Guide to guides

No, not that sort, human bird guides. In fact the title is a bit arrogant on my part because I haven't known that many, but I do have a lot of experience of foreign travel, so have come across several. Most people aspire to a foreign birding trip eventually, in fact it is far more rewarding for many than birding in the UK. Many twitchers discover quite soon that for what it cost them to take a charter flight to Shetland they could have had a week in Florida, and these days there are far fewer "hard core" twitchers around. Plus, your actual carbon footprint will potentially be far lower since the flights will still go even if you're not on them. 

 There are several ways to bird abroad, personally I would always prefer to arrange my own tour, but this entails a lot of organisation and homework for success. It's not sufficient just to look at e-bird, some species which are "staked out" don't appear on there due to being endangered, or for many other reasons. Several tour companies don't put exact locations for reasons of "protecting" their business. However there are cases where access is arranged for tour companies but not others. Mike and I went on a trip to Magee and Pelee, and recorded more warblers than most tour groups, plus several species which some companies don't go for. However, I recently went on an owl trip to Finland which would have been easily possible to organise oneself, but the owls are protected because if the sites were to become generally known, disturbance would probably cause breeding failure. Had I organised the tour myself I wouldn't have seen any owls (except a Short-eared which was a one-off!). Tour groups can do a lot to help conservation without undue disturbance, although it does depend on the guide. 

In many countries, such as the USA, parts of Europe and non-outback Australia it is perfectly easy to do your own trip without a guide (provided your ID skills are good enough). However there will always be species which require assistance from a guide, and this is where care needs to be taken. We once went on a one-day guided tour at the end of a whale-watching trip to see the range-restricted Belding's Yellowthroat. The head guide at the company was already booked (ironically to take large cruise ship passengers to see whales (large ship not large passengers, although many probably were!). Her replacement was quite inexperienced, to say the least; he'd not heard of Belding's Yellowthroat! However, he was quite competent at the easy stuff but spent a lot of time looking for hummingbirds, which we'd seen on our trip. He was also very pleasant and, unlike some guides, wasn't offended if we found birds, especially the Yellowthroat!

By contrast, the person leading our whale watching trip was excellent for both cetaceans and birds, but didn't like us Brits calling up our own birds. We had done a one day pre-tour around San Diego, and I upset him by calling a Glaucous-winged Gull from the bus right at the start. Then Ann found a Great-horned Owl ten minutes after his stating that he'd been to the park four times and didn't believe there was one there. To be fair, he did have a bad back which probably didn't help his mood, but when guides are charging money they should have a better attitude. 

In Argentina, we hired a guide for a week before travelling to Antarctica. Probably as most of his clients were pure listers, we nearly fell out after the first three days. This was because we were primarily looking for American Painted Snipe, and he had set up a "mini-tour" which required us to move on after the first 3 days to a different area. To be fair, nobody thought it would take that long to find one. Thankfully, at dusk on the last day, Ann (who else?) found two on a small pool at the side of the road. In truth the rest of the trip was much better in terms of numbers and variety of birds, our guide had been excellent, and not only had he learnt that ladies can find birds, he also had a lifer himself, Dot-winged Crake, when two just wandered out from the reeds in front of the car. (We later met two American birders who had spent three days looking for that species). By the end of the week everyone was having a great time, and we were treated to a superb meal one evening where Ann was presented with a red rose, because it was Ladies Day in Argentina.

The difficulty of finding a good guide is that birders vary far more than do guides in their wishes. It's a case of trying to find out as much as possible before you go, and asking questions. I'm not saying that there are bad guides, but to some it is more than just a job, whereas others are attracted by easy money, particularly in poorer countries. I have heard of a top guide who would no longer work for a particular tour company because most of their clients are British, and Americans tip better! Can't say I blame him, but it's easy enough to get a really good bird list on your own in Costa Rica anyway. Of course, should you be looking for certain targets, you will need a guide. 

I went to Sri Lanka on an organised tour, partly because I used to go twitching with one of the leaders. Owls are a big thing in Sri Lanka, with two endemics, one of which was only described in 2004. Trouble is, they will move their daytime roosts every few days in some species, and spotlighting is often not possible nor always convenient. The Sri Lankan guide had a "crew" of friends who went out very early to find birds as they returned to roosts after hunting. This apparently can take some time, indeed the Serendib Scops Owl was only found after three hours of them searching. It wasn't easy to access, but by hauling us up a muddy bank arm over arm, everyone got to see it. Good guides in Madagascar often work in groups, where the main guide "employs" helpers to persuade difficult species to show themselves to the group. They are absolutely brilliant, and birds will appear out of seemingly impenetrable jungle and be in full view for several seconds before disappearing again. Of course, this makes the guide more expensive, but you probably won't be going back for anything you miss.

When it comes to tour companies you would think the work of finding a good guide would be done for you, but in fact this is one of the biggest problems, since some companies use local guides that aren't quite up to the mark, or guides from their home country who, however experienced, are rarely able to find all the target species. This is, of course, reflected in the cost of the tour, and it isn't a problem for many people who don't want to target specific species. Really good guides will seek out particular species if asked, and have repeated attempts, whereas others will fall back on the old adage "nothing is guaranteed", and only show tour participants birds that they happen to come across. When we went on a Jaguar tour, in the early days before it became a "must do" for boatloads of "eco-tourists", I particularly wanted to see Brazilian Merganser, and the group leader/guide spent a considerable time looking, whilst still keeping everyone else happy. We saw them eventually, thanks to our guide, and no-one else on the tour realised we were going out of our way to see them.

In many countries there can be issues with police or rangers, and here a good guide is invaluable. Some national parks require you to be accompanied by an armed ranger, and guides can usually pick the best. In Uganda the police can be "over-zealous", we came across a bridge which had a police guard primarily to prevent photography due to its location. Problem is, it's the best site for Rock Pratincole. A brief chat by our guide, and a small donation (bribe), enabled us to spend time photographing the birds on the rocks below whilst the guards patrolled the other end of the bridge. We also had a problem with Brown-chested Plover, a difficult wader at the best of times. Our guide and I had seen several one evening, but when we went back the following day with Ann they had moved. After searching several areas he declared he knew where they'd be, but it was in an area with no access, on pain of a hefty fine. So we went and saw them, and when an armed ranger approached us we claimed to be lost, and the foreign tourists were very sorry but it wouldn't happen again.....

 I did, for a few years, help out a friend running a European tour for VENT, when he was in Norfolk/Suffolk for a few days. No payment, but I joined the group for meals at their hotel for a couple of nights, and accompanied them the following days. Two incidents made me vow never to do any guiding/tour leading myself. Firstly, a guest walked in to the hotel, picked up the menu before checking in and declared an inability to eat anything on the menu. I don't know the outcome, but the tour leader whispered to me that (s)he'd  been the same throughout the European part of the tour. The next day we were at Titchwell. On finding  a Little Gull I was told by a participant that I was wrong, it was an Ivory Gull! On pointing out the grey mantle I was accused of being colour-blind, the mantle was white! Any decent guide will be quite happy to admit to mistakes, and welcome discussions about ID, but there are limits. To be fair, my job as a pharmacist involved a lot of helping and guiding people, so I never would have become a bird guide, but several friends from my early twitching days have, and very successfully too.

I deliberately haven't mentioned any names of guides nor companies here, since it is based on our personal experiences, but am soon rewriting my links pages on my website, which, if you're trying to make a decision about a guide or a tour company, may help.  

Any guides reading this I would like to say thanks again, because every guide I have hired personally, and several with tour groups, have been excellent in one way or another, and I've felt mutual respect as fellow birders. 

#birds #guides #bird tours #bird photography #aabirdpix