BestBirdwatching
Rainforest, wetland, seabird cliff and migration bottleneck — the places that hold either the highest species counts on earth or the birds you cannot see anywhere else. Almost every one of them works on a calendar: a migration trap is empty outside its three weeks, a crane roost fills only in winter, and a cloud-forest endemic is easiest in its own short breeding season.
Kakadu National Park
Northern Territory
Details & links
A monsoon floodplain and sandstone escarpment park where the dry-season concentration on Yellow Water lagoon brings magpie geese, black-necked storks and comb-crested jacanas into one boat trip. Roughly a third of Australia's bird species have been recorded inside the park.
Lamington National Park
Queensland
Okavango Delta
North-West District
Intervales State Park
São Paulo
Point Pelee National Park
Ontario
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Magdalena
Galápagos Islands
Galápagos Province
Details & links
An archipelago where the birds have no fear of people, giving close views of waved albatross, flightless cormorant, and the finch radiation that shaped evolutionary theory. Each island holds different endemics, so the itinerary decides the list.
Mindo and the Chocó Slope
Pichincha
Details & links
A band of cloud forest on the western Andean slope an hour and a half from Quito, with hummingbird feeders, an Andean cock-of-the-rock lek and the Chocó endemics of the Milpe and Mashpi ridges. It is one of the highest bird densities reachable on a day trip from a capital city.
Látrabjarg
Westfjords
Keoladeo National Park
Bharatpur, Rajasthan
Andasibe-Mantadia
Alaotra-Mangoro
Pipeline Road
Soberanía National Park, Colón
Varirata National Park
Central Province
Details & links
A hill-forest park 45 minutes from Port Moresby with a known display tree for the Raggiana bird-of-paradise, the national bird. Growling riflebird and brown-headed paradise-kingfisher are both on the same trails.
Manú National Park
Madre de Dios
Details & links
A park running from Andean cloud forest down to Amazonian lowland with a bird list above a thousand species, the highest of any protected area in the world. The road down from Paucartambo crosses every elevation band on the way in.
Kruger National Park
Mpumalanga and Limpopo
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A savanna park the size of a small country with a list above 500 species, including the six large birds — ground hornbill, kori bustard, martial eagle, lappet-faced vulture, Pel's fishing owl and saddle-billed stork — that visitors work through. Self-drive access means the birding needs no guide.
West Coast National Park
Western Cape
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A lagoon and strandveld park 90 minutes north of Cape Town where Palearctic waders winter in tens of thousands and Cape gannet pass offshore. The Postberg section opens for the spring wildflower season.
Doñana National Park
Andalusia
Details & links
Marsh, dune and cork oak woodland at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, holding a large part of Europe's wintering waterfowl and one of the last Spanish imperial eagle populations. Access to the core is by permit and guided vehicle only.
Monfragüe National Park
Extremadura
Falsterbo
Skåne
Details & links
A peninsula at Sweden's south-western tip where migrants funnel before the crossing to Denmark, producing dense autumn raptor passage from August to October. The bird observatory has ringed here since 1955.
Asa Wright Nature Centre
Arima Valley, Trinidad
Bempton Cliffs
Yorkshire, England
Bosque del Apache
New Mexico
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