In case you were among the hordes of fans who, like me, were left adrift when Jeff Bouton last stopped blogging, your grim gulag has ended. The hardest working digiscoper in the business is back with a new Leica Birding Blog. Check it out!

Birders have known for a while that the Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea travels further and sees more hours of daylight per year than other bird, but researchers using tiny tracking devices have discovered that far from going in a straight line from one end of the planet to the other Arctic Terns make huge ‘S’ shaped curves which actually mean they annually travel a staggering 70,000km (43,000 miles). The BBC News website has the graphics and the details.

Jochen, the quirky soul behind ‘Bell Tower Birding, recently wrote, “Sometimes I wonder why I even bother picking up a camera” and linked to a blog which probably makes all of us wonder why we bother. Awesomely beautiful photos abound. Why on earth is Fraser’s Birding Blog so low in the FatBirders toplist with posts like these…? (I have no idea, is the answer)

After Mike’s spectacular visit to Jamaica last year we’re focussing more on this somewhat (from a world birder’s perspective) overlooked region. The Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB) is holding a wetland workshop in Negril, Jamaica next month. One of the birds participants will be getting good views of is the Endangered West Indian Whistling Duck. Neatly tying everything together we’re at the moment planning a series on endangered wildfowl - and the WIWD will be one of our featured birds. We may be announcing an even more interesting link with Jamaica in the near future - so keep watching this blog!