Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Touring Time – Local & Global

Mrs Gould’s Sunbird will liven up any day during a Rockjumper Birding Advneture to China (photo by Markus Lilje).
You may witness a spectacular Curl-crested Aracari during a Tropical Birding tour in the southern Amazon of Brazil (photo by Pablo Cervantes Dazaon).
Among the many exciting birds you can photograph on a Wings tour in Kenya, a Superb Starling will be a standout (photo by Paul Konrad).

Birding Tours are a great way to expand your horizons with a minimum of concern for planning and safety – tour companies take care of all that! You enjoy the fruits of the tour company’s labors, leaving you to concentrate on studying your field guide and keeping your life list up to date. You may prefer to tour an area cross country, or in a different country altogether – maybe even a different continent. A tour company will provide an experienced guide, a well-planned Itinerary, and take care of the transportation, hotels and lodges, fine meals, and a your personal safety.

A tour company will make the difference between a good birding trip and a great tour. Without question, a guide will increase the birds you find and identify, list, and photograph; plus they will provide information about the birds as well as about the geography, habitats, and cultural experiences – whether your headed for southern Arizona, the Pacific Northwest; Nome, Alaska; or northern Maine. Then too, how about the Caribbean, Australia, East Africa, Brazil, or China? The farther you are interested in traveling from home, the more you will appreciate and prefer a tour company’s guidance and expertise.

Where do you start? There are plenty of tour companies that specialize in birding, and they are really good at their craft and services! Here’s a quality list of birding tour companies – each with a special tour to take you to their website as an introduction to their company and services. Although we picked an exciting birding destination to introduce you to each tour company, please take a little time to view some of the many options each company describes on their websites – and have fun in the process.

Field Guides: Australia & New Guinea

https://fieldguides.com/bird-tours/australia-new-guinea

Victor Emmanuel Nature Tours: Peruvian Amazon Cruise

https://ventbird.com/content/118/F9D86A73-60E7-E811-80D7-00155D02A583/Amazon-River-Cruise

Wings: Kenya

https://wingsbirds.com/tours/kenya-november/

Wildside Nature Tours: Panama

https://wildsidenaturetours.com/wildside-tour/panama-birding-darien-pipeline/

Rockjumper Worldwide Birding Adventures: China

https://www.rockjumperbirding.com/dt_gallery/gallery-destination-china

Birding Africa: Botswana including the Okavango

http://www.birdingafrica.com/africa_tours/birdingtourbotswana.htm

Tropical Birding: Brazil – the Amazon and Pantanal

http://www.tropicalbirding.com/central-south-america-birding/brazil/pantanal-and-amazon/

Eagle-Eye Tours: High Arctic Canada

https://www.eagle-eye.com/High-Arctic-NWT-Birding-Tour-1

How many new birds were you introduced to just by viewing some of the birding tour company websites? Bet you learned something about the new birds too. How many of these birds would you like to track down on tour?

Share your birding experiences anytime at editors2tbw@gmail.com