Gunnar’s Midweek Bullets.

by Gunnar Engblom March 23, 2018

The Big Five for Health. Gunnar’s Midweek Bullets

As promised last week, this delivery is shorter. It is still a bit of an experiment, so please have patience. Have a coffee. I am mixing cats and dogs, apples and oranges. I am sure you don’t share all of my interests, but on the other hand, if you get this in your mailbox or read it on the blog, at least you share some. Since it is concise, you can either explore further or just skip the bits of no interest to you. Just as last weeks I am covering my main topics: Birding, Upcoming tours, Health, Podcasts I’ve listened to, Running and Guran Guran (my band).
Ready? Here we go!

Birding

I am extending the special offer 15% discount for March-May until Monday March 26 at midnight (Peruvian time). You best hurry if you don’t want to lose out on this. Check out this blogpost with the details.
Just as I am writing this, I have a couple interested in a 5 day Manu road and Machu Picchu between April 1-7… spring break. Any other teachers out there who want to join?
Also, one person just signed up for Carpish/Unchog April 12-16.
I liked this article by Kenn Kaufman. I Became a Better Birder When I Stopped Focusing on the Males. Even dull birds are interesting.
My book review of Noah Strycker’s Birding Without Borders was just published.

Upcoming tours

Here are upcoming and confirmed trips from Mid-July until September, some that still have a few vacancies which you can sign up to for best price. The trips in April to June you find in my last week’s Midweek Bullets.

July 12-13. Paracas pelagic with birding en route.
July 14-17. White-masked Antbird twitch at San Lorenzo with Black-necked Red-Cotinga and Black Bushbird. See blogpost about the birding here. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
July 17-21. Scarlet-banded Barbet and newly described Cordillera Azul Antbird. See blogpost. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
July 18. Ventanilla Lagoons – a few hours to kill near airport. Afternoon birding at Ventanilla Lagoons just north of Lima Airport. Good for Peruvian Thickknee and Many-colored Rush-Tyrant.
July 19. Bird photography in Lima. Best bird photography in Lima with Inca Tern, Red-legged Cormorant, Humboldt Penguin and Many-colored Rush-Tyrant.
July 20. Daytrip to Santa Eulalia Canyon. A classic, visiting the Andes from Lima with Great Inca-Finch, Black-necked Flicker and Andean Condor.
July 21. Lomas de Lachay and Paraiso Lagoon. In search of endemic Cactus Canastero and Tawny-throated Dottorel at the desert oasis 100 km north of Lima.
July 24-26. Bird photography at Chuncho Macaw Lick and birding at Chuncho Lodge. 3 days. Introduction to the Amazon and the great Macaw Clay Lick experience. Scarlet, Red-and-Green and Blue and Yellow on the same mud wall. Combine with other scheduled July programs.
July 27. Machu Picchu – independant . Perhaps guided.
July 28-29. Two days of exploring Abra Malaga and the many endemics. here.
July 30-Aug 3. 5 day Manu road Birding and Photography. Megadiverse Manu road with hummingbird feeders and fruitfeeders for tanagers in 5 days. Most endemic and special species along the route are also covered. Cock of the Rock close up.
Aug 6-10. Long-whiskered Owlet and Marvellous Spatuletail 5 day get-away. Our exciting 5 day North Peru tour sandwiched between two weekends.
Aug 11. Pelagic from Paracas.
Aug 25-28. White-masked Antbird twitch at San Lorenzo. White-masked Antbird, Black Bushbird and Black-necked Red-Cotinga are the main targets on this great little tour. See blogpost about the birding here.
Aug 28-31. Scarlet-banded Barbet extension. Now with newly described Cordillera Azul Antbird. See blogpost!
Sep 3-7. 5 day Manu road Birding and Photography. A short tour to combine with your trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu.
Sep 9-22. Manu road bird photography expedition. We have put together the best bird photography options in this action packed program for Manu road. There are presently 4 spots available. Price TBA.
Sep 15-19. Los Amigos. Amazing birding. People often ask me, which rain forest lodge I prefer. Amigos is without doubt the one. It has all micro-habitats including bamboo, terra firme, varzea, palmswamps, cochas, heliconia thickets, you name it. And target species such as Black-faced Cotinga, Rufous-fronted Antthrush, Emperor Tamarin and Anaconda.
Sep 27-Oct 1. 300 species in one day – The Biggest Day during The Big Month, part 1. Prep for Big Day and Big Day attempt. You may sign-up for only this trip.

Big Month October.
October will be the month of celebration for Kolibri Expeditions in Peru. You may join us to try to set a raise the bar for greatest number of species recorded in a single country. Hopefully over 1100 species. You can join the full month for $6500 or sign up for parts.
More about the details and the exact program in my Midweek Bullets next week.

Brazil in October – Want to see a jaguar?
We are setting up another jaguar and birding safari in Pantanal first week of October. If you are dreaming about cats and wildlife, plus spectacular birds, you could join us on this epic trips. It will last one week for best price and still ample of time. One can combine with a week of birding and bird photography from Sao Paulo afterwards.
Details follow the next week. Stay tuned.

Best videos I have seen the last week.

Leather made from mushrooms. The future is near. Vegan leather.
Absolutely hilarious Chinese promotional video for their indestructible phone

Best podcasts this week.

Fascinating life story from Airbnb founder Joe Gebbia on the Tim Ferriss Show. Part 1. Some stories Joe are telling! Also lots of Life Lessons to learn here. To see opportunity. To work hard to meet a goal. To find a solution to something which seems impossible. The word tenacity comes to mind. Don’t give up. Don’t get discouraged by rejection.
I listened to the podcast while running. Many of the latest interviews comes with video like this one below. This is a fantastic interview. Don’t miss it. Download the podcast and listen to it while on the run or doing chores.

Health

Fasting. Last week I made a big deal about this. Here is a fun article (or should I say rant?) by Jason Fung – the fasting Guru I talked about in the last GMB. What’s the difference in power between fasting and LowCarb High Fat (LCHF)? Obviously, fasting is so much better.
Coffee is VERY GOOD for you. The more the better. I was reminded opening a short read Coffee Fights Disease and Extends Your Life the other day. I have heard it before. One of the most compelling was the interview Ben Greenfield did with Dr Sanjiv Chopra. This was the first time I heard of that coffee actually was that good for you, and that I should have not remorse for loving it. In the interview Dr Chopra summarizes his book The Big Five Five Simple Things You Can Do to Live a Longer, Healthier Life. Yes, it is spiritual wellness guru Deepak Chopra‘s brother. The journey of the two brothers ending up in USA from India, and their successes is wonderfully described in their book Brotherhood. Get the Audible version, because the it is great to hear them read the chapters themselves. Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks.
Me re-listening to the interview above, I thought I’d mention the other four of the Big Five I implement (most) every day.
Meditation. I have listened to a bunch of highly effective people on various podcasts, reading books about creating good morning routines as well as books on fitness, health and entrepreneurship, etc, etc, ….and 90% of them mention meditation as the magic bullet for success. Since a year or so, I have tried to practice it with a short session in the morning. I am not great at it, but it has been helped to get a free introduction via the app Headspace and then sign up for a subscription (for a while).
Nuts. Eat nuts every day. Do it mindfully. One by one. Walnuts have lots of Omega 3, Brazil nuts contain Selenium which may protect against prostate cancer, pecan nuts have beta-sitosterol which helps against benign enlarged prostate and peanuts (not really a nut, but anyway) are good for the brain. When joining Amazon Prime’s 30-Day Free Trial you can get a large choice of good quality nuts with free shipping. Check for the Prime logo.
Sunshine – D-vitamin. You are about to go out and it is a sunny day. Before you go out, you smear yourself with sunblock factor 50 or more. Wrong! Chances are you are not getting the D-vitamin you need. There are many people who are D-vitamin deficient with serious health problems, and although you can of course take a supplement, the easiest way to get enough D-vitamin is to get exposed to sun. Get the sunblock on after 20 min or so depending on your latitude and time of day, if you will remain in the sun, so you don’t burn. The key is to expose yourself just a little bit. The risk of skin cancer is with prolonged exposure and burning. I have the last year often running without my shirt on, or I have done some morning exercise in the sun in our apartment open air patio.
Exercise. No problem there for me, as I am a runner. Maybe even too much of the good thing. Marathon running is perhaps a bit extreme. But don’t underestimate walking. Get yourself a treadmill, and with a piece of wood and some thick books to adjust the height of your laptop and voilà! You have a walking treadmill workstation. You get loads of aerobic training without leaving the office. Here is my set-up.
If you want something more fancy, you can buy this awesome workstation off Amazon.

As for me, I shall probably soon instead get a smart-TV to connect to the laptop, and put inside bookshelf in front of me. This way, I’ll keep my head looking forward instead of down on the screen, which will be better for posture.

Productivity

I found a few easy applicable tips just flipping through Flipboard. Best tip is usually, not to do too much Flipboard, because you get sucked in. On the other hand you may learn something. Just set a time limit, if you do find yourself flipping.
Here is how to be more productive. This is old stuff really, but worth repeating.

My Running

I am still not running as much as I would like, since I needed to catch up with a backlog of Kolibri Expeditions stuff including quotes, new programs, marketing and planning after almost 5 months of way too many days away from the office.

I am still getting some extra aerobic training while working, by using the treadmill above walking for 3-4 hours per day, apart from shorter runs around 10k. Skipped a run day yesterday, but just ran 16k today, so hopefully the long walks will make up some for lack of running. I shall make a test next week to see what my what speed I can maintain at a low HR of 135. I think I have not too much in fitness, by maintaining all this walking. I am considering doing the NatGeo 10K race on April 22, just to check if I am losing a lot of speed by doing all this slow aerobic training. It will be about time to start with faster workouts around then anyway.

Guran Guran

That’s my band. In 2016-2017 we got together again after a hiatus of 25 years. Last year we released a brand new album. Since a month ago, you find the songs on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and other digital media platforms.

Although, my songs are 20-30 years old, but just released, it seems in many ways they are still very current.
Check these two YouTube videos. They are in Swedish of course, but you can activate the English captions to get what they are all about.

The first one and title song to the album is about refugees fleeing wars and conflict, to be met by xenophobia and threat of rejection of their asylum status. The song was written during the Balkan refugee crises.

The second song in 30 years old from when I lived in the immigrant dense Stockholm suburbia Tensta (1985-1998). Rinkeby is just next door. Both have got bad rap in the press very recently including a 60 Minute crew attacked as they tried to film there. We filmed without any problems of course and the result is this video which has gotten over 215 000 views in less than a year.

More videos will be uploaded with English lyrics shortly. I would very much appreciate if you subscribe to our channel.
Oh, and there is a song about birding too. You may have heard it. This one is in English. BIRDPARTY.

I will be going to Stockholm in June and get the band together again to do some more recordings and one gig. Furthermore, in August we shall also do some gigs in Sweden.

It is a wrap up, folks… Not quite as long as last week… but still a bit long. OK. Next week under 2000 words, promise.
Let me know what you liked and what you did not like about this post.

Gunnar Engblom is a Swedish birder who lives in Peru since 1998, where he operates birdwatching and nature tours for Kolibri Expeditions. He is also a dedicated 3:04 marathon runner, right now training for Gold Coast Marathon, Australia in July 2018. In 2016, Gunnar additionally re-launched his rock’n’roll singer career with his band Guran Guran.

by Gunnar Engblom March 14, 2018

No More Lima Pelagics – No more! Gunnar’s Midweek Bullets.

New newsletter – Midweek.

I am a fan of Tim Ferriss Podcast and his books (get 4 hour work week, 4 hour body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors) and Tim does a weekly 5-bullet email that reaches over 2 million people. I am adopting this idea in my new newsletter/blog Gunnar’s Midweek Bullets, in my personal way, updating you on birding, birding tours, bird photography, running, health, food, podcasts, blogposts, books, music etc that I come across. If you share any of my interests….and I know you do…I am sure you shall like this. If you want to sign up to this newsletter, please visit my birding blog where there is a subscribe field in the upper right corner.

There will also be some more personal bullets related to my three hobbies.

Kolibri Expeditions. My birding and bird photography tour company. My hobby turned into a business. I blog here in English
Marathon training. Trying to defy age (now at 57) on a quest to beat my 21 year old me breaking 3h on the marathon
Guran Guran. Yes, I put my band together again after 25 years. You will get news here in English, in case you missed the Guran Guran Facebook group postings and any blog post. But yes, that is all in the internationally absolutely essential language to learn – Swedish. Ah, well. There is always Google translate of course, and the videos on our YouTube channel (more coming soon) are always with English subtitles which can be activated in settings. Rock’n’Roll!

Normally, these GMB posts shall be very short. Today, however, since I have not posted for some while, it will be a bit longer. Many tidbits to tell you about below.

Ready? Here we go!

STOP THE PRESS: NO MORE LIMA PELAGICS.

After 18 years of running pelagics from Lima, it is now a fact that there are no boats that pass the rigorous Callao Port Authority and Municipality safety rules for venturing beyond Palomino Islets.
Therefor, we are moving our pelagic operation to Paracas 230 km south of Lima, where there are several operators of fast speed boat. Still not easy to get a partnership going. Luckily, I have found a partner in one of the oldest operators of boat trips to Islas Ballestas. I know the owner since 1990 when I first went on a trip to the islands. So we managed to do a pelagic from here, which was very promising on March 11. The photo of the White-chinned Petrel is from then.

So, our scheduled pelagics from Lima will in the future be transferred to Paracas instead. Start will be at 5 AM. This means that you need to take a bus to Paracas (last bus leaves at 2pm and takes 3 h 30 min) and stay overnight or get your own transport, in case you are only interested in the pelagic. We are also supplying, either a transport for our clients who are doing more tours with us or doing a two day tour which provides stops at birding sites on the way and a visit on the Paracas peninsula for better chance of Peruvian Seaside Cinclodes, Blackish Oystercatcher, Peruvian Tern and South American Fur Seal. In the coming week the Pelagic web page shall be updated to reflect the new situation.

Other Birding News

Legendary Jon Hornbuckle died on Feb 19. He survived an accident last year, but lost his memory. Although I don’t know the details, undoubtedly it is the accident that caused his early departure. Jon had the longest birdlist of all with 9600 species seen. Many of us have enjoyed his company in the field and used his very detailed and excellent bird reports. RIP Johnny H.My song Birdparty is not about Jon in particular. We are many birders like that, including myself at times. Regardless, I will always think of Jon Hornbuckle when I sing “My friend Johnny is a birding legend”.
Just learned today from James Adams Facebook post, that Pico Bonito Lodge in Honduras is closing down, although it is not yet apparent on the website. The old owner died last year, and the remaining owners have no interest. For sale for 4M$, if you feel like owning a prime ecolodge. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a GoFundMe campaign or something, so the workers can run the lodge together.
Talking about lodges, I just had a family holiday in Costa Rica and visited Rancho Naturalista and Tapirus Lodge. Both excellent! I am preparing a new 5 day tour with both these places and which includes also La Selva. It will likely run second week of January, 2019.
While at Rancho Naturalista, I met with Swedish world birder C-G Cederlund for the first time. C-G has a list of 9450 plus species and got three lifers in a day at Rancho Naturalista. I saw the same birds of course. Snowcap, Chiriqui Quail-Dove and Black-throated Wren. Awesome!
Tapirus Lodge has an amazing resource with a cable car that slowly moves through the canopy. Although my time was too brief, this strategy should help to spot Bare-throated Umbrellabird and many canopy flocks. If anything interesting appears, the cable car may stop at the spot for a more prolonged view. We ran into C-G again here, with his guide Forrest Rowland. Forrest told us about a massive ant swarm attracting Ocellated Antbird on a nearby trail. We got brilliant views.

Upcoming birding tours.

Tired of snow? Hey, we are free for Easter. Interested in hitting Peru then? Either book any tour you want with an expert birding guide, and we try to pair you with others interested or perhaps rent our van and excellent driver for a week or more. Other confirmed immediate tours that have space follows below. Check out:

March 25- April 1. Triunfo, Chiapas with Horned Guan. Check our South Mexico trip report from last year.
April 22-April 27. Lowland SE Peru rainforest at Los Amigos. Amazing birding. People often ask me, which rain forest lodge I prefer. Amigos is without doubt the one. It has all micro-habitats including bamboo, terra firme, varzea, palmswamps, cochas, heliconia thickets, you name it. And target species such as Black-faced Cotinga, Rufous-fronted Antthrush, Emperor Tamarin and Anaconda. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
No bookings for May? Let’s do something about that. Where do you want to go? We are all ears. Booking and paying deposit before March 23 we offer a 15% discount on any trip, which makes it affordable even if it is only you or together with a partner. Send me an email to kolibriexp@gmail.com.
June 11-15. Short Manu road birding and photography trip. Can be combined with Machu Picchu before.
July 12-13. New Paracas Pelagic program. Confirmed, but still need to be uploaded to the website. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
July 13. Paracas Pelagic.
July 14-17. White-masked Antbird twitch at San Lorenzo with Black-necked Red-Cotinga and Black Bushbird. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
July 17-21. Scarlet-banded Barbet and newly described Cordillera Azul Antbird. Guide: Gunnar Engblom
For later trips or anything in between, check the calendar and the Kolibri Expeditions Website regularly or shoot me an email at kolibriexp@gmail.com.

Bird Photography

A new book is a “must have” for all of you who use point and shoot bridge cameras with a mega-zoom lens. Stephen Ingraham just released his Point and Shoot Nature Photography. Available from Amazon both as Kindle, to be downloaded to your smartphone or tablet, and paperback. Dead cheap. You’d be silly not to buy it.
I just got my own digital SLR gear recently with the best current set-up for a birder who wants to go beyond point and shoot, but still not carry too much weight. This is what I use.
Canon 7d Mark II house very fast and with 1.6x crop factor.
Canon 100-400mm 4.0-5/6 IS II great all round lense for birds with very fast autofocus.
Canon 1.4x converter II. Helps when birds are small or further away.A great set-up.I used this set-up recently this year on my birding trips to North Peru, Japan and Costa Rica. Here is Blakiston’s FIsh-owl from Hokkaido, Japan. I will link to some more photos in my next post.

Health

Fasting. With a lot of traveling lately my eating habits have not been that great, but I got very well motivated after recommended to listen to Dr Jason Fung, who recommends fasting as a way to weight loss, boosting the immune system, get into ketosis for mental clearness and use fat as fuel when running long distances.This interview of Dr Fung by Ben Greenfield (also as podcast) was game-changing for me (skip promo until 5:10 to get to the interview). I have previously had a semi-fasting intermittent fasting protocol as I have started my days with Bullet Proof Coffee (coffee, 1-2 tbsp of Coconut Oil, Turmeric and Cinnamon – and sometimes cream or butter), had lunch restricting carbs, and then ate the majority of my carbs later in the day after my workout. This is also known as Carb Backloading.The intermittent fasting is skipping breakfast all together and get all your food in a 8 hour window. This is known as the 16/8 protocol and perhaps most made famous by Hugh Jackman. This I have already tested, sometimes involuntary, as I start working at my desk and forget to eat.
A few weeks ago, after having listen to the podcast, I tried a 36 hour fast with no calories at all to see how I felt. I did allow for coffee and tea. It was not that hard.Now; I am on a 72h fast. The idea is to get into ketosis, which happens after 36 hours, so that I shall utilize the body’s fat deposits instead of glycogen to increase the endurance while running the marathon. Check out Dr. Jason Fungs two books. The complete guide to fasting and The Obesity Code for more info.
Tim Ferris has a variant of this, where he simply starts taking MTC oils such as coconut oil, or exogenous ketones. As my main goal is to get into ketosis, I will phase into Coconut oil the last 12 hours of fasting. And also include a workout.

How I train for my upcoming Marathon

A bit more than two weeks ago, and in fact my last day in Japan, I started my 18 week marathon training to prepare for Gold Coast Marathon, Australia on July 1. I had set goals to follow Jack Daniels Running Formula and the 18 weeks with 2 quality sessions per week. So I did for a week, but it was too much of shock for me with increased mileage and then on top some really hard workouts. It is a great training plan and very successful for many runners to set PRs and go sub 3h, but I needed more base, before jumping into this plan.

I stepped back and tried to make a new plan. After having run a very successful marathon in North Carolina – my second best ever at 3:04.11- in 2016 and in a similar situation. Then I hacked with a lot of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) sessions every other day or so to gain speed and mitochondrial growth, but not so much distance. It was really only my lack of long runs that did not get me under 3 hours that time. Ben Greenfield has a lot about hacking training to get stronger, faster and more endurance quicker in his book Beyond Training – a great source of tips not only on how to train, but also habits of eating, sleep, meditation and supplements to take.

First I needed to build base. I like the idea of Dr Phil Maffetone’s Maximum Aerobic Function, which basically is the highest speed you can maintain when mainly burning fat as fuel. Thus, lots of slow running, and the total opposite of Ben Greenfield. Maffetone’s ideas is presented in his Big Book of Endurance and Training.

So my idea of hacking it is building base with Maffetones ideas for 10 weeks at slow pace with very little speed training using a HR monitor. The idea is to get more efficient at burning fat and this is where ketosis comes in with my current fasting.
My speed at MAF should increase during the course of the weeks. The last 8 weeks are destined for racking up pace with intervals, hill sprints, marathon pace and a few races such as Half Marathon in Lima and a 10K in Sweden. You can follow evaluation of this tactic and my progress on GunnarEngblom.com, where I also post about other things that interest me such as cinema, wine, traveling, bio hacking, etc.

Some books I read now or have read recently.

Most of my recent books are mentioned above, but since I am preparing a blogpost review of Noah Strycker’s book Birding Without Borders on my blog at Kolibri Expeditions, you may want check out this book. No less than 33 pages are dedicated to Noah’s adventures with Kolibri Expeditions in Peru. Worth a read if you travelled with us before or think you will want to take one of our amazing trips. If you think, on basis what you read, that it is always so adventurous, mind you that the Central and South part of Peru in February when Noah was here is in the rainy season. The North and the coast is still great birding that time of year and if one ventures to the rainforest away from the mountains, even SE Peru can be great from Puerto Maldonado in the rainy season, as it is served with several daily jets all year around.

Some interesting podcast episodes I have listened to recently.

I mentioned Tim Ferriss. Here are my two favorite episodes from the past weeks.

Gabor Maté – Dr. Gabor Maté (@drmate) is a physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. He’s well known for studying and treating addiction. I also got very interested on his views on ADD. I am getting his book Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It. No, he says, ADD is not primarily a genetic disorder but shaped from your childhood. It is no surprise really, that the fast pace information age, and the stressful life in general of today’s society makes ADD extremely common. I am looking forward to learn more.
Tim Urban: Managing Procrastination, Predicting the Future, and Finding Happiness Tim Urban is the stick-figure blogger of Wait but Why. I recently posted one of his post on my Facebook about treasuring the time we have left. We are at The Tail End. Spend time with your loved ones. He specifically, makes a point to reserve time for family that lives far away. I will be taking time off to see my brother, my grown-up daughter and especially my Mom, when I travel to Sweden in June and in September. There are so many questions. Check 24 questions you should ask your parents when you can.
Finally. Who would have known that former NFL player and today actor Terry Crews is so multi-facetted. Very powerful and funny interview.

Finally, even though some may think this is political, it is really just common sense. I share a cat video explaining about guns. Or something like that. It is funny and educational. Enjoy.

That’s all folks. Until next week, which shall be much shorter I promise. Please consider signing up to the newsletter on my regular birding blog, and you will get a message in your email inbox.