For Monterey Bay Pelagic Trips
 
• Monterey Bay Whalewatch offers Monterey Seabirds trips during prime birding times. All trips led by local seabird experts, and you can make on-line reservations. Leaves from Monterey's Fishermen's Wharf; best value in the business.
• In addition, Monterey Bay Whalewatch offers daily 6-hour trips on Monterey Bay for whales (in summer-fall, sev. times a week in winter-spring); these can be very good for birds (inform them you're a birder). Leaves from Monterey harbor , usually with skipper Richard Ternullo, the best local boat captain. Full information and on-line reservations are accessed through their web site; there are also good pages there on cetacean research projects in Monterey Bay.
• Shearwater Journeys offers full-day pelagic bird trips, some from Monterey, on some weekends in fall (and occasionally at other seasons).

For Elkhorn Slough pontoon trips & private tours  

• Pontoon boat trips on Elkhorn Slough with Elkhorn Slough Safaris
• Privately guided local birding through Monterey Birding Adventures with Rick Fournier; he explores all parts of Monterey County and adjacent sites

Important local organizations:

• Monterey Peninsula Audubon Society [meetings, field trips, Christmas bird count +]
• Ventana Wildlife Society supports Big Sur Ornithology Lab & condor reintroduction
• Elkhorn Slough Foundation supports the Bird Festival and much more
• Santa Cruz Bird Club has a fine local site with loads of information
• Hastings Natural History Reservation, a U.C. research field station in upper Carmel Valley, has a fine extensive web site

For California bird photos:
 
• California rarity photos on the CBRC site [an eclectic collection of rarities from a wide variety of photographers; includes some from Monterey County]
• Bill Hill's site [a local Carmel photographer with some fine photos taken around Carmel, and sometimes elsewhere in Monterey County]
• Jeff Poklen's site [Santa Cruz photographer with many outstanding shots from Monterey Bay]
• John Sorensen's site [outstanding birds and mammals, mostly California, but also Wyoming, Texas, and east Africa; local Monterey Co. photographer]
• Peter LaTourrette's site [outstanding photos of many common California birds, esp. in Bay Area, but also a fine collection of Hawaiian specialties]
• Tom Grey's site [nice set of digiscoped and other images from S.F. Bay Area and elsewhere in western U.S.]
• Dave Furseth's site [some fine shots from southern California]
• Monte & Christopher Taylor's site [high quality shots of North American and Japanese birds]
• Don DesJardin's site [a very fine collection of mostly common southern California birds in a wide array of categories]

Another favorite site is Surfbirds.com. It is jointly operated by a group of birders in England and California; it emphasizes i.d. issues of interest to Europeans and North Americans, and has a lot more (interesting sketchbook, photo essays, trip reports. I particularly like the interactive Listing pages — you can keep all your lists there and compare with others in a wide variety of categories, from World list to your local patch!

For photos of world birds: Two sites are currently attempting to collect at least photo of every bird species in the world. Both sites use different family arrangements than I do on my pages but both are easy to navigate. Each has hundreds of photos so far.

• Tina MacDonald's World Bird Index has thousands of contributed photos (including some of mine) with links to the photographer's web site or to collected sets on her own site. This is the most complete set available, and can accessed taxonomically or alphabetically or by photographer.
• William Hull's World Bird Guide is collecting not only photos but bird sounds as well; may have more sounds than photos so far, but photos include many from Hans & Judy Beste's collection.

For photos of Asian birds:

• The Oriental Bird Images site has an unsurpassed collection of photos from Asia; it's maintained by Krys Kazmierczak for the Oriental Bird Club
• Paul Huang's Naturestops site is also filled with fabulous shots of Malaysia (including much of Borneo) & Singapore birds

For trip reports:

The "Travelling Birding" site has an extensive list of Internet trip reports arranged by country and sorted chronologically from the newest to the oldest. Americans should not be put off by the old "Eurobirding" name -- the site has links to trip reports around the world (including all of mine... ahem) and an easy-to-use "search" engine. They've now changed their name to fit their site.

The following personal sites also have fine trip reports for independent world birders:

• Simon Woolley & Julia Casson [various trips around the globe]
• John van der Woude [various trips around the globe]
• Ignacio Yufera [fine trip reports worldwise, plus detailed info on birding in Spain]

In addition, many of the sites with collections of links (see bottom of this page) have extensive links to trip reports

In northeast Australia, Hans & Judy Beste — well-known photographers and prior owners of Ptiloris, a birders' bed & breakfast — are available to act as guides to difficult birds for serious single birders or couples: email them here.

In Uganda, we booked our entire trip with Hassan Mutebi, and he proved to be a great guide/driver with his own tour company: Access Uganda Tours.

In India, we booked our entire trip through Raj Singh and his company Exotic Journeys; we had a perfect trip. email Raj Singh here.

In Malaysia, we booked our entire trip through Kingfisher Tours and the whole trip was flawless: email them here.

Other personal web sites that I especially admire for their photos and content are:

Greg Lasley's bird site [a great collection of outstanding photos from around the world, including Africa, Caribbean, Antarctica; also lots of information on Texas rarities with a good collection of Texas rarity photos. One of my favorites!]

Vladimir Dinets' site [fabulous pages on searching out wildlife (including birds) around the world. Born in Russia, Vladimir has visited more of Siberia, Mongolia, and China than anyone could imagine, and all with very little money. This is the most adventurous personal site I have ever seen -- just incredible stories! I am extremely impressed with his Wild cats of the world; he has seen 28 species so far, and photographed many of them! ]

Cagan Sekercioglu's site [another great collection of outstanding photos from around the world; Cagan is from Turkey but is now a Stanford grad student who has done research in Uganda & Costa Rica. He has also seen all but nine of the world's families of birds, and has photographed some really great birds & mammals]

Ron Austing's wildlife photography site [professional photographer whose evocative shots I admire; check out his "sample imagines" for good variety]

And for herps:

John Sullivan's site [great travel stories with numerous wonderful photos; and don't miss his Wild Herps pages -- a personal life list with loads of photos and tips on finding herps around the world]

An essential site for California is Gary Nafis's "California Herps" with photos, maps, and information on all the reptiles & amphibians of the Golden State

Eitan Grunwald "Herp Trips" is full of photos and stories from across the United States and sometimes elsewhere; he has an excellent set of links to other herp sites

William Hayes' home page takes you to his pages on herpetology and his discoveries about Caribbean lizards and more. I do like variety.

Search for reptile data around the world at EMBL's data base site

Search for amphibian data around the world at U.C. Bekeley's AmphibiaWeb site

The AsiaBird site
Focus is on Malaysia & Singapore vicinity; features very fine shots of hornbills and more (requires Java)

For India try Vivek Tawari's Birds & Birding in India which has many features including an index to numerous trip reports; for a focused site on south India the Karnataka Birds site is very good.

For Peru, the lodges and guides offered by Rainforest Expeditions (including a lodge at Tambopata Nature Reserve)

A Birding Israel site is a great starting point for that Middle East location.

A good start for Australia is Michael Morcombe's "Birds Australian" site, as is Lloyd Nielsen's 'Birding Australia' site

For eastern Australia, try Blue Mountains Bird Watching, an interactive site focused on the Blue Mountains National Park but with links throughout.

Marc Fenner's Costa Rica Birding has some really nice photos and site details.

A good book and a fabulous CD with photos, not generally available, of Puerto Rican Birds can be ordered on line at the link.

Tina MacDonald's Where Do You Want to Go Birding Today has links to many locality websites.

For bird identification:

Specialty gull identification sites:

Martin Reid's site [some good stuff on gulls and various difficult birds from Texas and elsewhere, but an unexpectedly varied collection of photos of neotropical birds, with information on bird trips there (that part of site has been down much of 2001, however, but may reappear).]

Steve Hampton & Don Desjardin's site [emphasis on California gulls but includes others]

Robert H. Lewis' site [emphasis of East Coast but also good collection from Japan]

Japanese Gull Identification site [very useful collection with wide selection of photos from Japan; many more shots than most sites]

Greg Gillson's 'Gulls of the Pacific Northwest' [Oregon/Washington with good photos of hybrid/introgressant gulls]

Michael Sheperd's gull site  [emphasis on North Pacific, esp. B.C., and on hybrid/introgressant gulls]

Specialty seabird sites:

Angus Wilson's ocean wanderers [had an early emphasis on western Atlantic trips and links to pelagic trip providers, with bird quizzes, but now expanded to cover the world's oceans with a lot of seabird photos, and a list of world seabirds. A fabulous resource]

Tony Palliser's site [Australian seabirds, with lots of great photos and trip information]

Brian Patteson's site [Gulf Stream pelagics off North Carolina & vicinity; good shots and super rarities plus up-coming boat trip info]

Tony Pym's site [mostly subantarctic and Antarctic species]

Specialty hummingbird i.d. sites:

Most North America species are covered on hummingbird identification by Paul Conover [a really fantastic collection of i.d. material on North American hummingbirds. State of the art!]

Van Remsen's Hum Net is an excellent starting point for lots of North American hummingbird topics, including their chat line

Tips on Selasphorus hummer are on Mike Patterson's page [esp. good for breeding birds near overlap zone in Oregon]

Photos of California hummers, including nests and young, are on Wayne Owen's Humabout site; more shots of nests and adults of a wider selection of hummers is on Joshua Fall's site

Specialty owl sites are:

Owling.com [a very fine site with tons of great photos and information on virtually all Nearctic and Central American owl]

The Owl Pages [a site originating out of Australia, bringing together fine photos of owls around the globe]

Handbook of the Birds of the World

Neotropical Bird Club

African Bird Club

Oriental Bird Club

Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center

Earthplatform is very useful for general environmental information

is one starting point.

• at fatbirder.com is the world's biggest free information resource for birders, and now includes much original information as well,
• at birdingguide.com, which also has news and equipment reviews,
• and at Denis Lepage's bird links to the world.