Bird watching tours for beginners

“People that don't go birding feel that they can't go out with those experts, with their tripods and everything else. They feel they don't have the right gear, that their gear isn't good enough.”

David Smith founded our partner Footsteps Ecolodge in the Gambia and runs our easy birding tours – including half-day taster sessions for beginners, as well as week-long holidays. The Gambia is known for its birding and for heaps of different habitats all in close proximity. There are over 600 species in a country that’s roughly the same size as Qatar or Jamaica. David’s ecolodge is set in gardens near the beach. A short walk takes you through a mix of bird-friendly habitats, but even staying put on the terrace brings in the birdlife.

“We get some absolutely stunning, beautiful, colourful birds come down to the pool on a daily basis,” says David, “The guests ask, ‘What kind of bird is that?’ Birding becomes a part of their holiday. It can't not be.”

David explains how non birders at the lodge will notice the birders leave before breakfast, returning late in the evening and wonder what the fuss was about.

“It's addictive. People that go birding, it's all consuming. It's not something that they do for half an hour.”

He now offers sessions to those who want to dip a toe. You might go into the woods next door, Kofrung Protected Forest. “It's got wonderful canopy, so it's nice and cool,” says David. “And it's excellent for birding. You're likely to see things like a green turaco or a violet turaco in there, which are just… You see one, you're never going to forget it: stunning, stunning birds.”

Our partners Wild Discovery, run by husband and wife team Dan and Rachael Brown, offer birding tours and wildlife tours that are beginner-friendly. Whilst some bird watching trips can be about ticking off hundreds and hundreds of birds, and running all around the country to see them, their trips instead focus on fewer locations, and spend more time explaining how the birds you see fit into the wider ecosystem.

They mention Batumi in western Georgia, on the Black Sea, a ‘bottleneck’ on the migration route which over a million raptors fly through. “That is going to be a bird fest,” says Dan, “but we’re not going to be whizzing around the country. We’ll be staying in one place for nine days, just watching what flies by. Our guests will be up on the watch points, looking at raptors migrating.

"It's a great place where if you've never looked at a bird of prey before, you can just go and on the most basic level, you can simply enjoy the spectacle of thousands and thousands of birds flying from Eurasia to Africa. But if you want to learn a bit more, you can start to work out the difference between the honey buzzard and the steppe buzzard or a lesser spotted and a greater spotted eagle.

"All our tours are like that. It doesn't matter whether you're a complete beginner or really focused, we'll build on your own expertise or your own interest so that when you go, you leave the end of the tour, you've got something out of it.”

As for the idea that other birders are intimidating? This isn’t true.

“Bird watching customers are very nice people in general, very flexible, very easy going, happy people, very positive,” says Yuri Napoles, a birding guide at our partner Cuban Adventures. “Nature lovers are more open minded and very positive people. I love to work with people like that; it’s a great education.”

There’s a quiet community to bird watching – as long as you keep your voice down in the hide. Camera-wielders have shown me thousands of pictures of firecrests to help me learn to spot them, and crane enthusiasts who’ve gone to Hokkaido to see them have given me plenty of advice for free.

In the last two years on our bird watching trips…

76 percent of our reviewers were on tailor made trips Just under half (47 percent) travelled solo Just under half (47 percent) of bookers were female

“Bird watching is an activity that is an adventure,” says Yuri. “It’s not like going to a resort and you know what you’re going to have on the menu. You’re never sure you’re going to see all the birds in the guidebook. That’s one of the good things: it’s always an adventure, it’s always different. For beginners we have to explain that. Experienced bird watchers know that.”

Our traveller Roger Greefe went on a tailor made birding holiday in Kerala. “If you want a wider focus than birding to your holiday (wildlife more generally, local culture),” he says, “get it written into your itinerary very clearly, and ask for a guide who will offer these aspects.”

Bird watchers are used to non-birders – and plenty of partners join our trips where just one is a keen birder, and the other wants to do other activities. David has had couples come to his ecolodge for 16 years – one pair stays at the lodge and enjoys their surrounds – the other two go birding.

“My guide Joji had such good knowledge of the environment,” says our traveller Ann Romans, who went with us in the Western Ghats. “He could spot birds I did not have a hope of seeing.”

Birding guides often make the best wildlife guides in general, and you can ask them to expand out from birding to other wildlife if you’re interested.

Trips may use a mix of birding guide, and then local guides at each reserve who know when and where species were last seen. Using local guides doesn’t just give you fantastic sightings, but also financially supports local communities and helps incentivise the protection of birding habitats.