How do big listers bird? (1 Viewer)

[Owene]

. If you view birds as akin to cultural heritage like paintings then it's perfectly acceptable to have a guide but it's a bit like painting by numbers

I’ve hired guides while on family holidays and to be honest the main attraction is having someone driving. We generally don’t hire a car and the cost of a guided day or two is comparable or less than hiring a car for the trip and far less fuss than trying to hire one just for a day in the middle of the trip when you don’t speak the language and aren’t by the airport any more. It removes fuss about parking too and I can’t imagine I’d get many birds while driving abroad.

When I’ve actually been birding with guides most of the time it’s just been like birding with a companion. They know the sites obviously but I’ve been just as likely to find a given bird.

That’s Europe though. Not tropical canopy birding with 100 unknown species each day

 

[pbjosh]

I feel bored with one more ... antbird, for example.

HERESY!!!! Never too many Antbirds or Babblers Even the most piece-of-shit birds of either category (Sumatran Babbler or Ashy Antwren, say) are way way better than White-eyes

 

[pbjosh]

I’ve hired guides while on family holidays and to be honest the main attraction is having someone driving. We generally don’t hire a car and the cost of a guided day or two is comparable or less than hiring a car for the trip and far less fuss than trying to hire one just for a day in the middle of the trip when you don’t speak the language and aren’t by the airport any more. It removes fuss about parking too and I can’t imagine I’d get many birds while driving abroad.

I agree with this thought process 100% even though the same thought process leads me to a different result. As long as people are birding ethically and enjoying themselves they are doing it EXACTLY correctly. I kind of look at it like taste in food or beer or wine. There is no such thing as one's personal preferences being "wrong" - eat / drink what you prefer, even if other people prefer other things.

Personally I prefer to hire a car or use public transit and do things independently in most places that it is possible - particularly anywhere in the new world or in Europe. As well, South Africa, Namibia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia I have found very easy to self drive. I plan to do the same in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and more in the future. But, for example, in India it is so easy to get a car and driver, the drivers know the sites, know the park contacts and local guides where necessary, know restaurants and hotels, it is barely (if at all) more expensive than car rental + fuel, and it makes the trip so much easier and more enjoyable. Even though self-drive is possible in India, it ceases to seem like the best way to do it, according to my personal criteria. And in a place like Madagascar, yeah well you're not going to self drive there, even getting around WITH a local driver is painful enough!

 

[Lerxst]

Another irony here is that while we typically hire guides while in tough places to bird / access, many of them end up driving me nuts after a few hours. Being an introvert it often gets unpleasant to be around a stranger for 16 hours a day, day after day. Sure it would nice to always be able to go at it alone, but it isn't practical if you have a lot of target species and not a lot of time.

 

[Mysticete]

It could be that way, but I use guides partly for the logistics of traveling in difficult-to-navigate places -- I do not want to have the stress of my wife trying to drive us through the streets of Bangalore or some chaotic Colombian city. And I always verify the IDs made by the guide, and so does my wife. We study the field guides for months before a trip and know exactly what we are looking for and what field marks to focus on. The guide is there to get us to habitat and point out where the birds are so we can ID them. I record every bird vocalization that they call out and I compare it to xeno-canto after the trip to be sure they were right. But mostly I benefit from the guide because I am legally blind and I appreciate the assistance of someone with good eyes patiently directing my bad eyes through the dense canopy so I can get my bins on a bird I'd not see otherwise, through no fault of my own. Without that I don't stand a chance to enjoy birding the way normally-sighted people do.

There is nothing paint-by-numbers about it.

Yes this. If I am doing a big birding trip to a foreign location, I want it to be a VACATION. I want to only have to think about the birds I want to see, not the logistics of traveling in a country I have never been in which operates using a language I don't know. Guides/Tours let me do, and I can focus on birding.

Also, just because someone is using a guide doesn't mean they are a passive participant. I spend months and sometimes longer studying field guides before a trip, and try my best to be an active participant and finding/IDing as many birds as I can without help. I'm crap at IDing calls, so a guide is always going to be better at this than me, not to mention having enough familiarity to know where to see certain things or how to find certain things.

 

[Mysticete]

Another irony here is that while we typically hire guides while in tough places to bird / access, many of them end up driving me nuts after a few hours. Being an introvert it often gets unpleasant to be around a stranger for 16 hours a day, day after day. Sure it would nice to always be able to go at it alone, but it isn't practical if you have a lot of target species and not a lot of time.

Yeah, I've run into this on occasion. I can be socially awkward and birding alone with a stranger for an extended period of time can be rough. It's not so bad if different guides are employed different days. Oddly enough group tours can sometimes make this better, as I can more easily kind of detach myself from the conversation and let other people carry that burden.

 

[THE_FERN]

I’ve hired guides while on family holidays and to be honest the main attraction is having someone driving. We generally don’t hire a car and the cost of a guided day or two is comparable or less than hiring a car for the trip and far less fuss than trying to hire one just for a day in the middle of the trip

True. I went for a day with one recently for exactly this reason (key site was a bit inaccessible)

 

[jurek]

it often gets unpleasant to be around a stranger for 16 hours a day, day after day

It is a normal phenomenon which even has names like 'arctic explorers disease' or 'mountain climbers disease'. Few people in constant presence and limited contact outside become uncomfortable and start arguing, even if they are completely socially normal people and get on perfectly in a larger company.

In my experience, the limit is about 3 weeks, afterwards the moods sour.

 

[01101001]

They are cheaters, that's what. I remember I didn't use to believe all these birds even exist--nobody outside the fold has ever seen them, the colours are a tad OTT and the photos are simply too perfect to be true. Besides, just think about it, how can you tick north of 60--let alone 80--species in one day; they clearly make it all up as they go!

 

[temmie]

I fear this topic is derailing a bit and I don't know if the comment above was tongue-in-cheek or serious.

In any way, everybody does what he likes, but some observations / an opinion from a low-lister world-birder ;-)

1. Everybody that has some weeks of holiday and is financially able to pay for an intercontinental plane ticket, can see at least a 1000 species of birds;
--> I started with trips to India and Ethiopia that cost me around 1500 euro (including flight) for around 3 weeks, and I got a bit over 500 species on each of those. 400/trip were new. No guides (bar the odd local guide pointing out a day-roosting owl). So I got over a 1000 species for what most would consider 'cheap' trips, and this was before ebird, xeno-canto, observation, cloudbirders (I admit you had the now-defunct travellingbirders website),...

2. Still, given you can see a fair number of birds cheaply, there are very few top listers who don't go on organised tours (or bespoke tours) or use local guides, and there are some good reasons why top listers go on organised tours / have fully guided tours:

the rational mind dictates that, if you are a world birder and your priority is to see all birds in an area ('to clean up'), it's a very unwise idea to risk dipping on a number of birds and regretting it once you are back home: a self-guided trip where you risk dipping some species + a clean-up trip, is often more expensive (and for sure more time-consuming) than doing a professionally organised trip with competent guides.
In some parts of the world though, you can 'beat the market', i.e. see as many (or even more) birds self-guided, than you would in an organised tour: organised tours often have restrictions in number of travelling days (so the price doesn't get out of control), locations and ofcourse a group sometimes restricts the flexibility and reduces the chance of seeing some skulkers,...

Personally, I mostly follow the philosophy described by George Wagner: "The idea of hiring professional birding guides to find, show and identify birds is (edit from me: in my personal opinion) contrary to the spirit of birding. As in sports, the difference is between being a participant or a spectator. However, I will accept hiring a local as a guide to show me the trails, especially so if it proves beneficial in the local community."

In this way, I can train my bird /-finder / -knowledge skills better, and I just enjoy this better than having birds shown to me by a guide. But with this philosophy, I will inevitably miss some birds on some trips. I try to convince myself that, the more I practice my self-guided trips, the better I become at finding even the most difficult birds...

So why most worldbirders are 'spectators', you can fill in any birding trip as you want: I know some people who (almost) outperform the guides in bird-finding during organised trips and are clearly participants / leaders on their own, and I know some very, very good birders who are superlazy during organised trips (as in: "it's my holiday, I pay for the guide to do the work"). Again, as long as you enjoy your birding all is fine. Sometimes I also just want to be a spectator, especially after a very hard day of guiding a group... ! I'm just pointing out the rationality behind hiring guides / joining organised tours when you're a world birder.

3. There is no correlation whatsoever between having seen a high number of species and being a talented / competent birder.
--> Ofcourse, experience helps to improve your birding, but there are many super talented birders who never venture far away from home, and there are some helpless / slow / near-sighted birders who have seen over 5000 species. There are, however, very few incompetent birders with lists (far) beyond 7000, as this does require, besides deep pockets / loads of time, more and more birding skill and determination per new bird.

With this statement, I would like to encourage anyone who finds birds at home and is hesitant to travel, because they think they will fail massively at finding birds, to just go for it. There are destinations and birds that require a guide, a stake-out, pure luck,... but there are many destinations where everybody has a good shot as seeing close to all birds that are specific to that area, without guides or with guides in specific areas (or as a back-up plan for when you feel you're failing massively . Just thinking of Caribbean islands for the Americans, Ethiopia, (parts of) India, Gambia, for Europeans (and for those that are lucky enough to live in a country with 500+ birds that can be seen: just go and explore your country widely!).

4. While you always have certain guides stringing, I honestly think it's a rare occurrence.
--> Most birding guides I know are very competent and very honest: if they claim / report an impressive number of species, they can often back it up with pictures etc. Ofcourse, if a guide is seeing 500 species this often translates into (most of) the group seeing only 70-90% of that number...
And with that said, as a consequence, you have to have a decent level of birding to see all your target birds, even when you're on an organised tour...!

Some birds you can't just buy through signing up for an organised tour: Seeing them requires some skill / luck, with or without a guide... In that sense, some birds can be really expensive and exclusive (think about Emperor Penguin), but others can be highly democratic (think about some Antpittas that you can often see much better birding alone on the cheap, while joining a (costly) organised tour will actually lower your chances seeing such skulkers

 

[dantheman]

It is a normal phenomenon which even has names like 'arctic explorers disease' or 'mountain climbers disease'. Few people in constant presence and limited contact outside become uncomfortable and start arguing, even if they are completely socially normal people and get on perfectly in a larger company.

In my experience, the limit is about 3 weeks, afterwards the moods sour.

Possibly from American English ... but know this as Cabin Fever.

 

[Mysticete]

If you don't know where to look for a guide and want a reputable one not prone to stringing, I'd suggest checking out the list of top birders for a specific country/province on ebird. While sometimes they are just average birders, in many "destination" birding locations like the Neotropics they are often guides or affiliated with guiding companies.

 

[THE_FERN]

There are destinations and birds ,... but there are many destinations where everybody has a good shot as seeing close to all birds that are specific to that area, without guides or with guides in specific areas (or as a back-up plan for when you feel you're failing massively . Just thinking of Caribbean islands for the Americans, Ethiopia, (parts of) India, Gambia,

Australia with few exceptions

 

[Tiraya]

I like tour guides because they cover the lodging, transport, and, well, the guiding too. But I can say from experience that putting in the effort to help look for the bird and know the sights/sound ahead of time really greatly increases the productivity. I went with a group of 8 once, and it surprised me how many of them just idled in the back waiting for birds to be called out. I don't think that has to be a bad thing, but you definitely miss out when you rely on a single person to find everything, no matter how good they are.

 

[jurek]

if you are a world birder and your priority is to see all birds in an area ('to clean up'), it's a very unwise idea to risk dipping on a number of birds and regretting it once you are back home: a self-guided trip where you risk dipping some species + a clean-up trip, is often more expensive (and for sure more time-consuming) than doing a professionally organised trip with competent guides.

I appreciate ambitions, however, in almost any birding destination in the world, one is unlikely to see all endemics and specialities on one tour. There is only a handful of very easy or endemic-poor destinations. E.g. on Tenerife it is more likely than not to see all endemics in 24 hours. Cuba is said to be a relatively easy destination to clean up endemics ...but not Zapata Rail and Cuban Kite.

4. While you always have certain guides stringing, I honestly think it's a rare occurrence.
--> Most birding guides I know are very competent and very honest: if they claim / report an impressive number of species, they can often back it up with pictures etc.

Maybe I am unlucky, but about a third of guides I had were stringers. Mind you, I don't count the situation when a guide sees a bird but others miss it, nor a situation when I myself was clueless about the ID.

To the contrary, I had few very respectable guides, even local guides, who actually asked to see particular ID marks so there was no doubt of the identification.

That there are photos of many specialities does not mean that few other birds were not strung. Of course, few people will cling to a false ID when a bird is photographed. Long lists of a place mean little - in practice such lists self-propagate IDs and easily propagate mistaken IDs. If in a remote locality 1-2 people seen species X, then at least few other birders will string a likely looking bird into X. Although they may not realize their mistake and are, of course, happier for that.

 

[temmie]

I appreciate ambitions, however, in almost any birding destination in the world, one is unlikely to see all endemics and specialities on one tour. There is only a handful of very easy or endemic-poor destinations. E.g. on Tenerife it is more likely than not to see all endemics in 24 hours. Cuba is said to be a relatively easy destination to clean up endemics ...but not Zapata Rail and Cuban Kite.

Ofcourse, there are often birds slipping through the mazes, but as in the case of Zapata Rail and Cuban Kite, there is no difference between tour groups and independent birders: everybody dips those.

Maybe I am unlucky, but about a third of guides I had were stringers. Mind you, I don't count the situation when a guide sees a bird but others miss it, nor a situation when I myself was clueless about the ID.

To the contrary, I had few very respectable guides, even local guides, who actually asked to see particular ID marks so there was no doubt of the identification.

That there are photos of many specialities does not mean that few other birds were not strung. Of course, few people will cling to a false ID when a bird is photographed. Long lists of a place mean little - in practice such lists self-propagate IDs and easily propagate mistaken IDs. If in a remote locality 1-2 people seen species X, then at least few other birders will string a likely looking bird into X. Although they may not realize their mistake and are, of course, happier for that.

I guess there are far more clients than guides stringing birds, and I guess you had some bad luck with guides you birded with...? My most succesful tactic (for myself) against stringing, is trying to take photographs in which the bird is identifiable. I managed to take photographs of close to 60% of all birds I have seen. So those with photographs are non-negotiable

 

[Mysticete]

I appreciate ambitions, however, in almost any birding destination in the world, one is unlikely to see all endemics and specialities on one tour. There is only a handful of very easy or endemic-poor destinations. E.g. on Tenerife it is more likely than not to see all endemics in 24 hours. Cuba is said to be a relatively easy destination to clean up endemics ...but not Zapata Rail and Cuban Kite.

Maybe not completely knock off all endemics, but a guide will in most cases certainly maximize the percentage seen while reducing the degree of stress involved. As long as I can get my key targets that are actually reasonable to get I am satisfied.

As for stringing...that is on the birder visiting. I have always tried to extensively study field guides before a trip, and I always make sure I see the key identifying features. If a birder just wants someone to point out things so he can check them off a list, great for him. But I doubt that is the experience of many birders that use guides.

And again, if it isn't clear...bird however you enjoy. If you like using guides, great! If you hate using guides? That is also great. There are plenty of ways to travel and enjoy birding, so you do you. Travel enough and you will figure out yourself what leads to a satisfying trip.

 

[cafe birder]

I've found that guides are an excellent investment in areas with unmarked landmines. Also they can stop you making potentially fatal mistakes such as crossing the border into a war-zone "because its there". But then; I'm not a big lister !