Midlands Birding Blog

Florida might be the ultimate family holiday. Every child dreams of visiting the theme parks, and even the most skeptical visitor cannot help but be impressed by their scale. Fantastic weather, great villas and hotels and easy travel make a holiday destination that would be enjoyed by virtually any family. I have been to Florida 3 times, and these have been some of the best holidays of my life. It is unusual though that such a great family destination can simultaneously offer such great birding. Without leaving the confines of the theme parks, you could easily rack up a long trip list. In 3 trips in March/April, with only a handful of visits to actual bird reserves,  I have seen a total of 137 species in Florida! The parks are vast, and have many green spaces which allow for casual birding while you go on rides. Great birds really can be seen in the most unlikely spots. I have seen a White-winged Dove on the Dr Seuss Trolley Ride in Universal IOA, I have seen a Limpkin at Disney ...

This is a birding trip report to Mauritius in July. Birding in Mauritius is not very conventional. Firstly, because there aren't many species you can see and secondly because of the strange mix of introduced and native species that inhabit the island. What little birding information there is available online tends to be from typical 'island-hopping' tours which spend a day or two on the island to sweep up all the endemics. My main motivation for writing this report is that there really isn't much information available online, especially for a family-motivated longer trip. In July 2019, I spent two weeks on Mauritius for a family holiday. The focus was not birding, but I was keen to see as many of the endemics as I could and also a broad range of species because all of the introduced species were generally new for me. All of the island endemics can be seen in just 2 days of birding (or even potentially in just 1) and in this time, the introduced species should take car...

Trip Review: Vancouver & Whistler July 2016 Overview: This report summarises the birds seen on a family holiday when I was younger to western British Columbia. We visited Whistler for 3 full days and then moved down to the suburbs of Vancouver for 7 days, and we did many day trips from here. Birds were not the focus, but we managed to do a bit of birding on a couple of days.  The sites are listed below. The main content of this report is an annotated species list to give an idea of when and where each species was seen. This report does not intend to give a comprehensive overview of a birding trip to the region – birds were almost certainly missed, and sites could have been visited at more bird-friendly times – but rather a guide for a casual birder on the birds you could expect to see on a family holiday to the region.  We only birded with binoculars, though our scope would have probably helped at the wetland sites, particularly Iona. We purchased a hummingbird...