Fall colors are here, with cooler days and longer nights for most of our readers. Migration is still going on for many of us, but our thoughts start to drift toward winter—and for many of us that turns into thinking about going somewhere for a break from the cold! If you still haven't planned a winter trip this year, there's plenty of time—and plenty of tours to choose from.

As you read this, we have five tours in the field, spanning the globe. In South America, Dan Lane is rounding up endemics in northern Peru; Willy Perez is leading a group to northwestern Argentina; and Bret Whitney & Marcelo Barreiros are guiding folks in spectacular southeastern Brazil. Elsewhere, Jesse Fagan has a group in Morocco, and John Coons is leading Part II of our Australia tour. By month's end we'll be heading to Antarctica, India, Louisiana, and on three trips to South America. There is always a fabulous destination to visit with Field Guides!

In this email, you'll find links to the newest installment of our popular Recent Photos Gallery, this month with more than 100 wonderful images from our tours by participants and guides from 13 destinations, including Colombia, the Galapagos, Kenya, Arctic Norway, Alaska, and more. Below, we have a section about a few late-winter Panama tours, including a new one that combines two popular destinations. You'll find our regular roster of upcoming tours with space, which includes Northern India: Birds, Tiger & the Taj Mahal, departing January 28 with the venerable Terry Stevenson. We also have a fun gallery of birds that might make you think about Halloween. Lastly, we feature seven new triplists from recent tours and 13 updated itineraries for 2023.

Our thanks to guide Dan Lane for the group in action above with guide Doug Gochfeld from one of our Hawaii tours. We have space available on two upcoming departures for this island itinerary, January 12 and March 20 guided by Doug Gochfeld and Tom Johnson, respectively. Want to get away sooner, say over Thanksgiving? Check out our Holiday at San Isidro, Ecuador tour with Mitch Lysinger, Nov 19-28—lots of birds to give thanks for there, too! Contact our office to hold space on any of these.

Thanks also to guide Dan Arndt for the fantastic photo of a dandelion-eating Black Bear from our recent Canadian Rockies: Alberta tour.

Winter is coming and the tropics are calling! Now is a great time to plan a winter break from it all on one of our Panama offerings. Together, these visit five of Panama’s premier birding locations: the Canopy Camp in Darien to the east, the Canopy Tower in the former Canal Zone, the lovely Canopy Lodge in west-central Panama, and Tranquilo Bay and Mount Totumas Cloud Forest Lodge in the western reaches of the country.

Our newest offering is a late-January combo tour to the Canopy Camp and Canopy Lodge with John Coons for birders who would like to experience more than a one-week visit to Panama. This 13-day itinerary combines exciting birding at the Canopy Camp in eastern Darien province with four nights at the wonderful Canopy Lodge in the foothills of central Panama. The two sites have quite different habitats and many different birds. Many eastern Panama specialty birds, including Harpy and Crested eagles, are possible in the lowland forests, with tanager flocks and more in the Lodge area.

Our February Canopy Tower tour is a popular and long-running one-week getaway to the former Canal Zone area for rich lowland birding, and our March Canopy Tower & Lodge tour offers a chance to visit both of these famous sites on an 8-day trip.

Our late-February Western Panama tour will be a largely different experience from the other tours. This tour spends half of the time in the cooler western highlands of Chiriqui Province at the wonderful Mount Totumas Cloud Forest Lodge, where Three-wattled Bellbirds will be on territory while Resplendent Quetzals cackle in the lush oak forest. There are several Chiriqui highland endemics we will seek too, and the hummingbird feeders alone are worth the visit. We'll spend the other half of the tour on an island! Lovely Tranquilo Bay Eco Adventure Lodge on Isla Bastimiento will be our base for boating around to various sites for targets such as Snowy Cotinga and Nicaraguan Seed-Finch, and we'll also include a full day of birding on the famous Fortuna Road. Significant raptor migration can also be a highlight as thousands of Turkey Vultures and Swainson's and Broad-winged hawks work their way north. The contrast between the highlands and lowlands, and everything in between, will be fully evident on this fun tour.  

Guides John Coons, Jesse Fagan, and Chris Benesh (below l. to r.) look forward to seeing you on one of these tropical adventures this winter, each with a few spaces available. 

Edgar Allan Poe's speaker wondered "What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore" meant in croaking "Nevermore." The answer lies in Poe's The Raven.

So many of our beloved birds conjure varying emotions from those not enamored with and awed by their beauty or majesty. For a little fun, click here for a short gallery of birds (and things!) that in some way have a Halloweenish theme!

Explore the fine collection of videos by our guides offered through our OutBirding series! You can see samples and descriptions on our OutBirding blog page, and monthly or annual subscriptions are available and will give you unlimited access to our video library.

We have triplists from past tours linked below, each with some lovely images and some with video clips, and all with great annotations by our guides. Enjoy!

We carefully read each post-tour evaluation we receive from our participants, so that we can continue to offer the best possible birding experiences and service on Field Guides birding tours. Here are a couple of representative recent comments. From all of us at Field Guides, our thanks for all your valuable feedback.

Listed below are our upcoming tours with space available, departing from now through March. Some of our most popular tours are included here—a great opportunity for you. Take a look below, and if anything fits your schedule, just contact our office to hold a space, or please do so if you have any additional questions.

As always, you can find more information about any of the trips by clicking below to visit their tour pages. We look forward to traveling with you—and our thanks to guide Tom Johnson for this tiger's eye that he photographed during our tour to Northern India: Birds, Tiger & the Taj Mahal.

March • Dan Lane & Micah Riegner