FEATURED PHOTO Lanceolated Monklet Micromonacha lanceolata Yasuní Research Station, Orellana province, Ecuador. This bird was bringing food into a nest cavity in a bank near the side of the road. Photographed with a Canon 7D camera and a Canon 100-400mm f4.5-f5.6 IS lens on 21 August 2010. An external flash was used since it was almost dusk and quite dark. You can find previous featured photos here. Direct link to the Neotropical birds photo gallery Direct link to photos outside of the Neotropics Direct link to complete species index Latest news and blog: 30 August: I added some more photos from Ecuador and Brazil, like this roosting Great Tinamou that we found in Yasuní National Park while we were checking a roosting location for Ochre-striped Antpitta that one of the researchers told us about. For a large photo on the tinamou, go here. Other new shots include Sunbittern, Great Potoo, Greater Rhea, Green-and-rufous Kingfisher, Jabiru, and Large-billed Tern. The full list can be found at the bottom. 27 August: Check out a neat photo of a bold Purple Gallinule. I've also added some mediocre shots of some scarce and/or tough to photograph species, Ochre-striped Antpitta, Ash-throated Gnateater, and Gray-breasted Crake. 26 August: A week in Yasuní National Park at the Yasuní Research Station with Andrew Spencer, Nick Leseberg, and Simon Mitchell was a vacation more than anything else. It's not often I get to bird the Amazon without guiding a tour. Weather was hot and insanely humid, but it did not rain more than about 10 drops during the whole week. Great birds there, though it was quite slow at times, perhaps due to the stifling humidity. The normally quiet research station got very crowded for a couple of days when the vice president came in and gave a speech on the Ecuadorian government's proposal to not drill the oil reserves in the national park if wealthy countries pay them not to. An interesting proposal, but it almost sounds like ransoming the Amazon. My best shot is the nesting Lanceolated Monklet that's now the featured photo. Photography in the dark Amazon rainforest is a challenge, but I managed some shots of some rarely photographed species, such as the Chestnut-winged Hookbill below. I haven't had time to add more species to the gallery yet, but hopefully will get a few hours this weekend. 13 August: I'm beginning to work through my recent photos, though it's a slow process, hampered by a horrendous cold I picked up on the airplane. I kind of randomly started with cracids and vultures. I've managed to replace some poor shots of Razor-billed and Bare-faced Curassows, though they certainly can still be improved on, and added a shot of Black Guan from Costa Rica that I overlooked a few months back. I had great luck with both of the yellow-headed vultures, getting decent shots of each both perched and in flight. The photo to the right (Greater) was a rare opportunity as the bird came down the river to drink. 10 August: Just back from a month in Brazil. I started with a soggy recce in the Northeast, then guided two great tours in a row, one was a short trip to the Southeast Atlantic Rainforest, and the other was my yearly trip to the Pantanal and southern Amazon. My recce was a bit frustrating due to rain. With the help of Steve Jones, a British expat living in Recife and also an amateur bird photographer (see his excellent work on WikiAves), I had arranged a trip to RPPN Frei Caneca and the nearby Fazenda Pedra D'Anta, two of the best remaining forest reserves in the region. A couple of weeks before I arrived, the region was afflicted by terrible floods, killing hundreds and washing away large parts of some of the towns near the reserves. It was a very sombre experience to drive through a town where most of the residents had lost everything. I did make it up to the reserves, staying in a park ranger's house with steve, but it rained much of the time we were there, and not only did I not see a lot of what I hoped for, by camera lens got wet and fogged up, drying out only on the day we had to leave, when the weather was of course fantastic! However, on that morning I was treated to the sight of a soaring White-collared Kite, one of the rarest and most endangered raptors in the entire world, which definitely put a smile on my face even if I couldn't photograph it. Thanks to the rain, we did get to watch the last few matches of the World Cup, but I would much preferred to have been out birding I have to admit. Below is my best shot of one of the regional endemics, a Pinto's Spinetail. I've got many new shots to add for the month, which I'll start doing as time permits. 4 July: This will be my last update for a while, since I'm about to head for Brazil to lead a couple of tours and to do a recce in the Northeast. Not much to add other than a few photos that I hadn't uploaded yet. I had a disasterous road trip with Iain Campbell to what we thought was remote area of Southeast Ecuador. A few years ago it would have been great, but somehow Ecuador has gotten funding to widen and pave roads that go absolutely nowhere, destroying all the forest next to the road in the process. There were thousands of hectares of forest not far from the road, but absolutely no way of getting into it - at least until the inevitable logging trails go in. Then we had a day from hell - first it rained all day, then the car broke down for inexplicable reasons. It started up again an hour later, and almost immediately we had a flat. We watched the US lose to Ghana over lunch, got the tire fixed which took forever, then the car stopped again. The mechanics had no idea what it was. We decided to try to make to Macas, and the car stopped for good a couple miles from the town of Logroño. We pushed it most of the way and then had someone pull us into town where there was a hostal and a dodgy bar that we immediately went to. I ended up having to get the car towed back to Quito at great expense, hassle and time. It turns out the security system had broke and was preventing the car from starting. Not something you can get fixed in the middle of nowhere. I hate security systems, but you can't insure new cars here without them. There is something to be said for beat-up second-hand cars... Anyway, we birded in trashed east-slope woodland for a few hours around Logroño, hardly managing to photograph anything except vultures - which seemed appropriate under the circumstances! 20 June: Coming off my antpitta failure of a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to finally get some decent shots of antpittas with my new 7D. I took it down to Angel Paz's bird sanctuary over the weekend and put it to the test. Things didn't start when I accidentally left my tripod at Tandayapa, and then this little kid scared away a cock-of-the-rock some of us were trying to photograph because he wanted to touch it. Well, I have to admit, the little kid was my godson, so I couldn't get too upset about that. Gabriel's dad Iain decided it wasn't a great idea to take him down after the antpittas, so they stayed up top and hand-fed Toucan Barbets while the rest of us went down. José lent me his tripod, and I got some shots of "Maria" and "Willy" coming into the worms. I was shooting at 1600 ISO and 1/20th of a second (flash is not allowed), and was pretty happy with the results. It's always a great day when I add new shots of antpittas, so I decided to take the opportunity to embed sounds recordings that I've uploaded to xeno-canto into the gallery page. I've got recordings of everything there except for the newly-described Fenwick's Antpitta, and it adds a nice new dimension to the page. I got a few other shots from the banana feeders at Paz de las Aves, including Blue-winged and Black-chinned Mountain-Tanagers, Crimson-rumped Toucanet, and Sickle-winged Guan. 8 June: A few nice new hummer shots today from Mirador Rio Blanco. Again the 7D impresses, as I got some super sharp and nicely lit shots handholding the 400m lens at 800 ISO. Check out the Green-crowned Brilliant and Green Thorntails. Also, I have updated the photo index, this time adding in quality ratings for each species. 7 June: Once again I failed to find Rufous-crowned Antpitta, this time at the Mangaloma reserve. It's becoming a habit. I did get to try out the Canon 7D in the dark rainforest understory. Working without flash and at high ISO levels, I was able to get some surprisingly good shots under the circumstances. This juvenile Barred Forest-Falcon was shot at 3200 ISO with a 1/50th of a second exposure. Noise is certainly obvious in the shot, but it looks decent if not blown up too much. A had a rare opportunity to shoot two Golden-crowned Spadebills in the same frame. This was at 1600 ISO and also 1/50th of a second. Noise is even less of an issue, but the shot was not 100% sharp, probably due to camera shake at the slow speed. Still, it sharpens up reasonably nicely and I was pretty happy to get something like that under the difficult circumstances. There were a few more shots - see the list below. 30 May: The Biggest Week was a big hit, drawing an estimated 15,000 birders to the migration hotspot of Ohio's Lake Erie coast. I've added a gallery of photos I took while there. Definitely the biggest moment of the week happened when a Kirtland's Warbler turned up on Friday, May 14th, causing the biggest "twitch" I've ever experienced in the US. An estimated 2500-3000 birders saw it in a single day. It was a lifer for me, and I got there within minutes of hearing the news on the Twitter feed. Sadly, the week ended with a minor disaster, when the trailer that I was staying in, along with two other owners of TB, burned to thr ground, destroying a frightening amount of cameras, bins, scopes, laptops, documents, etc, including my SLR camera that I had been using for the last year and a half. I've replaced it now with the newer 7D, and yesterday had a chance to try it out in the field for the first time. It's very impressive, especially in low-light conditions. The photo above of a Crowned Chat-Tyrant was taken at 800 ISO, but shows no significant noise, and it does reasonably well even at 1600 ISO. I'm looking forward to trying it out in lowland rainforest. Recently added photos: 31 August: Scaled Pigeon from Brazil. 31 August: White-tipped Dove from Brazil. 30 August: Great Tinamou from Ecuador 30 August: Sunbittern from Brazil. 30 August: Great Potoo from Brazil. 30 August: Greater Rhea from Brazil. 30 August: White-banded Swallow from Ecuador. 29 August: Anhinga from Brazil. 29 August: Wattled Jacana from Brazil. 29 August: Green-and-rufous Kingfisher from Brazil. 29 August: American Pygmy Kingfisher from Brazil. 29 August: Sungrebe from Brazil. 29 August: Limpkin from Brazil. 29 August: Chalk-browed Mockingbird from Brazil. 29 August: Snail Kite from Brazil. 29 August: Great Black Hawk from Brazil. 28 August: Jabiru from Brazil (3 photos). 28 August: Large-billed Tern from Brazil (2 photos). 28 August: Yellow-billed Tern from Brazil. 28 August: Rufous-crowned Greenlet from Brazil. 28 August: Rufous-bellied Thrush from Brazil. 27 August: Ash-throated Gnateater from Ecuador. 27 August: Ochre-striped Antpitta from Ecuador. 27 August: Purple Gallinule from Brazil. 27 August: Gray-breasted Crake from Brazil. 26 August: Chestnut-winged Hookbill from Ecuador. 15 August: Dark-winged Trumpeter from Brazil. 15 August: Purplish Jay from Brazil. 15 August: Golden-crowned Warbler from Brazil. 15 August: Southern Rough-winged Swallow from Brazil. 15 August: White-winged Swallow from Brazil. 15 August: Gray-rumped Swift from Brazil. 15 August: Flame-crowned Manakin from Brazil. 15 August: White-bearded Manakin from Brazil. 15 August: Spotted Puffbird from Brazil. 15 August: Swallow-winged Puffbird from Brazil. 13 August: Chaco Chachalaca from Brazil. 13 August: Black Guan from Costa Rica. 13 August: Razor-billed Curassow from Brazil. 13 August: Bare-faced Curassow (2 photos) from Brazil. 13 August: Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture (3 photos) from Brazil. 13 August: Greater Yellow-headed Vulture (2 photos) from Brazil. 10 August: Pinto's Spinetail from Brazil. 4 July: Buff-tailed Coronet from Ecuador. 4 July: Crimson-mantled Woodpecker from Ecuador. 4 July: Strong-billed Woodcreeper from Ecuador. 4 July: Speckled Chachalaca from Ecuador. 4 July: Orange-fronted Barbet from Ecuador. 4 July: Turkey Vulture from Ecuador. 4 July: Black Vulture from Ecuador. 4 July: Barred Puffbird from Ecuador. 4 July: White-winged Becard from Ecuador. 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