Natural History Goals

We’ve just returned from a 12-day camping trip, visiting west Texas and the southern reaches of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. On this trip, wedged between two birding tours to South America, we reached a milestone that has me thinking about the various natural history goals that Eileen and I have had over the years. […]

Northeastern Brazil

We took two back-to-back birding tours from Jan. 18 – Feb. 18 with Field Guides, Inc. (Nowhere but Northeast Brazil and Bahia Birding Bonanza). These tours visited the states of Pernambuco, Ceara, and Bahia in northeastern Brazil, with the bulk of the time spent in the latter. These areas are well southeast of the mouth […]

Zealandia

Zealandia is essentially a submerged continent about half the size of Australia. It is a piece of crust that broke away from Gondwanaland, the great southern supercontinent, about 80 million years ago, and subsequently subsided. About 94% of Zealandia lies below sea level. New Zealand, comprising 5.4% of Zealandia, lies about 1300 miles southeast of […]

Delmarva Peninsula and North

After leaving the Allegheny Plateau of West Virginia on May 30, we headed for the Delmarva Peninsula, named for the three states that encompass it, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. It is separated from the “mainland” by Chesapeake Bay, so it has extensive marshes on the west side, and fine ocean beaches, including a superb array […]

Appalachia

We left the coastal plain of North Carolina on May 12, visiting Carver Creek State Park (SP) in the Piedmont the next day. Here we successfully searched for Nestronia umbellula, a new genus for us, and a hemiparasitic shrub in family Santalaceae, which includes mistletoes. A hemiparasite derives some nutrients by parasitizing other plants, often […]

Ghana

We’ve just returned from  a three-week trip to Ghana in West Africa, on a birding tour with Field Guides, Inc. Ghana is currently probably the best country to visit in West Africa for natural history pursuits. This was only our second trip to Africa, the first being four weeks in Kenya in 2006. The only […]