Our birding and listing philosophy

We don't see as many species on our trips as a lot of other people do. For one thing, we're probably not terribly observant, but there may be other factors – we don't use birding guides, and we never use playback. We don’t use guides because we enjoy the challenge of identifying the birds all on our own, and we estimate we probably manage to identify about three quarters of what we see (in the tropics – better in the temperate zone where the diversity is not quite as daunting). We don’t see that much because, by not using bird guides, we don't know the best places to look, and we don't play tapes that draw the birds out. I actually have an objection to using playback except for scientific purposes. Playback must disrupt the behaviour of individual birds (why else is it banned with endangered species?), and I'd rather have as little impact on the birds I see as possible. I'm willing to pass on a lot of owls, and a lot of forest skulkers, for this. Oh, and I would never, never, chain a saltmarsh, so I will probably never see the two little ABA rails. It's good enough for me to know they're there. Undisturbed.

I have mixed feelings about the non-birding-guide policy. In many of the places we visit, there are not many employment opportunities, and eco-tourism can be a great help. We'll hire people to take us places, but we don't like someone telling us what we're looking at before we have a chance to identify it. So birding tours definitely don’t work for us, and local guides need to be aware of our quirks – it is certainly nice to have someone there who does know the birds to confirm, or otherwise, our IDs.

All that being said, if any of these lists are helpful to someone preparing to go on trip, great. You can probably figure most of the species are fairly easy if we saw them. For those who go on bird tours, these lists are probably not a lot of use – you'll see far more than we did. I wish you well – I have nothing against the tours, they're just not for me. I hope I haven't offended anyone, except those that drag saltmarshes, but if more people will start thinking about the ethics of playback, that would be a good thing, I think. If anyone has evidence it doesn’t effect the birds, I'd be interested to hear from you.