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While at this point the bits of traveling we do are mostly to do outdoors things, when we see family or do non-ecotourism things we tend to go out and see what there is to see in the local habitats if there are any. When Haley’s parents lived in Scottsdale, AZ we’d use eBird to find interesting hotspots in the area. We found burrowing owls in the area and learned about nice birding/wildlife spots like Gilbert, AZ

When visiting my parents’ house in Alabama, they have nesting ruby-throated hummingbirds in the area in the spring and other interesting wildlife.

While we haven’t been in the last few years, we used to wind up in Orlando to go to Walt Disney World. Florida’s actually got some of the best birding in the US, so from WDW we’d sometimes work in a side trip to Gatorland’s rookery which is astounding. It’s a very cheesy amusement park, but in the back they set up a lagoon as an alligator with nice wooden walkways along the shore. Herons and egrets actually love to build nests with alligator moat defenses and now there are vast numbers of nesting birds in the back with some nests fairly close to the walkway. There are occasional roseate spoonbills, lots of species of herons and egrets, and also many wood storks. Looking up, you’ll usually spot a couple raptors in the air as well.

There’s often interesting wild things to see out in the wild if you know where to look. For planning and for on the ground research, eBird and iNaturalist are both really valuable tools for finding things. eBird’s great for looking up local hotspots and finding out where to find birds and other wildlife, and you can look for local areas with dense iNaturalist observations easily to find various sorts of rich habitats.

At this point we tend to record what we find on iNaturalist more than eBird. We’re working on getting more observations in eBird too, but we tend to log things by taking photos and making an id list later which fits iNat.

Below is our iNaturalist observation map. It’s fun watching those red dots expand. Even in a place like Rome, Italy, just taking a photo of a pigeon as an observation adds an observation.

While we don’t have a count of all the species of birds we’ve seen (a couple thousand probably), our count for birds with a photo id is currently at 607. If we counted things we just saw/heard without a photo that would surely be well over 1k, but we like having evidence and consensus-based id for our list.

We’ve seen 48 species of wild mammals, 92 butterflies & moths (always fun to find new Lepidoptera), and are always happy to see a new species of ant, bee, fish, bird, mammal, crustacean, etc. We’re more of a naturalist that’s interested in birds, than a birder per se. Always interested in learning more about biogeography, ecology, coevolution, and general macro-bio topics, so iNaturalist is a nice fit for us.

Our life list

The other tool we’d heartily recommend is the Merlin app. We generally didn’t have any data but downloaded a Costa Rica pack and the local species lists with frequencies were always available. While the sound id doesn’t work as well outside the US, it’s often very good inside the US.

We were just heading back home from a lovely trip to Guatemala in late Jan. 2020 thinking about writing about our birding trip to the cloud forests in search of the quetzals we never found, and write more about the things we did find.

In the airport we heard about a new virus that had been spreading that was at risk of becoming a pandemic. And a blog about ecotourism seemed like a poor idea. But we’ll be posting some things here again, since we’ve been to San Diego

The Oregon coast

To Corpus Christi for a birding festival where we saw a David Sibley keynote (!)

On the way home from the Birdiest Festival in America, we visited Choke Canyon State Park near San Antonio which had really nice birding – lots of Neotropical species like kiskadees and green jays in the US.

And we also spent 25 days in Costa Rica. There’s > 100 photos in our Flickr album at this point and we wrote a series of emails a little over-full of photos that mostly weren’t delivered but will be fine for blog posts.

More to come.

We got a car from the Hyatt Centric in San Isidro to Lima’s airport. On the drive there we watched Lima out the window and watched the utterly insane things drivers were doing on the roads.

We would not rent a car in Peru. Lots of intersections were chaos with no lights and cars pushing their way along in horrible ways. We’ve driven in Australia, driven on mud roads in the sticks in Costa Rica, driven winding mountain roads in Greece that were usually too narrow for passing, and driven in Italy, Oslo, Mexico, and elsewhere outside the US. Peru – Hell. No. At the intersections without stop signs or lights, the right of way gets sorted out by some kind of hostility/threat signaling. Hard pass.

We talked to the driver on the way back about how much we’d enjoyed the trip, about how interesting Peru was, and about how interesting the indigenous peoples there are and about Aymara, Quechua, and the Manu Road and other things. By that point my Spanish was pretty warmed up, and he was very interesting to talk to.

We got to the airport, got checked in for the flight, and had a person from the airline help with Haley which also made baggage handling and security run fairly smoothly other than my shoes tripping metal detectors, and soon we were flying to Mexico City.

We had another long layover planned in Mexico City, so once we landed in Mexico in the evening we headed out to stay at a hotel. We decided to visit the Museo Nacional de Antropología. We had a lot of trouble getting pesos, and wound up eating at the museum’s cafeteria instead of from the street vendors nearby, but enjoyed the time we had there.

The museum is a very beautiful space, with a really huge and interesting fountain in a large covered courtyard and exhibitions from many different time periods and cultures in Mexico and I learned some things, esp. about early Meso-American cultures – there are some really ancient cave paintings I had no idea existed.

We didn’t have enough time in the museum before we had to get going to catch our flight, but what we saw was really interesting. They do have English maps and some guides but most employees don’t speak English so knowing a little Spanish helps with security, bag checks, and things. We had our luggage with us and checked it at the bag check which worked out fine.

From the museum we took a Lyft to the airport, went through security, and flew to San Antonio easily. Then we got a Lyft to our friend in S.A.’s house, and drove from there to Austin.

The Peru trip was very tiring, but we loved checking out Lima, seeing the flocks of saffron finches hopping around us, checking out the baroque and neoclassical art and architecture in their basilicas and cathedrals, and getting street food. The time hanging out on the Paracas coast at a scallop farm with ten dogs, seeing flamingos right there on the coast and going out to see penguins, seals, and tens of thousands of birds was our favorite. The Andes were full of really cool surprises, seeing the Incan sites and a people who still speak the ancient Incan language was so cool, and there was a ton of natural beauty and interesting wildlife in the Andes.

When we were leaving Haley and I both agreed we really wanted to return one day. There’s a lot we haven’t seen – the Manu Road, the Amazon, Lake Titicaca, and other things. At this point it will surely be a long time before international travel returns, but I am practicing my Spanish hoping there will be some day when we can return.

We do love getting to visit new places to see nature and wildlife, but we’re always happy finding local nature and wildlife in Austin too.

The Congress Ave bats here are well known and well loved by this town. There’s an area near Old McNeil and the 35 that’s got a similarly sized colony that’s a bit quieter and worth visiting.

Every year the purple martins collect in Austin to form massive flocks, gathering together in prep for their migrations. The flocks can number >400k birds in a small clump of trees. They used to flock in the Highland Mall parking lot, but this year they were in La Frontera up north. They’re amazing and well worth visiting if you’re in the area when they’re flocking.

Pretty close to Austin, we wound up in Dallas off and on and found the UT SouthWest Medical Center Rookery there. It’s amazing. In the middle of town just a bit off the I35 there’s a medical center with a protected rookery. At different times of the year you can see black-crowned night herons, great egrets, anhinga, little blue herons, tricolored herons, great blue herons, cattle egrets, and sometimes other species nesting here. It’s loud with bird noise. Wonderful place to visit.

We will likely have more to say on other Austin things later on bats, armadillos, birding spots, museums, and the interesting birds and wildlife to be found here.