Exotic Birding is an American tour company devoted to offering superior birding tours and bird/nature photo tours to tropical Central and South America. Every tour is led by an expert birding guide. Photo tours are co-led by a professional nature photographer along with a birding guide.
We invite you to explore our extensive website. We provide a wealth of information about our destination countries and tours, overview and illustrated description of each tour, itineraries, and information about accommodations where we stay. Take special note of our photo galleries, which contain some of our best photos. Simply click on the tabs or sidebar links on any page of our website to navigate from page to page.
Feel free to call us any time toll-free at 877-247-3371 from the US or 303-325-5188 from outside the US. We provide personalized service and won't subject you to a phone menu or an order taker when you call.
We are now offering Peru birding tours to Machu Picchu, Abra Malaga, and Manu in conjunction with an Ecuadorian birding tour company.
BIRD AND NATURE PHOTO TOURS
Each of our bird and nature photo tours is led by an accomplished bird photographer and accompanied by a master birding/naturalist guide. Our photo tours have a very different goal and are conducted at a very different pace than traditional birding tours. Rather than attempting to maximize number of species seen, we designed our photo tours to provide numerous opportunities and plenty of time to make photographs of birds and other animals under good lighting conditions. When photo opportunities present themselves, we take the time to make photographs rather than just looking at the bird and then moving on. We also place greater emphasis on finding more easily photographed birds and much less on birds that are more difficult to find and see or are too far away to photograph.
The birds we seek to photograph include hawks and eagles, trogons, kingfishers, puffbirds, toucans, woodpeckers, manakins, and tanagers as well as more traditional subjects of bird photography such as herons, egrets, and hummingbirds at feeders. Our master guide is expert at finding and identifying a wide variety of such birds to photograph in natural settings. Making use of a master birding/naturalist guide and seeking out more diverse subject matter is what distinguishes our photo tours from those offered by other companies. The expertise of our master guides is essential to obtaining images of many of the species we photograph.
Every photo tour is led by Laura L Fellows, a professional photographer who specializes in making environmental portraits of birds in exciting tropical environments. For a sampling of her photography, please click on the links to the left under "PHOTO GALLERIES". Our tours are not photo workshops and do not include classroom instruction or formal critiques. Their purpose is to put nature photographers in front of their subject matter so they can capture images of exotic birds, animals, and plants in exotic places.
We currently offer bird/nature photo tours to Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama. We also expect to offer a natural history photo tour to the Galapagos Islands beginning in summer 2009. For more information about our photo tours, CLICK HERE, on the tabs above, or on the sidebar links to the left under "NATURE PHOTO TOURS".
EXOTIC BIRDING TOURS
Our birding tours to Central and South America are intended for serious birders of every skill level who wish to see as many birds as possible while on tour. To that end we rise early each morning and spend much or all of every day birding, with slow periods during mid-day typically spent relaxing or transferring to the next birding locale. Each tour is led by a master birding guide who usually lives and guides in the destination country year round, thereby bringing local knowledge and birding expertise to each tour. Each birding tour covers diverse habitats, altitudinal zones, and locales in an effort to maximize our birding success. Some people on our birding tours take photographs when opportunities present themselves, but the pace of our birding tours is not designed for that purpose.
We're offering Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru birding tours in 2008. We're co-marketing a Galapagos Islands tour and our Peru tours with an Ecuadorian birding tour company who has been conducting these tours for numerous years. Our guide on these tours is Lelis Navarrete, one of the best birding guiedes in South America. The price of our Galapagos tour and Peru tours is the same whether you book through us or directly with them. For more information about our birding tours, CLICK HERE, on the tabs above, or on the sidebar links to the left under "BIRDING TOURS".
