Exotic Birding offers two types of tours to Central and South America, birding tours and bird/wildlife photo tours. Our goal is always to provide a quality and enjoyable travel experience as well as a successful tour in terms of species seen or photographs obtained. We are sometimes asked if the countries we visit are safe for travel. Exotic Birding carefully considers safety of all tour destinations and does not offer tours to places we consider unsafe for travel.
Every birding tour and every bird photo tour is led by a highly qualified birding guide and an accomplished bird photographer, but the two types of tours differ in emphasis. Our birding tours are for devoted birders of any skill level seeking to maximize species count. Our bird/wildlife photo tours are conducted similarly to our birding tours but are slower paced, emphasize photography instead of species count, and are intended for bird/wildlife photography enthusiasts. The goal of our photo tours is to photograph many different birds and other animals, not just a single species or group of birds.
We recommend that tour participants arrive a day early for most tours in case of flight/weather delays. We'll be happy to reserve any extra nights you need at the same rate you would pay if you make the reservations yourself.
Feel free to call us any time. We provide personalized service and won't subject you to a phone menu or sales pitch when you call. Interested persons should register as early as possible to ensure a place on the tour and lock in the price. Deposits are refundable until 90 days prior to tour departure. To register print the registration form accessed by clicking the sidebar link and mail it to us with your deposit.
EXOTIC BIRDING TOURS
We've carefully planned and organized every birding tour to maximize our birding success by visiting as many habitats, altitudinal zones, and locales as possible while still maintaining a reasonable tour pace. Each tour is led by an English-speaking expert birding guide who usually lives and guides in the destination country year-round. Accommodations are generally comfortable eco-lodges or hotels situated near birding locales unless otherwise noted on our tour pages.
We offer Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama birding tours every year because these are our most popular destinations. We also offer a birding tour to Belize most years. We began offering a birding tour to Guyana in 2010 and will begin offering a birding tour to Brazil in 2011. We plan on offering future tours to Colombia, Peru, and the Galapagos Islands as well. Guyana is a hot new birding destination that features many specialty and endemic birds of NW South America. Our special Guyana extension visits some out-of-the-way places not visited by most tours, including a reliable site for Sun Parakeet and also reliable sites for the rare Red Siskin, Rio Branco Antbird, and Hoary-throated Spinetail.
For tours led by Laura Fellows, we're happy to provide participants with a CD of photos taken by her during the tour at a nominal additional charge. TOP
EXOTIC BIRD/WILDLIFE NATURE PHOTO TOURS
Our bird/wildlife photo tours are designed to capture images of a broad diversity of tropical birds. We photograph hummingbirds visiting feeders, hawks and eagles in open habitats, and a wide variety of toucans, antbirds, tanagers, and other birds within rainforests and other habitats. While we emphasize bird photography, we also photograph caimans, tamanduas, monkeys, and other wildlife as opportunities arise.
In the past photographers wishing to photograph a broad spectrum of birds had to strike out on their own or join a birding tour where their photography often conflicts with the goals of serious birders. For this reason we created birding-like tours that emphasize photography rather than species count but are still designed to seek out many different kinds of birds. To our knowledge no other tour company offers comparable bird photo tours jointly led by a professional bird photographer and an expert birding guide.
Every photo tour is organized and led by Laura Fellows, who created the images on our website. Every tour is co-led by an expert birding guide whose role is to find and identify subjects for our photography in even the most challenging tropical environments. Our tours are not workshops, but Laura is happy to assist participants with their techniques upon request.
We offer bird/wildlife photo tours to Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama most years. We plan on offering a photo tour to the Galapagos Islands in future. For more information about our upcoming tours, please contact us by phone or email. TOP
