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The Shorebirds That Keep Me Going Back — Some birds are seen before they are met. This one remains a reason to return — perfectly understood, simply not yet in season. © Tamba Jefang

The Shorebirds That Keep Me Going Back

A personal reflection on lifer shorebirds, local knowledge, and unfinished encounters from a spring birding trip to The Gambia.

Gyorgy Szimuly

Gyorgy Szimuly

January 30, 2026 – 3 min read

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A New Continent at Thirty: Notes from a Moroccan Birding Trip — <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Orange light folding over the dunes of Merzouga – distance felt tangible, and silence stretched beyond the horizon.</span>

A New Continent at Thirty: Notes from a Moroccan Birding Trip

A father–son journey through Morocco at thirty – landscapes, method, missed species, and a long-awaited Cream-coloured Courser.

How PatchBird Changed the Way I Bird — <i><em class="italic" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">A Franklin’s Gull in breeding plumage, photographed in Mexico 21 years ago — from a time when tools like eBird did not yet exist, and many moments like this could only be held in memory. © Gyorgy Szimuly</em></i>

How PatchBird Changed the Way I Bird

PatchBird began not as a project, but as a shift in attention — fifteen minutes of stillness that transformed everyday birding.

How We Plan Birding Through Colombia — Among many other beautiful hummingbirds, the Crowned Woodnymph glows in the humid forests of the Colombian Andes — a fitting emblem of the landscapes awaiting us along our carefully planned route. © Patrick Maurice

How We Plan Birding Through Colombia

Planning a birding trip through Colombia requires more than chasing species lists. Here is the method we used to design a realistic itinerary using eBird hotspots, habitat diversity, and a slower PatchBird-style approach.

An African Finfoot and a Twenty-One-Year-Old Promise — A bird that appears and disappears on its own terms — and, on this day, brought three people back to the same stretch of river. © Hasan Al-Fahan

An African Finfoot and a Twenty-One-Year-Old Promise

A search for African Finfoot on the Gambia River reconnects with a missed pitta in Thailand — and a promise made quietly twenty-one years earlier.

A New Continent at Thirty: Notes from a Moroccan Birding Trip — Orange light folding over the dunes of Merzouga – distance felt tangible, and silence stretched beyond the horizon.

A New Continent at Thirty: Notes from a Moroccan Birding Trip

A father–son journey through Morocco at thirty – landscapes, method, missed species, and a long-awaited Cream-coloured Courser.