When we agreed to serve as Study Leaders for Peg's recent trip to Trinidad, we had no idea that we would be part of an invasion from an alien galaxy - or so it seemed. But there we were, on the beach, at night, in the coastal city of Grand Riviere. As soon as the sun set, dozens of 6 - 8 foot long, 1,000-pound behemoths crawled out of the Caribbean Sea, and made their way up the sandy slope. They moved with painstaking slowness, sort of like the zombies we have seen in many grade-B science fiction movies. We knew, of course, they were Leatherback Turtles (the largest marine turtles in the world), completing migrations from far off feeding grounds to the beaches of northern Trinidad. Only the red l.e.d. lights from our guide's flashlight revealed their true identity. In just over one incredible hour, we were able to witness their emergence from the ocean, location of a nesting site, nest excavation, the laying of about 100 eggs, nest camouflage, and their equally abrupt return to the sea. Leatherbacks can travel over 10,000 miles during a single year's migration. It's nice to know that the concept of "Naturalist's Journeys" applies not only to us tourists, but to the creatures we have come to see. Under the glow of moonlight, it was surely one of the most exciting wildlife experiences of our career as field biologists!

- Howard Topoff and Carol Simon

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Bird song was bold each morning we woke as spring painted Ohio with color. After an amazing morning at the Black Water Swamp Bird Observatory Banding Station (www.bsbo.org), where one of the field directors showed us some 15 species of day-glow colored warblers in the hand, we headed out to Magee Marsh to find them (and some!) in the wild. Warblers were everywhere, close and in general ignored our presence on the boardwalk. Over dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant in business over four generations, participant Al Balducci commented that "today was warbler immersion!"

Peg hosted a group from the Sawmill River Audubon Society at the end of April, and they had a grand time exploring the lush canyons and mountains of Arizona. Dave Jasper shared highlight species of Portal, delighting all with great sightings of Whiskered Screech and other small owls. A real surprise came on our final day though. We were at the lower of the Kino Springs Golf Course ponds, looking at a Great Blue Heron that was nesting where a Gray Hawk had the previous year. Its mate caught our attention, standing in the middle of the water at the far end of the pond. Behind Peg someone gasped, then exclaimed loudly - BOBCAT! We called the other van by radio to come up quietly, and all of us watched as a very large, likely male Bobcat walked the shoreline and then crouched to drink its fill - giving us several minutes of viewing before it slipped back into the brush - WOW. Next year's Southeast Arizona trip runs April 26-May 4th, and while we cannot promise a bobcat, everyday in the Sky Islands is a wonder!

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Hearing the clarion call of thousands of thousands of Sandhill Cranes is an absolute thrill! We found late March (March 25-30) to still be very much Winter in Nebraska, with the longer days and warmer temperatures making cranes restless to wing their way north to their Arctic nesting sites. Each morning these wary birds awakened on sand bar islands of the river where they seek protection from predators. Packed in body to body, they started to move like a wave, out into the water where they preened, stretched their wings and listened to add their voice to the deafening cacophony. We were huddled in the blind at Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary (www.rowesanctuary.com) where we watched pink light fill the sky, before a final thunderous lift off of some 200,000 cranes. The following evening, we returned to a blind that faced to the west. To our delight, it was a calm, relatively warm night. The birds came in over the period of an hour or more, in groups of 20 – 200, all calling, circling and finally coming down with legs extended like aircraft landing gear. In the six years guide Peg Abbott has done this tour, she has never had such a beautiful painted sky as a background for photographs of this spectacle. Read more about our adventures in the Trip Reports section of our website, and next year, consider joining us!

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For many, Antarctica is the trip of a lifetime, and for 12 from Naturalist Journeys this past Feb. 6-24, 2008 -- it certainly was! One simply cannot understand just how remote and wild this far end of the globe is without seeing it. Time on the Falkland Islands and South Georgia was vital to those of us keen on seeing wildlife. On a lonely farm of a private island in the Falklands, we marveled at Rockhopper Penguins displaying. They would drop their heads back to bray like donkeys, all the while flicking their golden head plumes like punk rock musicians. We visited King Penguin colonies on South Georgia that stretched as far as the eye could see, up a slope, with a background of an immense, incredible glacier. These giants, second only to the Emperor Penguin of ‘March of the Penguins’ fame, greeted us with curiosity. They boldly waddled up to our zodiac boats, surfed in adjacent waves rolling up on shore, and for the next few hours captivated our attentions with their calling, courting, and tending of young. Time cruising amidst islands off the Antarctic Peninsula gave us abundant time with whales – leaping Humpbacks cleared the water completely while breeching, then moved quietly next to the ship, where sunlight gave a Caribbean glow to the reflection off their white pectoral flippers. Minke Whales were curious enough to swim between and under our zodiacs, so close we could hear them breathe. Along with wildlife we were thrilled to see first hand the tiny spot of land that Shackelton’s men survived on for over 120 days on Elephant Island, as well as Shackelton’s grave. Learn more about our adventures in the Trip Reports section of our website.

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The sheer abundance of colors and density kept our small group in the Mojave Desert (March 14-22, 2008) busy with guide Greg Smith. Though off to a windy start in Palm Springs, they found a sheltered spot and soon everyone was on hands and knees taking in sweet flower scent. In the week of exploring they walked amidst sand dunes, dense cacti ‘forests’, playa lakebeds left from the Pleistocene, salt creeks, old mining sites, colorful granite boulders and on mountain trails near Telescope Peak. Ladderback Woodpeckers, a Long-eared Owl, and Costa’s Hummingbirds were some of the highlight bird species. Read Greg’s tales about the sex life of American Kestrels and other adventures.