in between fieldwork and guiding, Dan also co-authored Birds of Peru for Princeton University Press. His keen ear, deep command of taxonomy and distribution, and broad natural history knowledge make him a standout in the field—along with his talents as a gifted illustrator. Dan has guided more than 40 Field Guides tours to Peru, and traveling with him means learning from an ornithologist actively shaping our understanding of Neotropical birds. We’re lucky to count Dan as one of our guides!
| | Island-hopping adventures: April & June | | |
If you are looking for an immersive island adventure this spring or summer, we invite you to take a look at two of our most remarkable upcoming tours. Both offer an extraordinary concentration of species found nowhere else on Earth.
April 10–26, guided by Jesse Fagan & Sam Wilson
This is our most comprehensive journey through the Caribbean, visiting ten islands across six countries and two overseas territories. It is a rare opportunity to see nearly 30 regional endemics—including several rare Amazona parrots—at a pace that balances focused morning birding with relaxed afternoon exploration.
June 13–23, guided by Mitch Lysinger
Experience the world’s premier showcase of evolution from the comfort of the Nemo III catamaran. This tour focuses on the archipelago’s legendary endemism and famously approachable wildlife. From the nesting Waved Albatrosses to Giant Tortoises and marine iguanas, this is a deep dive into an otherworldly landscape during one of its most rewarding seasons.
Please contact our office for more information or to sign up.
(Photo of Montreal Gardens on St. Vincent & the Grenadines by participant Daphne Gemmill.)
| | Short videos from recent tours | | |
Many of our tour reports now include highlight videos featuring birds, wildlife, scenery, culture—or some blend of it all.
The first is from our first departure of our Trinidad & Tobago tour, operated early last December, and guided by Micah Riegner. Click here or on the Bearded Bellbird below to see the video.
The second comes from our recent Madagascar tour, a highlight reel courtesy of guides Marcelo Barreiros & Tarry Butcher. Click here or on the Band-tailed Manakin below to view.
| | A highlight video from the first of our tours last December to Trinidad & Tobago. | |  | A highlight video from our most recent Madagascar tour. | | | |
You may have seen our newly updated Trip Cancellation Insurance page with an easy link to get a free quote for your next Field Guides adventure. Insurance may not be exciting, but it’s one of the best ways to protect your financial investment when your travel plans change unexpectedly.
We’ve partnered with Generali Global Assistance (formerly CSA) for years because their coverage is dependable, flexible, and easy to purchase right from our website. Their plans include optional features like Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR), coverage for pre-existing conditions, and quick, responsive support.
Get your free, personalized quote by clicking here.
| | Field Guides merch is available! We've got shirts, hats, hoodies, mugs, stickers, tote bags, and more—all a click away at our Field Guides Store. Fashionable and functional—sure to keep you comfortable and looking spiffy—check it all out at the store. | | Reports from recent tours | | We have annotated and illustrated reports from recently completed tours linked below, each with some lovely images and some with video clips, and all with great texts by our guides. Enjoy! | | Tours with openings through June | | Each month we list in this section the Field Guides departures over the next six months that still have at least two spaces available (unless otherwise noted). | | |
Northern Arizona’s Colorado Plateau is a landscape of unrivaled beauty, from the San Francisco Peaks to the red rocks of Sedona. Our Northern Arizona's Canyons & Condor tour is based in the cool pines of Flagstaff and explores a unique ecological crossroads where southern specialties like Red-faced Warbler meet Rocky Mountain breeders like Clark’s Nutcracker and American Three-toed Woodpecker.
A central highlight is our visit to the Grand Canyon to seek the majestic California Condor, which has successfully nested among the canyon's ledges since its reintroduction. Leading the way is veteran guide John Coons; having lived in Flagstaff for over thirty years, John brings an intimate, "resident expert" perspective to these canyons and forests. There is truly no one better to show you the hidden corners of his own backyard. (Photo of a Red-faced Warbler by guide Micah Riegner.)
SOUTH AMERICA
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Jewels of Ecuador: Hummers, Tanagers & Antpittas, Feb 19-Mar 8 with Willy Perez
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Colombia's Santa Marta Mountains & Caribbean Coast II, Feb 21- Mar 1 with Dan Lane & local guide
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Guyana: Wilderness Paradise II, Feb 26-Mar 10 with Marcelo Barreiros & local guide
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Rainforest & Savanna: Alta Floresta & the Northern Pantanal, Brazil, Jun 10-25 with Marcelo Barreiros (1 space)
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Galapagos: An Intimate Look at Darwin's Islands I, Jun 13-23 with Mitch Lysinger
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Peru's Magnetic North: Spatuletails, Owlet Lodge & More, Jun 13-25 with Dan Lane & Jesse Fagan
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Brazil's Rio Roosevelt: Birding the River of Doubt, Jun 13-28 with Bret Whitney
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Machu Picchu & Abra Malaga, Peru , Jun 24-Jul 3 with Dan Lane
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Colombia's Central Andes: The Wild, Wonderful North, Jun 27-Jul 8 with Jesse Fagan & local guide
NORTH AMERICA
MIDDLE AMERICA & WEST INDIES
AFRICA
EUROPE
ASIA & AUSTRALASIA
To learn more about any of these tours or to hold a space, please contact our office.
| | Recently posted upcoming itineraries | | Click on any image or link below to see the detailed itinerary for the following tours. All of these itineraries are packed with information (and have a few nice photos as well). | |
Field Guides Incorporated, 4425 South Mopac Expy, Bldg 3-Ste 505, Austin, TX 78735
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