Destinations
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News
'Vuvuzelas could disturb sensitive birds' says one story on BirdLife International's new BirdLife Community web pages. Well, that's the headline: analysis in the story sensibly puts that idea in serious doubt.
These pages publish news stories from the BirdLife network, many of which Honeyguide supports. You can also sign up for regular news updates.
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Here on the east of Norwich, there were hummingbird hawkmoths at school then at home on 9 July, coinciding with the run of hot weather. Last year was a bumper one for painted ladies; could it be that 2010 will be one of those years with lots of hummingbird hawkmoths migrating north to the UK? You can enter sightings on the Butterfly Conservation website.
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"A small group finally made it to Menorca in May, a month later than anticipated due to the volcanic ash cloud. But every cloud has a silver lining," says leader Chris Gibson.
"Yes, most of the migrant birds had passed through, and almost all the orchids and other early flowers were finished. But the special plants of the island were superb, with some magnificent Balearic dragon-arum flowers and several of the endemic 'vegetable hedgehogs' in full flower, something we have never seen before, along with cerise swathes of wild gladiolus. And the breeding birds were there in force: turtle doves and spotted flycatchers everywhere; stone-curlews every morning; my best-ever Menorcan purple gallinule; and some wonderful encounters with bubbling bands of bee-eaters. There were a few surprises: a band of spotless starlings; a western olivaceous warbler around our garden; orphean and spectacled warblers; and none of us will ever forget the sight of a purple heron catching (but failing to kill and eat) a viperine snake, no more than five metres from the vantage point of our minibus!"
Updated 13 July 2010
Last June, bee orchids popped up opposite Norwich City Football Club (see News 2009 and the Eastern Daily Press. I looked on Monday afternoon and couldn't find any this year. The Big Yellow Storage meadow was cut in late May, which was unhelpful, though I suspect with the cold winter and late spring that there was still time for them to appear. No doubt they are there in the soil, or the odd leaf I couldn't find, and will pop up another year. Today I found three just coming into flower on Carey's Meadow, roughly halfway between the Football Club and Thunder Lane. That's as well as those pictured on the sign on the gate! |
This shows that they are running about 10 days behind last year's bee orchids, which were nearly fully out when I photographed them on 10 June 2009. Bee orchid, above and right |
Updated by Chris Durdin, 17 June 2010
Lesvos is one of few places to boast two 'where to watch' birdwatching books. Honeyguide's Lesvos leader Rob Lucking writes about both books here. We still have places on our holiday here in autumn this year, added to the programme recently after volcano ash hit spring holidays. |
 Molivos harbour (Rob Lucking) |
The Spanish Pyrenees with a difference? Our regular holiday in Berdún has a group booked for next spring, but we are wondering about seeing this area in a rather different way by walking parts of the Camino de Santiago in Aragón region that are close to our base at Casa Sarasa in Berdún. I think this would lend itself to an autumn holiday, and though this year is possible it may be more realistic to look at, say, October 2011. Many details are to worked up, but this website gives a good feel for what we could do. Or see Peter Rich's photos here. We'd expect to have a Honeyguide natural history leader and for the all-in price with flights etc to be roughly the same as other week-long Honeyguide holidays. It would involve considerably more walking than a typical Honeyguide holiday, though we'd expect to fine-tune the plans to get the best out of the natural history as well as the lovely buildings of the Pyrenees foothills and gorges. At this stage, it would be interesting to know if this appeals to anyone, before we take it further.
Updated by Chris Durdin, 9 June 2010
Spring was a little late in the Dordogne, as for so much of Europe - Greece and the south-east excepted. So the early orchids were exceptional: green-winged, early spider, lady and sombre bee orchids especially. After 10 years of holidays here, it was surprising to 'write-in' five new birds onto the checklist. Little egret, hen harrier, little owl, kingfisher: nice birds, but not great surprises. But best was black woodpecker, well west of its published range. We had brilliant views as two flew round us, and group member Bruce Bennett took these photos. The holiday report is here.
Honeyguide's first group in Poland went well. Helen Crowder tells more.
"The ‘wow’ moments started before we even reached our hotel in Biebrza – thousands of white-winged and other marsh terns hovering over their habitat, a pair of Montagu’s harriers in the background, and a few minutes later an elk in the woodland alongside the bus!
"The most obvious birds seen easily from our friendly, rural hotel were common cranes and white storks, while icterine warblers sang their manic, squeaky-toy song from silver birches in the garden and once a spotted eagle flew over (its tracking device was diagnostic!) Aquatic warblers, globally threatened and declining, were breeding nearby, as were Savi’s and grasshopper warblers, and the general rule that you hear but don’t see certain species was thoroughly thrashed as, thanks to our guides, we saw these and many others, including a corncrake, very well indeed. It is impossible to select a single highlight as there were so many, but my particular favourites were white-spotted bluethroats, scarlet rosefinches, lekking great snipes, perfect lady's slipper orchids (in a mosquito-infested wood, not itself a highlight), three-toed woodpecker with its yellow crown, listening to the thrush nightingale’s song and becoming aware of its subtle difference from the nightingale’s, the soothing sound of fire-bellied toads at night, breakfasting on delicious pancakes in the morning, and having brief but exciting views of bison grazing at the forest edge. A week is not enough. Poland is a wildlife haven."
Updated by Chris Durdin, 4 June 2010
Lesvos in autumn: with one and a half holidays lost in April due to cancelled flights, we thought another opportunity to travel with Honeyguide before next spring would be a good idea. Rob Lucking, who was due to be with me in Crete, is also our man for Lesvos, where we ran an autumn holiday in 2007, so a return to this Greek Island off the coast of Turkey was the obvious choice. The dates are 23 – 30 September, and all the details are on our Lesvos pages. These include, unusually, the itinerary and holiday information sheets that are normally posted on request and for those that book, so it's all there for you to read and consider while I am away in France, volcano dust permitting, from tomorrow.
To match the 'lost' Crete holiday, there is no single supplement for this week in Lesvos holiday and the price of the holiday is also the same as it was for Crete. We'll need a minimum of four to run this holiday, but we have three already so we are almost there even before the new holiday is 'official'.
The lure of orchids: when I started botanising, I was puzzled by why orchids seemed to get more attention than other flowers. But their intricate beauty, identification puzzles and extraordinary growing arrangements in combination with a fungus have drawn me under their spell. Now the story gets more fascinating still: new research shows that they tempt their pollenating insects with pheromones as well as their lookalike design. Read the story here
Updated by Chris Durdin, 5 May 2010
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Many of you will remember the RSPB's Bob Scott (pictured, right) and his enormous passion for birds and conservation. A year since his untimely death, to commemorate Bob's life and to aid trans-Saharan migrants, www.birdguides.com has launched a quiz that you can either download or order by post. It covers many forms of natural history and has four excellent prizes for the winners.
Stork webcam: the stork is back in front of the webcam near Honeyguiders Karin and Brennan in Markt Schwaben, Germany. One young fledged, 26 July.
BirdLife Malta has an online petition to "demand that Malta respects the EU law and stop killing of protected birds". You can sign it here
Honeyguide has new web pages on Crete Bird Reports here and wildlife mysteries, like the bug (top right), here
Updated by Chris Durdin, 25 April 2010
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Volcanic dust and flights: the rapidly changing situation has taken a turn for the better, with flights resuming in the UK from 22:00 on Tuesday. For the latest information, please check the NATS website.
April is a busy time for Honeyguide so this has been a bad time for flights to be cancelled for nearly a week.
Our Menorca holiday, due to leave last Friday (16 April) was cancelled. Part of the group will instead be going 14-21 May, and it may be possible for others to join that group.
Most of the Central Portugal group has, at last, arrived home. Since Saturday, when the holiday finished, after a night in Lisbon most of the group, 11 people, went by train overnight from there to Madrid. (Two had set off independently on the Saturday, with great success, and two stayed on in Lisbon). Then on the Monday afternoon, another train to Barcelona and a hotel by the station. On Tuesday morning they went north by train to Cerbère, near Perpignan, just over the border in France. Travelling conditions were congested and challenging, including the hangover from a French railway strike, so we arranged for them to be collected from there in two vehicles by Gilles, our coach driver from the Dordogne. Late Tuesday night they arrived at our Dordogne holiday base at Castang where they spent the night and recharged batteries in the good care of Cathy and Keith (indeed two stayed on there for a further day). Then, on the Wednesday, more train travelling to Calais, a long and cold wait for a ferry and the remaining nine were home in the early hours of Thursday.
The group for Crete 20-27 April (with me) was cancelled.
Happily the group to Eastern Greece left for for Athens on Thursday evening (22 April) and are safely in Dadia, the holiday having seemed highly doubtful early last week.
Updated by Chris Durdin, 14:25 on 24 April 2010
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This autumn's French Pyrenees holiday is now one day earlier than the brochure dates, namely 7 - 14 September, due to changes to flight schedules from Stansted to Pau Pyrenees. There are two places on this holiday, preferably flying from Gatwick or Bristol to Toulouse.
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BirdLife International estimates that more than 200,000 seabirds die each year at the hands of EU fishing boats. Please sign its pledge here to the new Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Maria Damanaki, urging her help to stop this slaughter. |
A first black woodpecker for the UK in Cumbria was reported to BirdGuides last week. The lady was cross-examined and the description was spot on. It turned out that BT is rather protective of its Cumbrian telegraph poles, and has for years been placing black woodpecker models on them to deter great spotted woodpeckers.
Updated by Chris Durdin, 2 March 2010
Madeira news: Honeyguide's group on Madeira coincided with the storms and mudslides (see BBC report here) that affected the island; the group was safe and they are now back home. The capital Funchal and the south was hit worst. The group was staying near Santana in the north, though was heading into Funchal on the worst day of rain. Leader Hugo was driving and decided that they would be wise to return to the north of the island. He had passed his video to Honeyguider David Melzack, in the front seat of the minibus, who captured the striking shots with Hugo's camera here (this link may not work in some web browsers). The 'boiling' river was taken by Hugo outside the vehicle. Inevitably, the weather meant the group's itinerary was changed and wildlife sightings were affected, but highlights still included many Madeira firecrests and being surrounded by a school of pilot whales at sea.
Updated by Chris Durdin, 5 March 2010
We have three new web pages, and they could hardly be more different.
| Orchids are a great feature of our Dordogne holiday, with 12 species at our base at Castang and another dozen not far away. Enjoy them online here or, better still, there are a few places remaining on this holiday. |  |
| A cuckoo's song in spring is a minor third. But this musical interval crops up elsewhere in nature, too. Can you shed light on this mystery? Thoughts from naturalists or musicians are equally welcome on our latest page in our nature notes. |  |
| ATOL matters: the initials and acronyns around holidays with flights (ATOL, ABTA, IATA etc) can be confusing. With Honeyguide, consumer protection comes from our Air Travel Organiser's Licence (ATOL), from the Civil Aviation Authority. The Government is now consulting on extending the respected and effective ATOL system to include non-flight packages, which we'd welcome. More on our new ATOL web page. |
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Biodiversity is life: how much do you know about conservation challenges for the house sparrow, red squirrel, tansy beetle and black poplar? |
It's the International Year of Biodiversity and Natural England is highlighting England’s native plants and animals for which conservationists are making thedifference between survival and extinction. See 'species of the week' - click here to read more. |
Updated by Chris Durdin, 4 February 2010
Climate change: there are clear changes in the natural world, like expanding ranges of Cetti's and Dartford warblers, little egrets and speckled wood butterflies. Naturalists know how wildlife responds to these subtle changes, so gives us a head start in recognising the reality of climate change.
The wintry weather has brought a few wildlife highlights too, but inevitably it's prompted a few comments such as 'so much for global warming'. This may be in gentle fun, puzzlement or can be cynical. Honeyguiders have a role in combatting cynicism: the evidence for climate change is too clear to dismiss, even though it's modest at the moment compared with what is predicted. Some nuggets to lob back at doubters: there's a difference between weather (today) and climate (long term trends); polar ice and glaciers are retreating; we've seen or heard about many severe weather events in recent years.
Our first 1,000 Honeyguide lapel badges have finally run out, but we have more. Our suppliers didn't get the best of colour matches for the pink honeycomb but they are pretty striking-looking. You're welcome to one if you've lost yours or just fancy the new one in deep pink.
Weevil threatens Cretan palm
The red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus poses a serious threat to the endangered Cretan palm Phoenix theophrasti, which occurs only on Crete
and in south-western Turkey. Honeyguiders know the grove of Cretan palms at Souda, just west of Plakias. Members of Flowers of Crete have found specimens of the weevil elsewhere on Crete, alerted the authorities and set up an online petition to raise awareness of the weevil's threat. To read and sign the petition click here
Updated by Chris Durdin, 12 January 2010
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Hummingbird hawkmoth, in the French Pyrenees (Ivan Nethercoat)
Would you like to search this website? We don't yet have a search function, but if you type into Google site:honeyguide.co.uk plus your search item - e.g. site:honeyguide.co.uk wallcreeper it searches www.honeyguide.co.uk
Purple heron with snake (Mike Poulton)
A new web page with nominations for the Top 10 songs with Backing Singers. Whatever next!? It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I hope it will strike a syncopated chord for some of the 'baby-boomer' generation.
An autumn wildlife holiday on Lesvos
Read more about our Lesvos holiday 23 – 30 September 2010 here.
Berdún (Chris Gibson)
ABBA: no not the Swedish pop group, rather Anything But British Airways. Earlier this year we switched flights for our Danube Delta group from British Airways to Wizz Air, a relief as BA cabin crew strikes continue. This will be Honeyguide's first year in 20 without a group flying with BA. An observation, rather than a cause for sadness.
Accounts for the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust for the year to September 2009 are now on this website. They show £7,757 going towards the conservation projects we support. More here.
The African penguin (pictured above by Geoff Crane at Boulders beach) enjoyed by Honeyguide groups in South Africa is now officially Endangered. Recent data show a rapid population decline due to a lack of food supply. Sadly, there is no easy answer. Commercial fisheries are cited as a factor, but also a move in prey populations to the east away from nesting areas, and it's unclear if that move is due to climate change or a 'regime shift' which occurs in the oceans, and reverses itself after an unknown number bunch of years. More here
Our wildlife Mysteries have partly been solved. John Muddeman in Madrid identified the while flower as a star-of-Bethlehem Ornithogalum concinnum, and via the e-newsletter we now know that the armoured bug (above) is a weevil from the genus Brachycerus. There is now a mystery composite flower on the Mysteries page - any ideas?
Krüper’s nuthatch, Lesvos speciality
Woodcock orchids
Bob Scott
Honeyguide cake at the hotel in Santarém in Central Portugal (Helen Crowder)
A Nature Notes page has the story of how crown daisies, a Mediterranean wild flower, grew in the Norfolk Broads for three years.
Also new: more on birds in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
At his local pub after his return from Madeira, John Durdin was presented with the cartoon above. Click here or on the cartoon to see it bigger.
What's the link between a forester moth on a pyramidal orchid and some sheep? Find out on our new web page about brebis sheep in the Cévennes, one of our Nature Notes collection.
Goshawk in wintry Poland
(Artur
Wiatr, Biebrza Explorer)
Jim Durdin's climate change blog here. Jim is a postgraduate student studying sustainability and climate change.
Cretan palms near Plakias
