In this newsletter.
1. Kolibri Expeditions website problems now resolved.
2. Pportunity. Extremely inexpensive scouting trip to Taiwan and our regular Taiwan tour mid-september.
3. Bird Photography in Peru.
4.
Manu road in October
5. India and Borneo in October
6. Complete Northern Peru in November
7. Thanksgiving Get-away - North Peru with Machu Picchu as a pre-trip
8. Madagascar in November
9. Cambodia December
10. North Peru Birding Sandwich over
Christmas for 9 days.
11. Hindi/Bhuddist Christmas Escape with India and Bhutan over Christmas and New Year.
12. Philippines repeat. January 2026
13. Japan February - SOLD OUT! The March 1-7 tour still has space.
14. What has Gunnar been up to.
The Kolibri Expeditions Website
Have you been trying to check Kolibri Expeditions website lately without success. You are not alone. It was extremely slow. Support and my developer have been very slow to give help, so I tried to learn what to do myself with the help of
ChatGPT.
It was a technical issue with a redirecting through a service called CloudFlare which supposedly should make the site safer. The settings were quite complicated. I think I have sorted the settings now.
If you have any questions regarding upcoming trips mentioned in previous newsletters, feel free to send me an email. Also, let me know if you have trouble accessing the site. It will be very helpful.
Additionally, I just realized that emails to my alternative email gunnar@kolibriexpeditions.com have
not been forwarded to my regular gmail since April 18.
This means that I probably missed a lot of replies that you may have sent to my occasional newsletters. For this I am truly sorry. We could probably have served you with a tour. Hopefully the tour you are interested in is in the future. Once again sorry for this technical mishap.
I believe, I now have managed to set the email right, but to be sure
it is best always to use kolibriexp@gmail.com. Some 200 emails have been downloaded to gmail, but gmail blocked the account for 24h because of too many emails in a short time! It is impossible to win!
Dead Cheap Taiwan Scouting trip
It was not possible to get a local bird guide on Taiwan
for the dates I had proposed, because of the World Bird Fair. Therefore, I have to do a scouting trip for 5 days (Sep 15-19) and then guide the commercial trip on my own Sep 23-28.
Taiwan is quite straight forward to bird, and I have all the waypoints for keybirds, all the calls for playback, thermal camera and a scope.
It is possible to join the scouting trip with me for just $1100 including hotels, vehicle, gas, and tolls. Meals are paid for on the go. It will be very high paced. We should get all the possible endemics within those 5
days.
I will rent a vehicle for the five days, and consequently have four spaces to fill for this great opportunity to get most of the endemics of Taiwan.
Taiwan is the land of CUTE (kawaii) - and man are many of the 30 endemics cute. And if not cute, they are spectacular like the two pheasants and the Blue Magpie. Send me an email if interested.
You may sign up for the main trip here. And for the
scouting trip here. Peru Bird Photography Sep 7-18
The trip now has a few bookings. A new guide has been assigned. Jose Luis Avendaño. An
experienced bird guide and bird photographer who has guided these areas a lot. He speaks very good English.
The trip may look expensive at first glance, but note that there are four internal flights included and some expensive lodges, as well as a boat trip, the train to Machu Picchu and Machu Picchu entrance fee that increase the price.
Check out the itinerary.
It is urgent to book. The trip is less than three weeks away, and there are very few entrance tickets left for Machu Picchu at the time of writing this. All the birds will still be there even if you book late, but
you may miss out on Machu Picchu.
Manu road in October.
The long tour to Manu road and lowland Manu of 18 days simply has not gotten any takers. In the end, we got only got a couple who are doing a combo of two shorter tours back to back for a 10 day holiday in Peru. There are still space if you want to join.
Oct 10-14 Manu road
Oct 15-19. Machu Picchu and Abra Malaga
Other short tours can be combined back to back so you can build
a longer tour if you like. For instance, I recommend to add either or both Amigos (5 days) or Chuncho Macaw Clay lick (3 days) before the start of Manu Road.
India and Borneo October
Mid-October, I plan to attend the Global Wildlife Fair in Delhi, India. In combination with this I am offering two tours: India with Taj Mahal and Tiger (5 days) and Borneo (5+6 days) that I will lead myself together with local guides. They can easily be placed back to back with a day in between.
Northern Peru Nov 8-23
The North Peru trip in
November is now confirmed with two clients doing the full itinerary. If 16 days seems too long to you, one additional client is doing just 12 days, starting in Cajamarca and ending in Tarapoto one day early. Great if you are short of time!
You can save the birding around Chiclayo for another trip. Tarapoto can also be saved for the future, because, if you ever wanted to go to see the
Scarlet-banded Barbet of the cover of the Birds of Peru field guide, you'd have to come through Tarapoto anyway.
With either choice you would still get over 50 species of Hummingbirds, including the Marvelous Spatuletail, Rufous-crested Coquette and Gray-bellied Comet, as well as a good go at all of the Marañon and Abra Patricia endemics, including Long-whiskered Owlet and Marañon
Crescentchest.
Short Marvelous Spatuletail and Long-whiskered Owlet for Thanksgiving.
If you are short of time and just have the week of holiday around Thanksgiving, you may want to joing two other clients for a five day tour to Northern Peru, which would give you around 40 species of hummingbirds, including Marvelous Spatuletail, starting on Tarapoto on the 24th of November. The clients are visiting Machu Picchu before this, so this may be an option for you too. We may start the main tour on Nov 25 to also include the Abra Malaga area in the vicinity. Send me an email if interested.
Madagascar November 16-22
When I was at the Global Birdfair in the UK recently, I was told by Madagascar opérators that the Helmet Vanga is now back in Andasibe. The complicated setup with Makoala would not be necessary. Instead we add more time at Andasibe during our short Palmarium
extension for the Aye-Aye. Check out the Madagascar itinerary here.
Cambodia December 7-12
There is a new Cambodia program. It has been expanded from 5 days to 6 days to also be able to include the Vulture Restaurant. The White-headed Duck is now so rare, that it no longer an option to try to see it, so instead we visit a hide for the Coral-billed Ground-Cuckoo.
We have also changed the dates from October to December. Less rain, more birds!
The trip will start in Siem Reap with Angkor Wat and end in Phnom Penh. I hope we will be able to also fit in Mekong Wagtail as the last bird on the trip.
Dec 13-15 we will do an extension to Aural Mountains. For this you need to be VERY FIT. We will use local staff at the base of the mountain who
know the birds and where to find them.
With in the next couple of days, I will upload the correct program. Meanwhile, there is an outline uploaded, and you can read about many species in the main text of the previous program.
I will be leading the tour, with the help of local guides.
Obviously, the the cultural and quite birdy visit to the mindblowing Angkor
Wat world heritage site is included.
North Peru Big Weekend Birding Sandwich for Christmas
One very happy client, who participated in the Central Peru Biggest Weekend Birding Sandwich in June, wanted us to set up a similar 9 day program in Northern Peru with five weekdays of birding sandwiched between two weekends, to minimize taking off too many days from work. Best time for him - over Christmas!
OK, let's do it. Running it over Christmas, Dec 20-28, will give even less workdays to take off from work. If Christmas is not important to you, or if you rather stress about birds, than Christmas shopping, then this trip is for you.
Our birding sandwiches are hardcore. We focus on time management to see as many birds as possible. Breakfast and lunches may in some instances be replaced with snacks and
sandwiches in the car in order to maximise our time in the field, to eat when we are on the move.
Below is an outline of the trip. The carefully planned detailed program will be up within a week on the Kolibri Expeditions tour calendar. The goal is to get as many of the Northern Peru endemics as possible within this 9 day window.
Day 1. Bosque Pomac and Quebrada El Limon. Peruvian
Plantcutter, Tumbes Tyrant, White-winged Guan, etc. Night in Olmos
Day 2. Porculla pass to Jaen. Marañon Crescentchest and Black-cowled Saltator, etc. Night in Jaen.
Day 3. Jaen-Pomacochas-Abra Patricia. Little Inca-Finch, Marvelous Spatuletail and Long-whiskered Owlet. Night at Fundo Alto Nieva.
Day 4. Fundo
Alto-Nieva-Llanteria-Aguas Verdes-Moyobamba-Oilbird. Antpittas and hummingbirds.
Day 5 Morro de Calzada and Ash-throated Antwren site then drive back track and stay at either Fundo Alto Nieva or Owlet Lodge depending on if there are more antpitta feeders active.
Day 6 Abra Patricia-Gocta feeders.
More birding in the Abra
Patricia area for additional endemics.
Day 7. Gocta to Leimebamba via new Pale-billed Antpitta site. In the late afternoon we will visit Atuen for newly described Atuen Antpitta
Day 8. Leimebamba-Celendin.
Marañon endemics.
Day 9.
Celendin-CajamarcaCajamarca Antpitta, Gray-breasted Comet and Great Spinetail. Crazy itinerary for crazy hardcore birders. Guide: Juan Julca. Interested? Write me.
Bhutan over Christmas and New Year.
Far less hectic and more of a meditative escape from the Christmas hustle is our new itinerary for Bhutan. I have previously
tried to sell a very short tour to Bhutan, but I realize that most people want a slightly longer and more inclusive trip for this once-in-a-lifetime destination. Therefore, I decided to offer this longer transect of Bhutan. Bhutan has now lowered their extremely expensive tourist fees, and by crossing the border in India to get to Bhutan one additionally saves one expensive flight leg, and one avoids the internal flight from one end of the country to the other.
Most other birding tours to Bhutan runs in the spring, are much longer and much more expensive. However, the winter is the best time to get the large concentrations of Black-necked Cranes that overwinters in the Phobjikha Valley in large numbers. They only remain to early March.
Our 12 day pilot trip costs only $4850 (compared to $3900 of our previous 7 day trip) plus the cost of flight back to India, Thailand
or Nepal (calculate around $300-$400 for this flight).
We start in Guwahati, in North East India on Dec 25.
We will undoubtedly miss a few species on this tour because of the lack of time, and the fact that it is winter, rather than spring. However, almost all species are possible at Eagle Nest in India, at lower per day price. We plan an Eagle Nest trip combined with Kaziranga in spring of 2026.
News about this trip is forthcoming in another newsletter.
If you have more time to spend, I recommend our 5 day Tiger, Bharatpur and Taj Mahal trip in India before coming to Guwahati with start on
Dec 20. Birding and culture at its best! And the food.
I love Paneer Butter Masala. We can also set up an extension to Nepal if you wish.
Philippines again.
After the very successful trip last year, when the 7-day Mindanao trip became a 23-day trip all over the Philippines for some of the participants, we decided to do it again with start January 12, 2026. We already have people for the Mindanao and various extensions, so the trip is definitely running.
Last year we had great views of a soaring Philippine Eagle, and a host of other
endemics.
I have just received the final itineraries and will update the page within the next few days.
Note that you can join for just different sections of the complete 23 days of the expanded tour.
Japan February-March 2026.
Yes, the February Japan trip is full. However, there is space on the second departure March 1-7 with Roger McNeal as the guide. But you need to sign up ASAP because there is a lot of demand on the hotels and we can't hold reservations without firm bookings.
There is also space on Okinawa and Izumi extensions before and after the main trip. I will be guiding the Myiake Jima pelagic and the Okinawa extension between February 21-25.
The rest of 2026
I have not set the entire program for 2026 yet, but it will be presented in the next newsletter. Preliminary 7 Wonders Birding Tours include Kaziranga and Eagle Nest, Southern Spain, Petra, China with Sichuan extension, Uganda, Pantanal, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, Galapagos, Borneo, and Tanzania. The
destinations lacking links are under production and will be up soon.
For Peru we will continue offering the shorter five-day tours, complete Northern and Central Peru, our intense Birding Sandwiches of 9 days covering the Center, the North and Manu road and Cuzco, the Bird Photography Tour (guided or unguided) and the combined culture and birding tour.
What else is Gunnar up to?
If you are a Swede or a birder visiting Falsterbo Bird Show Sep 5-7, you must not miss this. My band Guran Guran, celebrates 40 years and we are
celebrating with a small tour playing in Malmö at Grand Restaurant/bar on Sep 5. Support is Le Punk D'Amour fronted by Daniel Green - another birder and owner of BirdSafari Sweden. Get your tickets.
We have long
wanted to participate in popular punkrock festivals in Sweden, but we have constantly been sidelined. So we created our own festival in Stockholm on September 10 at Kollektivet Livet Bar&Scen with some great bands in the line-up.
Listen to Psychopunch for instance. Love the energy of this song.
