Bird Watching Vacation

To broaden your bird-watching experience beyond your own backyard, consider incorporating some bird-rich locales into your next vacation. Serious bird enthusiasts actually plan trips around visiting bird sanctuaries, nature parks and other natural locations where they can view birds in large numbers, in diversity of species and in their native habitats. Traveling to a region of the country other than the one in which you live will allow you to see species you may have never seen before.

There are about 9 703 species of birds divided up into 23 orders, 142 families. Birds can be found on all major landmasses from the poles to the tropics as well as in or over all our seas and oceans and their accompanying islands. The total number of birds on the planet is very difficult to estimate because their populations fluctuate seasonally, but scientists have suggested that there may be between 100,000 and 200,000 million adult or near adult birds on the planet at any one time. Of these the most common or populous wild bird in the world is the Red-billed Quelea from south of the Sahara in Africa. These birds are so prolific that they are serious pests of grain and millions are killed at roost sites every year in a vain attempt to control their numbers.