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 birding tour and bird/nature photo tour is led by an expert birding guide who lives in Central or South America. In addition, every photo tour is co-led by bird/nature photographer Laura Fellows, who took most of the photos displayed on our website.
Our website provides a wealth of information about our destination countries and tours. To navigate from page to page simply click on the links (words highlighted in blue) or on the tabs below the banner of each page (when present). Please take special note of our photo galleries, which are accessible from the left sidebar and from tabs on our home page and photo tour pages.
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. TOP
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. Every tour is led by an English-speaking master birding guide who usually lives and guides in the destination country year round, thereby bringing local knowledge and birding expertise to the tour. Each birding tour covers diverse habitats, altitudinal zones, and locales to maximize our birding success.
We offer Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru birding tours most years. We also offer a Galapagos Islands tour in conjunction with an Ecuadorian birding tour company who has been conducting these tours for many years. Our Peru birding tours are offered in conjunction with the same partner company. Lelis Navarette, one of the best birding guides in South America, leads our Galapagos Islands tours and our Peru birding tours. The price of our Galapagos and Peru tours is the same whether you book through us or directly with our partner company. We recently completed a scouting trip to Guyana, a lesser known but fabulous birding destination in northeastern South America, and we plan on offering birding tours there beginning in October 2009 (click on the "What's New" tab above for more information). TOP
BIRD AND NATURE PHOTO TOURS
We currently offer bird/nature photo tours to Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, and Panama. Each tour is led by Laura Fellows, an accomplished bird photographer, and is accompanied by a master birding/naturalist guide. We photograph many unusual and sometimes even secretive birds and other animals that are rarely seen or photographed on other photo tours thanks to our guide's expertise in finding and identifying subjects for our photography.
Our photo tours are intended to place participants in front of birds and other animals to photograph, including species difficult to see and photograph without an expert guide. They are not intended to be photo workshops and do not include formal instruction, though our tour leader is happy to share knowledge and tips for making better images. Some companies use the terms 'photo tour' and 'photo workshop' interchangeably. We do not. We consider photo tours to be tours designed to provide photo opportunties and photo workshops to be courses designed to provide instruction on techniques.
Each photo tour is designed to maximize opportunities for making photographs of tropical birds and other animals in their natural environment. We walk trails, take boat trips, and explore a variety of habitats seeking diverse subjects for our photography. We also make make photographs of hummingbirds near lodge feeders and other birds in gardens around the lodges where we stay. The pace of our photo tours allows us more time to capture beauty shots of the birds we see, in contrast to birding tours that are designed specifically to see as many species as possible.
Birds we photograph on tour include guans, macaws, parrots, hummingbirds, trogons, motmots, puffbirds, toucans, woodpeckers, antbirds, antpittas, cotingas, manakins, tanagers, honeycreepers, oropendolas, and caciques. We also photograph a variety of seabirds (Galapagos tour), herons, egrets, waterfowl, hawks, eagles, owls, and animals such as poison dart frogs, iguanas, caimans, otters, anteaters, monkeys, etc. when opportunities present themselves. TOP
