On April 17th, Joe and Maggie Tieger took us along with them on their recent trip to Madagascar, the fourth largest islands in the world and isolated enough (250 miles off Africa’s east coast) to be stuffed with endemics, both fauna and flora.

Tropical Birding Tours was very good to them, not cancelling the tour when more people didn’t sign up, so they had two excellent guides to themselves. They were able to see an extraordinary number of endemics of all types including most of the birds, lemurs, lizards, and plants, but the wrong season for the famous frogs, alas!

They started out their slide show with an overview of Madagascar, history, climate, culture, etc. It’s one of the poorest places on earth, human-wise, and the infrastructure shows it, including traffic, sanitation, and lack of upkeep on wildlife refuges. They did have some good accommodations in the first half of their circuit of the country, but in the second half there was a lot lacking and some resultant illness.

About the time some of us were thinking we’d never go there, they started in on lemurs, and suddenly we were enthralled again! The lemurs were truly magical and many of them quite approachable, as humans were not on their predator radar. Sizes ranged from mouse-size to almost human scale, with those long talented tails on most, but surprisingly not all. The lizards were also amazing and varied.

Birds were fabulous. Many of them appeared to be African species, but recent DNA has shown their isolation has made new species or subspecies, so many endemics. In fact, 90% of the birds are endemic species or subspecies! These include several Kingfishers, and Carole Breedlove was on hand to appreciate seeing them again after including Madagascar on her world travel for Kingfishers.

The Vangas were the equivalent of Darwin’s finches for Madagascar. All descending from the original Vanga, the many current species imitate finches, flycatchers, woodpeckers, and many other types of birds. And many are beautiful, too.

One interesting aside about photographing birds is that the guides on this trip had very bright flashlights and used those instead of flash photography. Joe explained that most of their shots were lit this way and how much easier it was to focus and click on an item already lit up for the camera.

When they got home, they put together a photo book in lieu of printing their best shots. It was one of the best photo books I’ve ever seen and the ultimate souvenir for a birder.
Thanks, Joe and Maggie!