One of the greatest things about birding is that you can do it absolutely anywhere. Be it Kenya or Kent, East Asia or East Anglia, it’s still essentially the same game. However, there’s very little which can match the thrill of going away to a foreign country where you can be surrounded by entirely novel and fascinating species.
This is, of course, unless you’re a birdwatcher’s spouse and, in all truth, you’d rather be looking for a cocktail than a cockatiel. So, on browsing through the excellent field guide, Birds of the Dominican Republic & Haiti, it occurred to me that maybe the island of Hispaniola is one of those special places which has it all.
With a diverse range of habitats including wetforests, savannahs and grasslands, mountainous pine forests, lakes, lagoons and a varied coastlines, all contained on an island small enough to really explore in one trip, Hispaniola is as good a place as anywhere on earth to go birding – the illustrations and accounts in this guide alone are testament to that. And for all those pro-cocktail individuals amongst you, I hear you can get a very good Mojito in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo. And with bright green Hispaniolan Parakeets overhead, I’d be surprised if you hear any complaints from the birding fraternity.