A taste of things to come – Summer Tanager, Lost Maples, Texas 2009

Jane and I depart shortly on our two month long Great American Birding RoAd Trip (or GABRAT for short!), following the birds on their Spring migration – travelling from east to west and south to north. We arrive in Houston, Texas mid-April, travel down the Gulf of Mexico and then east along the Rio Grande, Neal’s Lodge to Big Bend, then on to El Paso via Fort Davis. On this first leg we’ll be joined by our youngest son and keen birder Jake. At El Paso we meet up with our long-time birding friends, Bob & Sue, for a tour of south-east Arizona, before heading north to the Grand Canyon and then to Vegas. A few days there then it’s on to Death Valley, Yosemite and over to the coast at Monterey, in the hope of catching a pelagic. North to Point Reyes, where we say goodbye to our friends, before heading on into Oregon – Klamath, Crater Lake, and the sites around Bend. Our final adventure, after we meet up with my brother and his wife from Australia, is a brief tour of north-west Washington State, including a ‘mini pelagic’ ferry trip to Vancouver Island. Finally departing from Seattle for home, sometime in mid-June. Hopefully, I’ll be publishing regular blog-posts, capturing the birding highlights, as we follow the awesome spectacle of American Spring bird migration…