What was your best birding trip? (1 Viewer)

[hookem2010]

I'm counting down the days to my first international birding trip (T-minus 232 days!) to the Santa Marta Mountains of Colombia with some friends.
My only birding-specific trips so far have been to the upper gulf coast and Rio Grande Valley of Texas with the same guys a few years ago (only a few hours from home), so this trip has dominated my thoughts since committing to it. 80% of the birds I'm likely to see will be brand new. The preparation is almost as fun to me as the trip. I've researched a bunch of hypothetical trips, knowing full well they weren't likely to actually occur.
Anyway, what were your favorite birding trips?

 

[pbjosh]

I’ve been fortunate to go on some amazing adventures. My favorite was 35 days in the SW Brazilian Amazon with a friend. Close runner up was the Atlantic Odyssey. Amazing trip and made a friend who is now a friend for life and we see each other regularly.

 

[John Cantelo]

I'm little traveled compared to most of my contemporaries but my best birding jaunt by far was a winter trip to Japan which got me four birds on my 'top ten' list - any albatross (I saw 3 species), Steller's Eagle, Blakiston's Fish Owl & Red-crowned Crane (& masses of multiple crane species near Izumi) plus lots of terrific birds. A fascinating country.

 

[Steve Babbs]

6 months in Thailand and Malaysia (including Sabah), low budget, no guides, public transport. I wish I could go for that long again, although I have managed plenty of 5/6 week trips so I am luckier than many.

Highlights orangutan, proboscis monkey, Gurney's and several other species of pitta.

I got home, couldn't cope and so went off to work In Cape May for a couple of months very shortly afterwards. Life was simpler then.

 

[hookem2010]

Sounds like you made that trip count, JC! Those are some amazing birds. I'm hoping for...
1) Blue-billed currasow- rare endemic
2) Keel-billed toucan- beautiful bird that I managed to miss on my single-day tour in the Yucatan
3) Northern screamer- what an odd-looking/sounding bird
4) Santa Marta warbler- endemic warbler and parulids are perhaps my favorite family
5) Hummingbirds!!!- hard to choose, but I'll be happy with whatever we find. So many cool ones in the area, including several endemics

Expect a very lengthy trip report when I return. I could miss all my targets and still have an incredible trip.

 

[Prestdj]

Spain Estartit 1987 as a 14 year old hooked on birding it was stunning hoopoe, alpine swift, crag martin, great white egret

Spain Andulucia 1999 proper hardcore birding......booted eagle, little bustard, black wheatear, rock sparrow, auduions gull just wall to wall birds

USA june/july 2001 various sites

hilton head island was base so black and white warbler, prothontry warbler, scissor tailed kite, mississippi kite,painted bunting the various woodpeckers were stunning

new york brown thrasher central park

atlanta yellow rumped warbler at a black sabbath gig

USA december 2001/2002 stayed in brooklyn thats a rough area

New York northern harrier, downy woodpecker

3 day drive to a mates house in south beach miami for christmas

Florida seaside sparrow, scrub jay whilst watching the space shuttle on the launch pad just testing but surreal it was massive, one of the best things ive seen

from miami we headed to New Orleans via alligator alley 80 mile road belted kingfishers and american kestrels every 100yds on the wires add in loads of egrets and herons you see loads of birds just driving, night time as we hit Tennessee and crossed a time zone

New Orleans

western kingbird, king rail

Grenada 2007

best friends wedding,so off to the carribean........wilsons plover, grenada dove, lesser antilian bullfinch, brown booby

 

[foresttwitcher]

I have to echo John Cantelo & for basically the same reasons - 2 weeks in Japan second half of February 2020.

 

[dwatsonbirder]

I've also been very fortunate to have travelled to some incredible places and had multiple unforgettable wildlife experiences, but 318 species of birds (mostly without a guide) in 14 days in Uganda takes some beating.
My wife and I had a lot of fun driving across the country with a paper map (!), camping in National Parks almost every evening, and saw some fantastic mammals too - Mountain Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Lion, Elephant, Giraffe... Shoebill still ranks as one of the most incredible birds I've seen in the wild.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

Kenya 2007. My first birding trip to Africa and we were also there for wildebeest migration in Maasai Mara.

560 species seen, 440 of which were lifers. We also saw a family of cheetahs take down a wildebeest.

 

[Farnboro John]

I may come up with a few but one definite favourite was a May week in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland with my Mum. We picked it as a slightly familiar spot having visited it with her school a couple of years before when neither of us was birding.

We stayed in Wengen and used the various railways to get around as well as taking some fairly long hikes. Despite knowing very little about the birds of the area we managed to find some really great stuff: Nutcrackers, Three-toed and Black Woodpeckers in the forests round about, Wallcreepers at the Grindelwald Gletscherschlucht, Snowfinches at Kleine Scheidegg and Alpine Accentor nearby, Alpine Choughs up at the top station of the Eigerwand railway. Lesser birds included summer plumaged Water Pipits all over Wengen and any open country in the mountains, Black Grouse, Golden Eagles, Black Kites down the hill at Interlaken, Dippers, Fieldfares singing from every tree, Red-backed Shrikes on bushes and fences.

We had good weather almost every day so the scenery was off the chart as well: Mum also kept pointing out flowers to me, not really my thing but even I can appreciate a Gentian. A bonus that has become more so as I've since got into mammals was that we had close views of Alpine Ibex and many Red Squirrels, with Chamois showing more distantly on very steep slopes and crags. We also had good views of Alpine Marmots and were surprised to find how big they were - more or less Badger-sized as far as we could tell at the time.

John

 

[Lerxst]

Probably the one trip to the one continent with by far the fewest birds. Being in Antarctica is like being on a different planet.

 

[Mysticete]

I feel like I have had a lot of trips with really memorable encounters, enough that its sort of hard for me to pick just one really.

Perhaps Panama. This was my first dedicated birding trip to an exotic location (versus being part of a work-related trip). It was also my first trip to the Neotropics, so the first time I got to see many of iconic birds of that region (antbirds, "real" tanagers, toucans, etc).

 

[pbjosh]

I feel like I have had a lot of trips with really memorable encounters, enough that its sort of hard for me to pick just one really.

Perhaps Panama. This was my first dedicated birding trip to an exotic location (versus being part of a work-related trip). It was also my first trip to the Neotropics, so the first time I got to see many of iconic birds of that region (antbirds, "real" tanagers, toucans, etc).

I still think that Panamá is the best introduction to neotropical birding there is for packages / guided trips / etc. Largely due to just how good of a setup the Canopy Family has. Perhaps CR, the Yucatán, or Mindo are better for unguided / self drive trips but I think it’s a minority of people who are comfortable doing that for their first trip. A week at Canopy Tower was my intro to tropical birding and it was awesome. My next trip was 4 years of driving from Mexico to Argentina birding almost every day but that was no longer beginner territory

 

[Mysticete]

I still think that Panamá is the best introduction to neotropical birding there is for packages / guided trips / etc. Largely due to just how good of a setup the Canopy Family has. Perhaps CR, the Yucatán, or Mindo are better for unguided / self drive trips but I think it’s a minority of people who are comfortable doing that for their first trip. A week at Canopy Tower was my intro to tropical birding and it was awesome. My next trip was 4 years of driving from Mexico to Argentina birding almost every day but that was no longer beginner territory

Hah...I definitely appreciated Panama after NW Ecuador. Ecuador was a great trip that probably gave me a bigger trip list and some phenomenal wildlife encounters. But there is something to be said about mostly staying in one location and not trying to squeeze in several hours of commuting every day.

 

[Nightjar61]

Every one of my birding trips has been wonderful and allowed me to see some great birds and amazing places.

The best one, however, was a privately arranged trip to Yemen and Djibouti in 2007. The Yemeni island of Socotra was also included in our itinerary.

I had met one of the top world listers on a trip to Gambia and Senegal earlier that year, and he mentioned that he had arranged this trip and was looking for one more participant. The price was unexpectedly reasonable, so I signed up.

This was a trip about quality, not quantity. We saw 213 species in Yemen and 105 species in Djibouti, but those numbers included almost all of the southwest Arabian and Socotra endemics, as well as the seldom-seen Djibouti Spurfowl. We also saw several Himalayan Swiftlets on Socotra, the first record for Africa.

Yemen has some of the most spectacular and beautiful desert mountain scenery I have ever seen, the architecture in Old Town Sana’a was amazing, the culture was fascinating, and the people were friendly. Foreign birders were so rare and unusual that we were interviewed and filmed by a local news crew while birding at some ponds near Aden.

The cutest thing happened when we were birding near Ta’iz. As so often happens in many countries that are off the beaten path, local kids came over to check us out. One of them asked our local fixer what we were doing. When he said we were looking at birds, the kid asked, “don’t they have birds where they come from?”

Tragically, Yemen is now one of the most dangerous countries in the world and will probably be off limits to birders for a long time. And it’s a shame that the people we met have to live in such a dangerous place, if in fact they were able to survive at all.

Dave

 

[WACCOE]

Been on a few trips Nepal,Brazil, Kazakhstan to name a few would have too say my favourite would of have to be Western Cape mainly due the pelagic out of Simon's Town the first time you see an Albatross it's just WOW.

 

[Bananafishbones]

You will certainly love the Santa Marta area, fabulous birding. I hope you are staying some time at the Eldorado Lodge 👌👌

In the Andes at Montezuma we were fortunate to log 123 different species in a single day, this while we lost a good few hours early morning due to torrential rain. Noah Stryker was with us for 5 days during his big year, he got 1 new bird for his big year list on that epic day, in comparison I bagged about 70 lifers 🤣🤣

Colombia 🇨🇴 was certainly one of my favourite birding destinations. To whet the appetite. you can read 12 pages about my Colombia trip on my blog

Bfb`s Outdoor Ramblings

A photographic diary. Header image: Barn Owl

bfbsoutdoorramblings.blogspot.com

 

[Steve Babbs]

My next trip was 4 years of driving from Mexico to Argentina

Now that is a trip that I am seriously gripped by! I always thought I do a trip of a year or more and never did and I suspect It is now unlikely to happen.

 

[temmie]

My next trip was 4 years of driving from Mexico to Argentina birding almost every day but that was no longer beginner territory

Was that the failed Tiny hawk expedition?

 

[pbjosh]

Was that the failed Tiny hawk expedition?

Apparently it was beginner territory after all