About that Lilac-breasted Roller on our cover

Even when the sky is overcast, the colorful Lilac-breasted Roller is hard to miss.

Photograper Thomas Chamberlin certainly didn't miss it, and his excellent photo was perfect for our February 2008 cover, which nicely illustrates Editor Chuck Hagner's story on the rich birding opportunities in Uganda.

Chamberlin was actually in Kenya, at the Masai Mara National Reserve, for a two-week photo safari in September 2007. He recalls heading out of camp in a Land Rover with tour leader Wayne Lynch early one morning. It was cloudy, but they easily spotted the colorful roller "on a nice, clear perch," said Chamberlin.

"We weren't in a hurry, so we decided to watch it for a while," he said. Then the bird stretched its wing and flew away, but not before the photographer captured the moment with his Nikon D200 and a 200-400mm lens.

It was the first bird photo that Chamberlin, an endocrinologist from Salem, Oregon, has had published, and his first cover photo. But he is no beginner to photography or travel. He's had pictures published in Frommer's travel guide books, Northwest Travel magazine, and other wildlife publications. He's traveled in Europe and Asia and throughout North America and is planning to travel to Spitsbergen, a Norwegian Island only a few hundred miles south of the North Pole, in the summer of 2008.

But Africa remains at the top of his list as a favorite destination. Among the birds he saw were hornbills, Woodland and Malachite Kingfishers, Blue-naped Mousebirds, Baglafecht Weavers, and Gray Crowned Cranes.

"I loved it," he said of Africa. "As soon as I got back, I wanted to go again." --E.M.