Unbirded localities of the world (1 Viewer)

[Ficedula]

Reading this thread makes me wish I was a millionaire (or is that considered "bankrupt" these days!!), so I could explore all these insane places. There's so much out there that needs attention!

You don't need to be a millionaire (although of course it helps), all you need it to be relatively young and fit, and have quite a hight tolerance of discomfort, and most of the places I listed above you can get to. All of my extensive trips across Melanesia, lasting many months, including the Bismarck's and the Solomons, probably cost less than a single guided tour to Indonesia lasting a couple of weeks would cost you now. It was a long time ago though. I must say I am astonished how few people have revisited these places since I went, or tried to get to.

 

[01101001]

Aside from discomfort, would, then, the biggest concern be health and safety?

 

[Moo]

Aside from discomfort, would, then, the biggest concern be health and safety?

No, from a personal point of view, it would be the logistics, especially in places like PNG.

 

[Tiraya]

You don't need to be a millionaire (although of course it helps), all you need it to be relatively young and fit, and have quite a hight tolerance of discomfort, and most of the places I listed above you can get to. All of my extensive trips across Melanesia, lasting many months, including the Bismarck's and the Solomons, probably cost less than a single guided tour to Indonesia lasting a couple of weeks would cost you now. It was a long time ago though. I must say I am astonished how few people have revisited these places since I went, or tried to get to.

Unfortunately I live in California where the cost of rent and bills effectively becomes the greatest financial restriction of all...! For me that's probably the biggest cap on where I can go, less the cost of the trips, and more the cost of not having to have 2-3 jobs that take up all of your year.

However, I have always been curious how folks organize some of these really off-the-trail trips to awesome locations. Sounds like there's a lot of hands-on planning involved, and maybe a lot more last minute arrangements in places where cell reception may not be so commonplace.

 

[Jacana]

Someone must have birded to the top of the Cyclops mountains? but I've not heard about it. The base of these mountains easily accessible, but they are very steep and apparently trackless?

I wonder if there'll be any information coming out on birds seen here, following the recent echidna news.

 

[jurek]

I think the birding community changed - people think more about going for an organized tour or at least revisit known places. Ebird even pushes people to do it by organizing whole birding around hotspots.

I have friends who go for months backpacking around the world, visit remote places in Asia, South America or Pacific by local transport, but they are not birdwatchers. They could easily see many rarely reported endemics. Some went around Indonesia and got to see birds of paradise for a 10th of the cost of a bird tour. Others went across South Pacific islands. Others traveled around Myanmar and Cambodia etc.

 

[Ficedula]

I think the birding community changed - people think more about going for an organized tour or at least revisit known places. Ebird even pushes people to do it by organizing whole birding around hotspots.

I have friends who go for months backpacking around the world, visit remote places in Asia, South America or Pacific by local transport, but they are not birdwatchers. They could easily see many rarely reported endemics. Some went around Indonesia and got to see birds of paradise for a 10th of the cost of a bird tour. Others went across South Pacific islands. Others traveled around Myanmar and Cambodia etc.

I think this in large part accounts for it. FOMO is a big thing now. In my day there were no local guides anywhere in the developing world, even those in Australia were not very commercial and often just took us out birding for nothing. Also in the pre-internet, pre-mobile phone days the info was much more limited, you were just as likely to see as many good birds at an unknown site than a well known one. Now overseas birding has devolved into international twitching, with 100's of people seeing the exact same individual. It is a simple fact that if you try to do a trip without a guide you will almost certainly see fewer birds, or need to double the time you spend and do a lot of your own research. It will be cheaper though, and much more satisfactory. Perhaps we need to develop a culture of only counting birds seen without a guide!

 

[Moo]

I think for a lot of people the lack of time, not necessarily money (after all, there are plenty of people paying £££s for tours) leads to this scenario. There must be university age people spending months touring?

 

[KenM]

For me birding is “finding!” and that invariably means NOT going to recognised “hot spots” to tick off expectants from a pre-ordained list.
Surely, nothing can beat the adrenalin rush of finding something new that on paper is not known to occur at one’s chosen site.
Be it garden, urban park, patch or holiday vacation, get out and explore the places that others don’t. 👍

 

[halftwo]

As Ficedula says, the world has changed now, and birders seem to have too - unless it just seems that way to me because I'm not in touch with the young crowd!
Time versus money: most have one or the other, few both. Those with money but little time will want to maximise trips using all resources at their disposal.
Then there are those with both - but mostly they are no longer fit enough to do the mountains, etc! I know a few of those!

 

[temmie]

Having just been to Madagascar (2nd time), I reckon many parts are severely underbirded / not birded at all:

• Large parts of the West coast;
• everything from Berenty to Lac Tsimanampetsotsa (S of Anakao); That's a stretch of 400K.
• All forest from Andohahela up to... Ranomafana (with occasionally birders going to Andringitra. That's 500K of forest, in length.
• Same actually for all forest North of Ranomafana until the Andasibe area, and all forest North of Mantadia until... Marojejy?

I mean, birders go to Andohahela, Ranomafana, Andasibe-Mantadia, Marojejy, Masoala and Bemenavika, but at each of these sites we're only scratching the surface and each site is 100ths of kms apart from the others. Only dedicated expeditions venture wider and it's only so that e.g. Dusky Tetraka got rediscovered, and there is still ample room for discovering new locations for birds that seem thin (or non-existent) on the ground in certain areas, e.g. Red-tailed Newtonia, Helmet Vanga, Madagascar Serpent-eagle, Yellow-bellied Sunbird Asity,...

 

[01101001]

Not counting unbirded places which are unlikely to have interesting or any birds, like polar ice caps, or uniform boreal forests of Canada.

There is reportedly a chance that Eurasian Wigeon wintering in America breed in some of those places.

EDIT: e.g., https://ebird.org/checklist/S37599930

 

[Mysticete]

I think for a lot of people the lack of time, not necessarily money (after all, there are plenty of people paying £££s for tours) leads to this scenario. There must be university age people spending months touring?

Yeah...how many folks have the economic security to spend weeks in a foreign country birding around? I use guides when I travel simply because I often have just a week, and it might be the only chance I ever have to bird an exotic location.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Aside from discomfort, would, then, the biggest concern be health and safety?

You don't need to be that remote to have health and safety concerns. I just got back from Ghana with five stitches in a leg wound which has subsequently become infected and the absence in clinics there of the most basic things, is astonishing.

We saw an horrendous accident at the roadside which appeared to have involved a JCB and one poor man had both his legs and his left arm, strewn across the roadside. If he survived which I doubt, I cannot imagine what his life from here on will be like in Africa and I just hope that he wasn't the sole earner for a family. We're so fortunate to be born where we are in Europe or the USA or Australia, every day in such poor countries, makes me thank my lucky stars.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Having just been to Madagascar (2nd time), I reckon many parts are severely underbirded / not birded at all:

• Large parts of the West coast;
• everything from Berenty to Lac Tsimanampetsotsa (S of Anakao); That's a stretch of 400K.
• All forest from Andohahela up to... Ranomafana (with occasionally birders going to Andringitra. That's 500K of forest, in length.
• Same actually for all forest North of Ranomafana until the Andasibe area, and all forest North of Mantadia until... Marojejy?

I mean, birders go to Andohahela, Ranomafana, Andasibe-Mantadia, Marojejy, Masoala and Bemenavika, but at each of these sites we're only scratching the surface and each site is 100ths of kms apart from the others. Only dedicated expeditions venture wider and it's only so that e.g. Dusky Tetraka got rediscovered, and there is still ample room for discovering new locations for birds that seem thin (or non-existent) on the ground in certain areas, e.g. Red-tailed Newtonia, Helmet Vanga, Madagascar Serpent-eagle, Yellow-bellied Sunbird Asity,...

Is the Pochard still hanging on at that tiny pond?

 

[opisska]

I dunno, I am trying to get to obscure localities most of the time, but I am very often simply met with someone who stops me from doing so. I am no stranger to discomfort, but it's not rare to be told that my uncomfortable way is now illegal and I simply must hire the services of an entourage of hands open for more and more money.

Somebody wrote upthread "in my day there were no local guides anywhere in the developing world" - and I envy them to have lived in that period. Now there guides pretty much everywhere and they are working hard to make sure nobody gets to just wander around without them.

 

[Andy Adcock]

I dunno, I am trying to get to obscure localities most of the time, but I am very often simply met with someone who stops me from doing so. I am no stranger to discomfort, but it's not rare to be told that my uncomfortable way is now illegal and I simply must hire the services of an entourage of hands open for more and more money.

Somebody wrote upthread "in my day there were no local guides anywhere in the developing world" - and I envy them to have lived in that period. Now there guides pretty much everywhere and they are working hard to make sure nobody gets to just wander around without them.

Sometimes, these arrangements are just dreamed up to fleece tourists, Tangkoko in Sulawesi for example. The local 'guide association' just decided that you cannot go in to the forest without a guide but afaik, they have no legal basis with which to enforce it, the forest isn't even a national park IIRC (?) but they have set up an entrance kiosk where you have to pay to go in.

 

[temmie]

Is the Pochard still hanging on at that tiny pond?

I honestly don't know!

It seems there are no observations whatsoever on e.g. ebird in 2023, while people have been birding the lakes at Bemenavika in 2023. So it's a bit puzzling.
Reports from autumn 2022 mention 62 birds on the lakes, but the population has been supported by captive bred birds since 2012-2013 so I don't know how much the population would have held without addtitional birds...

 

[jurek]

Unfortunately, this fleecing tourists is true. Which of course keeps these places in poverty I the longer run, but nobody told them how Thailand became rich.

 

[THE_FERN]

Yeah...how many folks have the economic security to spend weeks in a foreign country birding around? I use guides when I travel simply because I often have just a week, and it might be the only chance I ever have to bird an exotic location.

Well I tend to agree, but it does depend on your financial risk appetite and other things. E.g. you could work for deliveroo for 6 months and spend 6 away, while living in a tent more-or-less continually. But I suspect you value other things too much (as do I).

I bemoan that it's more and more difficult to study other stuff like insects, plants. Some fundamental discoveries await in even well-visited locations but it's hard to collect legally