Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

On January 1, 2001 (yep—01/01/01), for the first time in my life, I handed my brand-new passport to a friendly stranger, and off I flew to a foreign land—Costa Rica. Since then, I’ve taken at least 16 international birding trips to a total of 14 countries on 4 continents. This plus opportunities I’ve had on bird trips within the United States means I’ve had a lot of experience with bird guides. A couple have been marginal at best, most have been perfectly adequate or even excellent, and a handful have been beyond wonderful.

Right now I’m putting together a program about my trip to Guyana, so I’m focusing on our guide there who, coincidentally, is one of the very finest birding guides I’ve ever spent time with. Leon Moore made what would certainly have been a wonderful trip into a genuinely amazing one.

This was a “fam tour” to familiarize the two of us who write about birds and the three who operate guiding companies with the birding possibilities in this under-explored, ecologically rich country. It had been organized after Leon’s guiding season was already planned out, so our tour began on May 1, which is normally when the rainy season, and his time off from guiding, begins. This year the rain started early, so rivers were already swollen when we arrived.

Guyana is such a desirable birding location because of its pristine rainforest and savannah, which of course means there are very few roads through the interior, and those roads and bridges can easily wash out, as we discovered the hard way. Fortunately, Leon was prepared for every contingency, keeping track of conditions by staying in communication with people all along the way—he even had a boat already lined up before we reached one washed out bridge.

Within the country, we traveled by air twice. The drive from Georgetown to Lethem, an excellent hub for several important birding spots, is 327 miles and takes 12 ½ hours. Rather than drive, we took a very small commercial plane and got in hours of birding in a 4x4 between Lethem and our first lodge; meanwhile, Leon’s assistant spent that day driving the van with our luggage.

We also had to fly to reach Kaieteur National Park, which is inaccessible except via boat and a long and arduous hike, or via a VERY small plane—the Kaieteur airfield is extremely small. After our thrilling time at the park, the plane brought us back to Georgetown. Again, Leon’s assistant spent that lovely day driving the van with our luggage from our last lodge back to Georgetown.

Working out logistics like that is a requirement for any bird guide, and even if it’s way, way trickier in a country like Guyana than in a country with a long history of ecotourism, it’s still a basic expectation. Somehow, Leon Moore made it all seem smooth and easy.

The minimum requirement for a bird guide anywhere is knowing how to find and identify every likely bird species. That’s tricky enough in the United States—here in Minnesota, a guide who works year-round must be familiar with more than 400 species. In Guyana, a country smaller than Minnesota, a guide must know twice as many species. Leon Moore happens to have the longest Guianan eBird list of anyone; as of October 8, he’d listed 545 species this year alone, and 721 species in all.

Finding and identifying as many birds as possible is fundamental to being a great birder, but being a great guide requires them to get a whole group of people of varying skills all looking at the same sought-for birds during the often brief time they’re there, and Leon excels at that. He’s a wonderful photographer, but he didn’t carry his good camera with him when we were birding—he was too busy helping us see those birds.

One of the traditions on many birding trips is taking time every night to “do the daily checklist,” going over all the birds seen that day. On a winter tour in northern Minnesota, this can take less than 10 minutes, but it can take up to an hour or more on a good day on a tropical trip.

Nowadays, most guides create eBird checklists to share with the group. This saves a lot of time and effort for those participants who use eBird to keep track of our sightings. To balance list-keeping with all their other responsibilities, some guides make just one or two running eBird lists all day, but Leon managed to make an eBird checklist for every single location we visited—67 checklists for our nine days of birding. He didn’t expect our group to also want to do a daily paper checklist, but some people insisted, so he got a checklist printed and went through it with us every night. Considering how much logistical stuff guides must do at night and before we set out in the morning, I was very impressed at how obliging Leon was dealing with this added duty.

Even beyond getting us on the birds and keeping track of them on eBird, Leon’s people skills were superb, and he never gossiped about or ridiculed clients from previous trips—something a few otherwise excellent guides do, which of course always has some of us concerned about what they’ll say about us in the future. I’ve become accustomed to birding guides paying closer attention to the men in groups, but not Leon.

This is the first trip I’ve ever been on in which I was the oldest participant—most birding tours include a lot of retirees. A few times—mainly getting in and out of boats, climbing one short but steep hill, and one situation in which we had to cross a makeshift bridge, he knew exactly how much help I’d want without being the least bit condescending or patronizing.

The oil industry has been burgeoning along Guyana’s coast, and building up the country’s ecotourism to ensure that the Guyana’s unspoiled countryside and rich biodiversity aren’t destroyed by billionaire greed is critical. Based on the beautiful places we birded in and lodges we stayed in, and with Leon Moore being such a great ambassador, I’d say Guyana’s birdlife is in excellent hands.