Here’s some good news: six new tiger cubs were sighted at India’s national wildlife sanctuary Ranthambore this year. This brings the total number of tigers in the park to 38! 😀

In March 2006 we were fortunate enough to see tigers at Ranthambore on our vacation in Rajasthan. That was such an exciting moment; the park is beautiful and even without seeing tigers we would have had a great visit, but all of a sudden an adult tiger crossed the road just in front of our jeep:

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Yesterday we visited Madurodam, the smallest town in the Netherlands. Madurodam is a tourist attraction near the Hague where typical Dutch buildings and landmarks are displayed at a 1:25 scale. Here’s a video of some of the things we saw:

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Last week we saw a new bird in our backyard: a Goldfinch (‘Putter’ or ‘Distelvink’ in Dutch). It isn’t a rare bird at all, but we never saw one before in our own backyard.

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There are three movies that come out this year that I am really looking forward to, all of them sequels: Star Trek 11, The X-Files 2 and Indiana Jones 4. A brand new trailer of Indiana Jones came out today. I expected it to be one of those trailers where you don’t see anything, but it actually shows a lot of scenes. Check it out:

You can see a lot more in the HD version which you can download from Yahoo.

This week we were in Florida and for New Year’s Eve we visited Leesburg for First Night. Leesburg, a small town north of Orlando that celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007, is one of four cities in Florida that organize a First Night every year. There was live entertainment in 17 venues along the town’s charming Main Street, from 8pm to midnight.

Leesburg Main Street

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I’ve updated and finalised our 2007 Year Book in our online Photo Album. Highlights of the year were our visit to The Gambia in January, where we saw 177 different species of birds, our holiday in the south of Spain, where we explored Andalusia and a part of Portugal, and our diving trip to Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt, where we had some wonderful dives in the Red Sea.

Today we visited Teylers Museum in Haarlem to see one of the rarest and most expensive books in the world: “The Birds of America” by John James Audubon (1785 – 1851). The exhibit “Vogels van Formaat” (that runs from 3 November 2007 to 20 January 2008) has on display an original copy of the huge book. It consists of five volumes depicting all birds of North America (as known at the time) in actual size on beautiful dramatic paintings by Audubon.

Approximately 200 sets were thought to have been created in the early 1800’s, but only about 130 are still known to exist. One of these was sold by Christie’s in New York in 2002 for 8.8 million dollars! Teyler Museum bought the first edition book when it came out for 2243 guilders and has owned it since. Throughout the time the book is on display, the museum opens a different page in each book every day.

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We saw seven different species of Kingfisher this year, 2007, in The Netherlands (‘IJsvogel’), Egypt and The Gambia! We saw most on our trip to The Gambia in January, and most of these were Pied Kingfishers (Ceryle rudis). These black-and-white birds are very approachable. They hunt by hovering over the water and then diving down bill first directly below to catch a fish. We found this one somewhere between the towns of Tendaba and Georgetown:

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On 13 October 2007, our 7th wedding anniversary, we visited St. Catherine’s Monastery during our holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is at the foot of Mount Sinai and is one of the oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries in the world.

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