birding tours, nature tours and travel, wildlife tours, adventure travel and general travel to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific

Birding Australia

click here for our Australia Birding & Wildlife tour October 2008

Birding Tours

As bird tours and travel are a style of wildlife tour pretty much unto themselves, we thought we'd devote a page or two just to bird tours, mainly for birders. This page is for those among us who don't think it's strange to be looking the other way , not at the Taj Mahal (at least for a while) because there's a house crow across the road. Or consider that spending a few days at a bird lodge where there's no TV, no nightlife (other than talking birds or reading about them, and the only thing to do is to get up early and look at both beautiful and little brown birds, seems a good thing. That's not to say that birds aren't an important component of all of our nature tours, but if you're traveling to Australia and/or New Zealand just to bird, this is your page. (For this reason the page, and images, will take a bit longer to download - we didn't compress them as much, so they are clearer)

Nature Travel Specialists does not operate dedicated, list-at-all-costs birding tours, but we do know which dedicated bird tours may suit you best, and we know Australia and its birds pretty well (our Director, Andrew Haffenden, has personally seen over two-thirds of them, and conducted field research on magpie geese, brolgas and sarus cranes for many years. That's him on the right with Dyak headman on the Upper Mahakam River, Borneo, the day after having two groups of white-shouldered ibis). We do operate birding modules to Tasmania and the Northern Territory suitable for dedicated birders; these are also designed for the less serious birder and/or the partners accompanying dedicated birders. See our Australian Birding section for these, and also just down this page for some other bird tours including a 26 day super tour.

We also recognize that many birders like to organize their own birding travel, so we have included lots of links to companies and accommodations in Australia that you can contact directly. If there's anything we can do for you along the way - there's lots of aspects of comfortable and successful nature travel other than just booking wildlife tours and hotels - we'd be happy to so. If not, that's fine too; please explore these links, contact the companies, and good birding. We won't mind, however, if you tell the people you're booking with where you found them.

We also have an Australian bird and wildlife tour, an adaption of our "Birding with your Partner" tour, operating in October 2008. Birding with Your Partner means that the tour is arranged to allow for plenty of birding, with top flight bird guides, but also time to look around with your non-birding partner, and activities arranged for the partner while you're out chasing down the lifers. This particular tour is more heavily birdy, with less alternative activites available, but will still suit a partner who is interested in nature - birds, other wildlife, plants etc - but wouldn't normally go on, or is usually a bit cranky on, the normal "up at 4.30am, to bed late after owling and up at 5 again and seeing nothing but birds all day every day" bird tours. The sort of tours that don't visit the Taj Mahal because it wastes birding time. This isn't one of those, but still is looking at 350+ bird species, and our guides will always be available for a very early look around, and a late bit of owling on nights there aren't any activities. We'll be visiting Cairns and the Tablelands, Australia's best birding region, have close to a week in the top of the Northern Territory to do it properly and not race through, and see Victoria's coast and deserts as the key birding areas. Kangaroo Island is also included, and we have a pelagic trip that usually gets 30+ species. Tasmania, and/or a non-bird look at Ayers Rock, are trip extensions. Click here for a detailed itinerary, or call or email for more information.

Some new Australian bird tours have just been announced (April 8) by Birds Australia, and we've quickly put them up on Birds Australia bird tours page. We can book you on these and make all the ancillary arrangement for you to get to Australia, and of course do whatever else you want to outside the tours dates once there.

If you're visiting Cairns independently, the Tropical Bird Club has regular outings and also gets together on the Esplanade; you are welcome to join in either.