News: VENTflash Archive
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Catch up on the latest news from Victor Emanuel Nature Tours by reading the latest VENTFLASH.
VENTFLASH #107
Victor Emanuel: March 12, 2010
Dear friends,I recently returned from co-leading our birding and natural history cruise of the Lesser Antilles. For this wonderful trip we chartered the historic Sea Cloud, a vessel we have used on three previous occasions for this same program. Once again, we visited the five remarkable islands that form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean: St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Martinique, Dominica, and Guadeloupe. Like a string of pearls, these Caribbean islands are unique and beautiful, and each ...
VENTFLASH #106
Victor Emanuel: January 11, 2010
Dear Friends,On the last afternoon of the year I walked a path at Hornsby Bend, my favorite local birding area, with a friend. It was a gorgeous day under a bright blue sky with mild temperatures. There was no wind, making it seem as though time was standing still on the final day of the year. As I walked along, I found myself thinking of all the events of the year that was about to end. My thoughts were interrupted when I spotted an immature Harris's Sparrow at very close range in ...
VENTFLASH #105
Victor Emanuel: December 07, 2009
Dear Friends,Last week I returned from Corvallis, Oregon, where I spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with my niece and her family. On Friday, my good friends Bob Fleming and Larry McQueen drove up from Eugene to go birding with me at the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge. It had rained all day on Thanksgiving, but the day after was clear and sunny. We saw thousands of Cackling and "Dusky" Canada geese with one lone Snow Goose flying with them. Another highlight was seeing a flo...
VENTFLASH #103
Victor Emanuel: October 26, 2009
Dear Friends,Nature has a way of surprising us when we least expect it. A few weeks ago I was asked by a neighbor to take eight area kids, ages six to twelve, out birding. I suggested we meet at Hornsby Bend, the wastewater treatment facility that is Austin's best local birding area. On the afternoon I had arranged to meet the group, the weather conditions were hot and muggy—certainly not the kind of day when you expect to see something unusual.As I pulled into the parking lot I saw...
VENTFLASH #102
Victor Emanuel: September 22, 2009
Dear Friends,I have just returned from a wonderful scouting trip to Greece in advance of our second-ever Greece: History, Culture & Nature cruise, September 1-10, 2010. The focus of this exciting trip will be on the history and culture of ancient Greece combined with birding. Of the many highlights of this scouting trip, a visit to the ruins at Olympia was the most remarkable. This is the site of the ancient stadium where the Olympic games originated and were played every four years from ...
VENTFLASH #101 - Madagascar Discount
Victor Emanuel: August 18, 2009
Dear Friends, Yesterday, VENTFLASH #101 was sent out with an announcement that we are offering a discount of $1,000 on our upcoming Madagascar tour, October 29-November 18, 2009, in hopes we could fill the spaces of a couple who cancelled and were under cancellation penalty. In fact, the amount of the discount we are offering is $2,000 per person. The discounted tour fee is $8,695 for these spaces in double occupancy from Antananarivo. Ring-tailed Lemur— Photo: Victor Emanuel Madagasc...
VENTFLASH #101
Victor Emanuel: August 17, 2009
Dear Friends,As I write this VENTFLASH, I am on a plane back to Austin after co-leading our summer youth camp, Camp Cascades, with Barry Lyon and Louise Zemaitis. Ten boys and three girls joined us for two weeks in Washington state. We had a marvelous time. Highlights included over 3,000 Rhinoceros Auklets seen from the ferry to Port Townsend; Varied Thrushes singing in spruce trees while mist rose from the valley below Cascade Pass; a family group of White-tailed Ptarmigan; both Sooty and Du...
VENTFLASH #100
Victor Emanuel: July 09, 2009
Dear Friends:I wanted to share with you a wonderful birding show that has played out in front of my house for the past three weeks. Almost every evening, around 8:30 p.m., a pair of Eastern Screech-Owls and their two young come out to hunt in the small park across from my house. During the first two weeks the young birds perched close to each other, bobbing their heads around and swaying back and forth, waiting for the adults to bring them something to eat. The adults, meanwhile, hunted the l...
VENTFLASH #99
Victor Emanuel: May 22, 2009
May 22, 2009Dear Friends,While the ongoing economic downturn has made this year a challenging one for VENT, we are proud to say that we are meeting that challenge, thanks to your support. Amid difficult economic times, I am very pleased that VENT will once again have a profitable year. We are operating almost all of our scheduled tours, even though some have gone out less than full. Our guaranteed departure policy for all our tours in the United States and Canada has been a big plus for VENT ...
VENTFLASH #98
Victor Emanuel: April 23, 2009
April 24, 2009 Dear Friends,It is hard to believe that more than two months have passed since the last edition of VENTFLASH was published on February 6. After spending almost four weeks of January in Antarctica, February passed quickly. A highlight for me was a 40th reunion I had in early February with two of my oldest birding companions, Fred Collins and Dennis Shepler, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The three of us met in the late sixties when we all lived in Houston.&n...
VENTFLASH #97
Victor Emanuel: February 06, 2009
February 6, 2009Dear friends,Last week I returned from a marvelous trip to Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. I was home for only a few days before I left for Phoenix, Arizona to attend my first National Audubon Society board meeting. During the meeting, we visited the Rio Salado Nature Center, which is being built on the south bank of the Salt River near downtown Phoenix. I was fortunate to meet some of the local people who have made the creation of the center possible. I c...
VENTFLASH #95
Victor Emanuel: November 25, 2008
November 25, 2008Dear friends:I was on a ship off the coast of Panama when the news reached me that my old friend Peter Matthiessen had been awarded the National Book Award for his novel, Shadow Country. Peter is evidently the only writer to have ever received this prestigious award for both a non-fiction book, The Snow Leopard, and a work of fiction.The news evoked memories of an afternoon in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in April 1976. It was the first VENT tour Peter co-led wi...
VENTFLASH #94
Victor Emanuel: November 04, 2008
November 4, 2008Dear Friends:October is the beginning of our tour year. Even though the month just ended, we have already received wonderful tour reports from our leaders. Highlights on our Barranca del Cobre tour included an unprecedented 10 Eared Quetzals and sightings of the rare Aztec Thrush. Our Southeast Brazil tour recorded over 400 species. Almost 150 of those birds were regional endemics (birds found only in Brazil or nearby Argentina or Paraguay). The number one highlight from the f...
VENTFLASH #93
Victor Emanuel: October 22, 2008
Dear Friends:In mid-September I traveled to Racine, Wisconsin to attend an event sponsored by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology that included a showing of Lord God Bird. This film describes the search for the last known Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the 1930s, as well as the more recent searches in Arkansas and Florida. The most moving parts of the film were the footage taken by Arthur Allen of a pair of Ivory-bills at a nest in the Singer Tract in northeast Louisiana in l935, and the foota...
VENTFLASH #92
Victor Emanuel: September 08, 2008
Dear Friends,With September already upon us, I have been reflecting on all the great trips VENT operated not only this summer, but throughout this past year as well. Our tour year does not parallel the calendar year, but runs from October 1 through the end of the following September. The year that will end on September 30th has been one of the most successful in our company's 32-year history. We again offered more than 150 tours to destinations all over the world. In addition to operating...
VENTFLASH #91
Victor Emanuel: July 17, 2008
Dear Friends:After a highly eventful spring season that included our first ever Austin, Texas Birding and Nature Festival; successful birds & history cruises to Sicily and Scotland; and outstanding tours to Arizona, Point Pelee, the Smoky Mountains, and New Mexico, we are now well into our summer tour schedule. Our June tours to Minnesota & North Dakota, Alaska, and Churchill & Southern Manitoba all had to contend with unusually rainy, cool weather, but in all cases, the tour lead...
VENTFLASH #90
April 09, 2008
Dear Friends: I recently returned from our Grand Southern India Train Odyssey. It was everything I had hoped it would be: great birds and mammals, wonderful cultural sites, and several marvelous days traveling across the Deccan Plateau on a lovely train. One of the highlights was our time at the Nagarhole National Park where everyone saw Asian elephants and where some of the group saw wild dogs, a leopard, and two tigers. I have made six previous trips to other parts of India, but this was ...
VENTFLASH #88
December 12, 2007
Dear Friends:I've just returned from another marvelous trip to Madagascar. We saw lots of lemurs, birds, chameleons, and other fascinating creatures. We had a wonderful and enthusiastic group of participants, with people from England, Canada, and various parts of the United States. Most had been on many previous VENT trips. Every trip I've made over the past 30 years has been such a great pleasure because it has given me the opportunity to share great birds and nature with such fine p...
VENTFLASH #87
November 08, 2007
Dear Friends:In the last edition of VENTFLASH, I told you of my desire to occasionally highlight several less-known tours or regions of the world that I know you would enjoy hearing about. The tours or regions I speak of are special in that they tend to receive little promotion, yet offer some of the finest travel experiences in our entire repertoire of tours. Most recently you learned of Venezuela. In this edition I want to tell you about two special European tours we will run in 2008: Winte...
VENTFLASH #86
October 15, 2007
Dear Friends:Every day I come to work I am reminded of all the marvelous destinations to which VENT operates nature tours. I am proud that we offer more than 150 tours worldwide annually. Because all the places we visit are so special, I wish I could share with you my feelings about every one of our tours. Unfortunately time is limited and it just isn't possible. But every so often I like to focus attention on a particular tour or region that I feel you would enjoy reading about. Over the nex...
