Trip Report Repositories

Each Fatbirder country or state page carries links to trip reports about birding trips to that country rather than having them in this section – that’s the place to first look for the most up to date reports.

These days there are far fewer places to see trip reports. This is down largely to two factors. Firstly, people now tend to use eBird, and rarely do eBird reports have lengthy diaries of what was seen where and by whom, etc. They tend to just give you lists of the birds seen. Secondly, some birding tour companies are much less likely to make their reports public, perhaps for fear of other companies looking at their itineraries and making changes accordingly. Some of those companies also allow their leaders to use eBird to list their sightings rather than make full reports. I, for one, am not really happy with this trend and it’s not just because trip reports allow people to create their own birding trips, I also believe that tour companies who do not bother with this are missing a huge marketing opportunity.

There remains one major resource, outside of Fatbirder that is, which is CloudBirders, and you’ll see that listed below. It’s a repository of many hundreds of trip reports which are submitted by individuals, tour companies, and so forth. Also listed below, you will find those tour companies that do still make their trip reports easily available to anyone who wishes to view them.

Fatbirder offers many additional links, on country pages, to reports on personal sites which may not be on the larger trip report websites. There are some reports directly hosted by fatbirder too. Although I am willing to host PDF reports, I still think it best if you offer yours to a site that specialises in Trip Reports rather than Fatbirder hosting them. If you have reports on your own website and want Fatbirder to link to them, email me. Below are some guidelines on writing up your trip.

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If you want your report to appear in Cloudbirders’ repository they may ask you to follow a few simple guidelines, you may also find these of use if you wish your reports to be used by others:

Guidelines for Birding Trip Reports

• A list of birds you saw is not a report; nor is a list of rarities without commoner species. That is a list for your own pleasure (or possibly to impress your friends) but is not in itself a lot of help to other birders. Your list of birds should either have sites against each bird, or each site should have a list of birds against it.
• In the interests of space, it is better to give map references rather than maps; descriptions rather than pictures. Too many maps or pictures will make the report take too long to open on the site and that will frustrate potential users. If quoting map references or place names include a note in the report of the maps or books you used with publishers and prices at time of writing. Of course, you should include maps of very specific sites if they are not, to your knowledge, published elsewhere.
• Background is useful, and not just for infrequently visited locations. Not all of us have been to Tenerife or Disneyworld and will find tips about people, bargains, transport, local customs etc. useful, so long as you do not write a whole book about it.
• Costs help… if you got a cheap flight or package tell us how much and where. If you booked online give us URLs (website addresses).
• You might have kept your notes in the form of a diary but, apart from the time of year, we do not need to know which day you were where… include a trip itinerary instead if you want to show us the logistics of a complicated travel plan.
• Finally sum up. It’s nice to know what you thought of the places you went to and whether it was value for money and what problems you had.

These are, of course, guidelines – not commandments! Please get in touch if you want us to host your trip reports – there is no charge to you or to the report readers. On some pages, this section is nowhere near as full or recent as it could and should be. Many birders will not only have produced their own reports, but will also have them on their own web-sites. Come on you shrinking violets… let us know your website address and what you have recorded so we can all share it.