America: land of opportunity. In particular a land of opportunity for birding, and, embracing the American way, I exploited many of these opportunities on a recent month long drive around the American west. I’ve been to the west a couple of times previously but always in autumn or winter, never summer, so there were plenty of opportunities for new birds and other wildlife.
I flew with British Airways via Heathrow to San Francisco, where I picked up a hire car from National (booked via Expedia). The car hire was remarkably casual. I more-or-less got told to pick a car from the fairly extensively stocked lot! I’d booked a ‘compact car’ but I’m not sure they have many of those in America so I ended up with a mid-size Toyota Corolla. This was basically fine for the whole trip and easy to drive. I had my own sat-nav, which was extremely helpful even if it sometimes didn’t quite know where it was going. This caused us to fall out on occasions, but we generally patched things up. Accommodation was mostly in motels, but I camped on six nights. Costs were fairly high, but I reckoned most things were cheaper than in the UK, particularly petrol (still less than half UK prices, despite recent rises).
I had spent a lot of time planning the itinerary. The visitor to America is not lacking for sources of information on birding sites. For most areas there are books or online guides and Ebird is now an extremely helpful guide to what can be seen in different areas. Because it’s so up-to-date Ebird is very useful in finding out where particular birds have been seen recently and it helped me to find numerous species. That said there are still areas that I visited where coverage is rather sparse and for these areas it’s perhaps not quite as helpful. I was able to stick fairly closely to the basic itinerary that I planned, although a few small adjustments were needed. To give an idea of the route, these are the overnight stops:
Sun 19th June Mill Valley, CA
Mon 20th June Fairfield, CA
Tue 21st June Camping near Willow Creek, CA
Wed 22nd June Crescent City, CA
Thurs 23rd June Newport, OR
Fri 24th June Westport, WA
Sat 25th June Westport, WA, Westport Seabirds pelagic trip
Sun 26th June Camping near Port Angeles, WA
Mon 27th June Anacortes, WA
Tue 28th June Camping near Winthrop, WA
Wed 29th June Okanogan, WA
Thurs 30th June Camping, Beth Lake near Chesaw, WA
Fri 1st July Sandpoint, ID
Sat 2nd July West Glacier, MT
Sun 3rd July Camping, St Mary, Glacier National Park, MT
Mon 4th July Great Falls, MT
Tues 5th July Idaho Falls, ID
Wed 6th July Filmore, UT
Thurs 7th July Flagstaff, AZ
Fri 8th July Tucson, AZ
Sat 9th July Tucson, AZ
Sun 10th July Sierra Vista, AZ
Mon 11th July Sierra Vista, AZ
Tues 12th July Madera Canyon, AZ
Weds 13th July Madera Canyon, AZ
Thurs 14th July Brawley, CA
Fri 15th July Camping, Angeles National Forest
Sat 16th July Camarillo, CA
Sun 17th July Maricopa, CA
Mon 18th July Monterey, CA
Tues 19th July Flight San Francisco – London
Weds 20th July Arrive London, flight to Aberdeen
I’ll do a day-by-day account over the coming weeks (or months quite possibly!) but, just to tantalise you, I managed to see 341 species of bird and 45 species of mammal. There were some good ones amongst them.
It will be interesting to see your trip reports as your adventure unfolds! I have been to some of the places you mentioned, some being Westport pelagic, Port Angeles, Tucson, Sierra Visa and Madera Canyon. They all offered great birding!