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By Jacob Roalef and Chris Lotz
Posted on 20 October 2025.
Since we launched the Birding Ecotours company eBird account at the end of 2019, we have shown about 7500 bird species, in 65 countries, to our tour participants. Our October 2025 eBird snapshot map is shown below:
As we write this, the species count is increasing, and the map continues to be filled in. We have many tours running all the time (this only stopped during the Covid pandemic; see our blast from the past about that below).
On our birdwatching holidays, we pride ourselves on achieving high species lists while also taking the time to savor the birds we observe. We do not feel these are mutually exclusive endeavors; kindly see what sets us apart from other bird tour companies for more information about why we think this is the case.
The above actually underestimates the number of places we’ve taken tour participants to and the number of bird species we’ve shown clients. For example, our latest Antarctic birding and wildlife cruises did not get captured on eBird, and we didn’t eBird any of our trips prior to late 2019. For example China, Canada and several European countries don’t reflect yet even though we’ve certainly enjoyed showing people birds in those places before.
It’s now very interesting to (below) look back at previous versions of this blog article, to see where we stood 1) during the challenging first year of Covid, and then 2) in August 2023, midway between the pandemic and now (see the two blasts from the past below). At the bottom of this blog are some final words, so do scroll down if you want to skip over the blasts from the past. Also, be on the lookout for future updates to this blog as we continue to show our tour participants the many birds that inhabit Planet Earth.
We’ve e-Birded Red-throated Twinspots on many of our African birding tours
A blast from the past – the situation in March 2020, just before Covid, after three months of e-Birding:
“Nearly a quarter of the year is already over, and our team has logged almost a quarter of the world’s bird species in that time during our tours!
We started our team eBird account back in December, excited to see how many species we could record while on Birding Ecotours trips from 1 January through 31 December 2020 (and future years).
So far in 2020, we’ve completed very successful tours to eight different countries (India, Thailand, the USA, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, South Africa, Colombia, and Guyana) and have logged 2231 species of birds while on tour!
Sadly, our March Jamaica tour was canceled due to the COVID-19 situation. However, we did get in some amazing back-to-back trips; for example Dylan guided three consecutive India trips covering a large part of that country, and Andy did similar for Thailand.
We’ve also been quite busy since starting this eBird account several months back with now 3141 lifer species.
Below is a map showing all the countries we’ve visited since this fun tracking journey began:
Another blast from the past – 10 August 2023 update:
Since our company eBird journey began in 2019, our team has greatly enjoyed logging the birds on all our birding vacations.
We feel very strongly about doing this:
- It allows us to share lists with all our tour participants
- It helps contribute to citizen science, and
- It enables us to keep track of our own Birding Ecotours “life list”
So far, we have managed to share 5889 species with our valued birding tour participants, and it has been an incredible honor doing so. We look forward to sharing many more “lifers” with you in the years to come!
2022 saw our first full calendar year of trips post pandemic, and we managed to tally 4215 species while visiting 28 different countries! What an incredible year it was.
So far in 2023 we have recorded an impressive 3297 species in the first seven months, which is around 900 more than last year at this same time. We have toured in 18 countries in 2023 and look to add a few more before the year’s end, with trips set for West Papua, Colombia, Argentina, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Australia and more. We hope to break our 2022 record and maybe even surpass the 5000 mark for our year list!
Other interesting data points from our eBird adventures are the country lists, with the following our top five most species-rich countries:
- Uganda (710 species)
- Indonesia (706)
- Colombia (701)
- South Africa (681), and
- The USA (626)
The country leaders in 2023 look slightly different:
- South Africa (543 species)
- Uganda (529)
- Ghana (425)
- The USA (415), and
- Costa Rica (382)
It will be exciting to see how the last five months of 2023 will shake up these leaderboards, and we expect to see a move from Indonesia and Australia to crack into these top lists!
Below was our 10 August 2023 map showing the snapshot at that point:
We eBirded this Vermiculated Fishing Owl in Zambia on a September 2025 Zambia birding and rare mammals tour (thanks Tim Williams for the photo!)
Final comments about the Birding Ecotours team eBird map:
So, we’ve come a long way since the end of 2019 when Birding Ecotours began its eBird journey. Although our eBird account omits the first 17 years we, as a company, were showing people birds (we founded the company at the start of 2003 and only started our eBird account 17 years after this), we have nevertheless accumulated a nice eBird list. Our company eBird list as of October 2025, is about 7500 species.
By the time you read this blog, the number is likely to be higher; you can see the live update here.
We would love to hear from you please contact us and:
- Share your eBird list with us if you want to
- Let us know the top 5 birds you have seen, and the top 5 birds you still want to see
We’ll then respond! We honestly just love talking birds, so would love to engage with you on the above exciting subjects.
