Some of the "hotspots" on this page are identified by an icon ( )
as one of the best overall sites in South America. These sites were identified
from:
 Steve
Hilty's Top 12 Birding Spots in South America
Taken from Thayer's Birds of North
America CD. Not available on the WWW. Steve Hilty is the senior author
of Guide to Birds of Columbia and Guide to Birds of Venezuela.
This list was used as a search list to find sites which described one of
the "top twelve" locations. For some of the sites mentioned in this list,
no information was available on the WWW (for example, road from Trinidad
to La Habana, Bolivia). These sites are listed without a link just
for information.
A number of other techniques were used to identify the various birding
"hotspots" in Other resources that 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
-
A site guide or birding itinerary written by a commercial (for profit)
company, selling a tour or other service to birders
-
An informal trip report written by a birder for other birders
-
Any site which provided either directions or a map to the birding hotspot
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!
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