Birding friends, thanks for checking out our latest e-news. The first hints of autumn weather have been making their presence felt for many of our North American readers. Have you brushed up on your fall warblers and Empidonax flycatcher calls? Pretty much everything has begun its long journey south—hopefully, we can all find the time to get out and enjoy it!

August is an atypical month for Field Guides during which we offer only a few tours, while much of our focus is on our annual business meeting (which you can read a bit about below). However, we do hit the ground running as the month winds down. As you read this, we have happy clients seeing birds in Brazil, France, Morocco, South Africa, and Oregon. Over the next few days we'll kick off additional tours to California and Maine, with seven other tours to follow before September's end. Are you joining us?

We've got a lot packed into this month's emailing. Aside from the recap of the business meeting, we are officially launching our Field Guides Store. Yup! You read that right. We are (finally!) able to offer items that folks have been requesting for years. We have a few tours to promote, including a new adventure to the Dakotas. And as always, we also have our popular Recent Photos Gallery, showcasing over 100 images from 13 trips, newly published triplists from six recent tours, and fresh itineraries for nine tours in the new year. We also have a couple of fun videos taken by guides during recent tours.

Thanks to participant Kevin Watson for the lovely photo of a Peruvian Racket-tail that he got during our most recent Peru's Magnetic North: Spatuletails, Owlet Lodge & More tour. And thanks again to Kevin Watson for the image below of the weird and wonderful White-necked Rockfowl from our Ghana: Window into West Africa Birding tour earlier this year. Great photos, Kevin!

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As always, we hope you'll spend some time reading through this emailing, and if a tour should catch your eye and you'd like to find out more, just contact our office and we'll help you get on your way.

If it is August, it must mean its time for the Field Guides annual business meeting. Once again we held it at Cave Creek Ranch in the heart of the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona. Attendees came from around the globe: South Africa, England, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and all over the U.S.—from Alaska to New York to Texas. Aside from conducting business and discussing the future, this meeting allows folks who have never met each other to do so, and to eat, drink, and be merry together—and of course it brings together many old friends who don't see each other nearly often enough. This year had a few first-time attendees. Guides Tarry Butcher (South Africa-based), Sam Wilson (Alaska), Alex Sundvall (Minnesota), and our newest addition to the office staff, Maria Zaslavskaya (Texas), all got a chance to meet most of the Field Guides family. Aside from the business, we do get out and do some birding while we're there. Highlights were plenty this year—and by the time the meeting was over, first-time North America visitor Tarry had seen well over 125 new bird species.

Finally, Field Guides swag is available! Many (soooo many) of you have been asking us to offer apparel with our name or logo on it. We can finally say that we've got you covered. We've got shirts, hats, hoodies, mugs, stickers, tote bags, even pajama pants—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. If you hurry, you can probably be the first person on your next tour wearing one of our t-shirts! Also, it isn't too early to start your Christmas shopping!

Here is guide Tarry Butcher donning our new "FG" logo trucker hat and one of our new t-shirt designs.

We are eager to announce a new tour for spring of 2025: Birding the Dakotas: Prairies, Black Hills & Badlands. Our guide Cory Gregory has been working his tail off to get this tour on the schedule for 2025 & 2026, and we're happy to say that he's pulled it off. He's created an exciting eight-day itinerary that combines prairie birding and wildlife viewing with fascinating geology, endless scenery, rich American history, and visits to bucket-list destinations like Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore.

Some of the expected birds include Chestnut-collared Longspur (pictured above); specialty sparrows like Baird's, Nelson's, and LeConte's; grassland shorebirds such as Upland Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew, and Willet; as well as other odds-and-ends like Sprague's Pipit, Yellow-headed Blackbird, and Black Terns. Why not be part of this inaugural tour, and join Cory—an easy-going, smart, sharply funny (and insanely knowledgeable) guide—and bird the Dakotas next year? If you can't swing it in 2025, perhaps 2026 is a better fit. Please contact our office to sign up.

With well over a dozen different Field Guides tours to Brazil annually, it can be difficult to choose which one you want to take—or take next. We've got two in early 2025 that we'd like to showcase here. Both of these tours are operational (that's our in-house parlance for "we're going!"), and each has a few spaces available.

The first is Nowhere but Northeast Brazil! You can join the incomparable Bret Whitney & Micah Riegner on this quest for specialties of the endangered caatinga, chapada, and Atlantic Forest habitats. Or put another way: gobs and gobs of endemics, some among the most endangered species on the continent. This 18-day adventure covers the states of Pernambuco, Ceara, and north-central Bahia, ending in Salvador. A sampling of the birds we expect are Lear's Macaw, Hooded Visorbearer, Araripe Manakin (pictured), Seven-colored Tanager, Gray-backed Tachuri, four piculets, anshrikes, antwrens, and hundreds of others. For the truly intrepid, this tour dovetails with our Bahia Birding Bonanza tour (described below)—for an unforgettable month with even more unforgettable birds! Click here for our most recent triplist from this tour.

The second tour is our Brazil: Bahia Birding Bonanza, guided by Brazilian Marcelo Barreiros. Bahia is Brazil's fifth largest state—a little smaller than Texas—and sits on Brazil's Atlantic Coast. We explore rare habitats that host birds with exceptionally small ranges. The endemics we seek on our Nowhere But Northeast Brazil! tour above are replaced by a different set of birds. We'll endeavor to see birds such as Giant Snipe, Hook-billed Hermit, Banded Cotinga, Ruby-topaz Hummingbird, Striated Softail, along with a bunch of ant things, like antbirds, antwrens, and antvireos too! Click here for our most recent triplist from this tour.

If you have any questions—or would like to sign up—please contact our office.

We have made a tweak to our Panama tour schedule for 2025 and 2026. Instead of offering a single-week tour at Panama's Canopy Tower, we are offering two departures each year to the combination Panama's Canopy Tower & Lodge tour. This 8-day tour allows for four nights at the Canopy Tower with visits to the nearby, legendary Pipeline Road, followed by two nights at the Canopy Lodge with its stellar foothills birding in the montane forest of El Valle de Anton. This is a great introduction to neotropical birding, and even veterans will find the canopy tower delightful. Both of our 2025 departures are guided by John Coons, and both have space available.

Panama's Canopy Tower & Lodge—Jan 26-Feb 2 & Mar 9-16

Among our several tours to Costa Rica is our popular, two-part Costa Rica: Birding the Edges tour. This itinerary visits many of the places that our Classic Costa Rica and our holiday tours don't. Part One heads south, where we hope to pick up a suite of birds that can only be found in Costa Rica and Panama, as well as a Costa Rica endemic: Black-cheeked Ant-Tanager. We're talking about Volcano Hummingbird, Fiery-billed Aracari, Yellow-bellied Cotinga, and Slaty Flowerpiercer, among many others.

Part Two takes us north, to the Cano Negro wetlands with their abundant birdlife. Here we'll seek Sungrebe, Pinnated Bittern, the highly local Nicaraguan Grackle, plus hummingbirds, antbirds, tanagers, and much more. There are plenty of "regular" Costa Rica birds around too, like the Lesson's Motmot and Resplendent Quetzal pictured here. The fantastic, top-notch Megan Edwards Crewe is joined by Costa Rica native Vernon Campos for both parts.

Please contact our office if you have any questions or would like to sign up!

We've got just one spot left on our next visit to Thailand, and we would love to fill it. It is only a few months away—running January 11-February 1—but it is sure to be a fantastic trip. Guides Jay VanderGaast and Uthai Treesucon would love to take you around the "land of smiles" while searching for birds like Mrs. Hume's Pheasant (pictured above), Spoonbill Sandpiper, Siamese Fireback, Giant Nuthatch, and well over 450 other species—all while taking in enchanting Thai culture and dining on delectable cuisine. What a way to kick off 2025! Please contact our office if you'd like to claim that last space.

In a refreshing bit of good news, in June of this year, a group of birders sought the four endemic species on Mussau Island, off the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea, and were able to document the presence of Mussau Triller—a cuckooshrike not reported since 1979. You can read more about this exciting re-discovery by clicking here for a link to Cornell's Birds of the World website.

Our first video is from one of this summer's Alaska: The Great Land departures, guided by Micah Riegner & Sam Wilson (and recorded by Micah). There is quite a bit of great footage of Alaskan birds in it. Click here or on the Crested Auklets below to watch the video.

The second video is fresh off the presses, a highlights video taken by guides Bret Whitney & Micah Riegner of some of the sights and birds seen during last month's Iquitos, Peru: Canopy Walkways & Ancient Forests tour, viewed by clicking here or on the Common Scale-backed Antbird below.

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 two representative recent comments. From all of us at Field Guides, our thanks for all your valuable feedback.

Yellow Rail is often the last of the rails for folks to lay eyes on, which is why our Louisiana: Yellow Rails & Crawfish Tails tour is usually a sellout. However, this year we have ample space remaining. This is a short tour—arrive on a Thursday, depart on a Monday, with three fun days of birding and Cajun cuisine in between! This tour is timed to coincide with the rice harvest, allowing us a unique opportunity to see rails from right in the middle of the habitat. Yellow Rail is a key target, but the tour also spends some time seeking out Southeastern specialties like Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Bachman's Sparrow, and Brown-headed Nuthatch. Dan Lane & Sam Wilson are guiding this year, and the tour runs from October 31-November 4. For more information or to book a space, please contact our office.

To learn more about any of these tours or to hold a space, please contact our office.