EXOTIC BIRDING LLC
SAINT JOHNS, FLORIDA

ABOUT EXOTIC BIRDING Exotic Birding is a joint venture of Jim Wittenberger and Laura Fellows. Jim became an avid birder as a teenager, an interest that led to a PhD in zoology and an early career conducting research on bird behavior. He later morphed into a software engineer, giving him technical skills he could combine with his knowledge of birds and birding to form the basis of our company. Laura was a commercial photographer and studio manager of a major advertising studio in Atlanta GA for 15 years, during which time she organized and led numerous photo shoots in both North and South America. She then founded one of the first photography workshops in Italy, where she learned fluent Italian and gained experience organizing and leading group photography tours and workshops. She had long dreamed of doing bird photography, and meeting Jim gave her that opportunity. Their combined talents led to the creation of a Exotic Birding LLC, a tour company devoted to offering superior birding and bird photography tours to exotic places, currently to the Neotropics and East Africa, but eventually to exotic places elsewhere in the world as well. The goal of our company is always to share a quality experience with our clients at a reasonable price. We keep our prices low by operating with low overhead and, whenever possible, arranging logistics ourselves rather than using land agents who have their own profit margins added into the final price. In this regard, we are unlike most other birding tour companies currently in operation. While our prices are very competitive, they are not necessarily the lowest on the market. That's because we travel in small groups rather than spreading fixed expenses across a dozen or more people, hire professional drivers with roomy vehicles whenever possible, and prefer staying in comfortable accommodations whenever they are available near prime birding locales. All content and design © 2004-2018 by Exotic Birding, LLC. Original banner photo © Laura L Fellows. All rights reserved. No photos, descriptions, or other content may be copied or disseminated on any media without prior written permission. A single birding tour to Ecuador is hardly adequate to do the country justice. Most Ecuador birding tours are based in the north. They typically cover some or all of the western Andes Mountains, eastern Andes Mountains, and occasionally the Amazon headwaters along the Napo River. More exotic birding tours go to the south, where some 150 species not found in the north can be found. Birding tours to the south are becoming increasingly popular as people discover all that southern Ecuador has to offer. discovered in the 1980's, and a great many parrots, parakeets, hummingbirds, tanagers, and finches not found further north. A series of reserves operated by the Jocotoco Foundation provide basic accommodations and extraordinary birding all over the south. The upwelling waters of the Humboldt Current create a tremendous abundance of marine life that provides ample food for large numbers of seabirds. Many of these species nest on small islands along the coast. Because the Continental Shelf is not far off the Peruvian coast, pelagic birding is possible not far offshore. The Andes Mountains provide diverse habitats for numerous specialty birds and endemic species. The western and eastern slopes have very different bird life, as the high mountains provide a barrier that prevents interbreeding. Also the latitudinal gradient between northern Peru and the Bolivia border lead to additional changes in species composition. Kenya is best known as a safari destination for viewing big mammals, and for many people that is the purpose of going there. However, birding is also spectacular. Over 1100 species of birds have been recorded in Kenya, and it's possible to see over 600 species on a 3-week tour and 800 species on a 4-week tour. The varied geography of Kenya is the reason for such species diversity, and a basic knowledge of its geography is helpful in understanding the birding opportunities. In the far northease of Namibia is a narrow strip of land between Angola and Botswana known as Caprivi Strip. Located there is Bwabwata National Park, which is an amalgamation of the Mahango and Caprivi Game Reserves. This region offers some of the best birding in Namibia with about 430 species recorded. The Bwabwata area encompasses lush flood plains and wetlands around the Kavango and Kwango Rivers along with open savanna and savanna woodlands. Boat trips are the best way to see much of the wildlife and birds of the wetlands. A number of Angolan and East African birds reach the southern-most extent of their ranges in the Caprivi area, making the border areas around and between the border towns of Rundu and Katima-Mulilo especially good for birding. When one flies over Zambia, one is struck by the sameness of the woodland below. This is the Miombo Woodland, which covers 50% of the country predominantly in the north. The woodland is interspersed with grassy wetlands, or dambos, around the headwaters and along the margins of major rivers. These dambos make up about 30% of the Miombo biome and are most extensive in the north. Many parts of the region have suffered extensive deforestation due to charcoal production and clearing of the land for farming. Kafue National Park protects an extensive tract of this habitat biome. The upper slopes of South Luangwa National Park are also covered by Miombo Woodland. Birds of undisturbed woodland often form mixed species flocks. A single flock may contain 10-20 different species of mainly insectivorous birds. The most conspicuous are All content and design © 2004-2017 by Exotic Birding, LLC. Original banner photo © Laura L Fellows. All rights reserved. No photos, descriptions, or other content may be copied or disseminated on any media without prior written permission. In spite of the high population density and concomitant habitat destruction on some islands, Indonesia is of great interest to birders due to its high rate of endemism. Over 350 of the 1250 or so recorded bird species are endemics found nowhere else in the world. This high rate of endemism as well as great species diversity is due to the geological complexity of the country. Indonesia encompasses 17,508 islands on either side of the equator and straddles three tectonic plates that have been on a collision course for millions of years. As a result, the country has numerous volcanos, many still active, and is subjected to frequent earthquakes. Deep water trenches separate some of the islands from others, and these correspond to plate boundaries. The famed English naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the theory of natural selection independently of Charles Darwin as a result of his studies of the islands. The Wallace Line was viewed by him as the faunal boundary separating the biozones of Asia and Australia. On the Asian side of the line are Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. On the other are Sulawesi, Halmahera, the Lesser Sunda Islands, the Maluku Islands, and New Guinea. A second line, known as the Webber Line named after the zoologist and biogeographer Max Carl Wilhelm Webber, more or less follows the deep water trench of the Lombok Strait and further separates Sulawesi and the Lesser Sundas from Halmahera and the Maluku Islands the New Guinea and is now considered to be the boundary between the Asia and Australia plates. The bioregion of Wallacea encompasses part of Indonesia and is a heart-shaped area that encompasses the islands east of the Wallace Line and beyond the Webber Line to include all the main island chains east of New Guinea. Hence, it includes Sulawesi, Halmahera, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the Maluku Islands.