Identification of Hotspots

A number of techniques were used to identify the various birding "hotspots" in the United Kingdom, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Australia and the South Pacific, Asia and the Middle East. No lists of "best" sites were available. Anyone with access to a listing of "bests" for these continents, please contact Tina MacDonald. Resources which were used included:

reviews of available print birding guides
searches of any available birding sites which addressed location.
searches of government tourist sites
web search for any sites on national parks, nature reserves, wildlife reserves, and bird sanctuaries
review of itineraries for commercial tours

This web site entailed many, many hours of research on the WWW. For most of these countries, the challenge was to find sites in English. In selecting which site (or sites) were used as the selected link, the following rules of thumb determined the priority order of selection:

A site guide written for birders by birders (or birding organization)
A site guide written for birders by a tourist bureau or government organization
A site guide written for environmentalists or scientists by a government organization
A site guide written for general tourists which mentions the birding features
An informal trip report written by a birder for other birders
Any site which provided either directions or a map to the birding hotspot
A site guide or birding itinerary written by a commercial (for profit) company, selling a tour or other service to birders

In some cases, the websites were so good that one or two (or more) references for a specific birding location were used. Some judgement was used if the higher priority source was a significantly lower quality website (amount and quality of information, navigation features of the site, etc.) than a lower priority source.

Please provide comments via the button found throughout these pages if you disagree on the choice of website for a particular birding hotspot, or your favorite "hotspot" was omitted. If there is no good website on the WWW for your favorite birding location, take up the challenge and write one! Just remember to let me know where to find it to add it to these web pages. E-mail should be directed to tina@camacdonald.com.

Don't miss the chance to see how many of the national birds you can identify. These pictures are located on the left hand side of the page, beside the country name. Pause your cursor on the picture to see the bird's identification. For those countries with no national bird identified, please let me know if you are aware of the national bird for that country. When searching for the "national bird" for many of these countries, the only web references which could be turned up were "the national bird of X is the construction crane". Funny the first time, but not so funny after a hundred repetitions!

And... can you identify the gulls in the "Where do you want to go birding today?" logo at the top of this page??? Unfortunately, the only prize for getting it right is the satisfaction of knowing you're a very good birder (or at least, you know your gulls)! Highlight the following line with your cursor for the answer....

Glaucous-Winged Gulls (winter plumage) Good Birding!