Where do you want to look
Field guides to the places we cover: seasons, habitats, signature species, and the naturalists who know them best.
- Abra Patricia, Peru: Owlet country: hummingbird feeders at the pass and orchids in the mossy forest. · Northern cloud forest · peak May-Oct
- Acadia, USA: Where the mountains meet the sea on Mount Desert Island: peregrines back on the Precipice cliffs after the reintroduction, common eider and black guillemot off the shore paths, and 45 miles of carriage roads through spruce that Rockefeller built for horses and left to walkers. · Granite coast, spruce-fir & kettle pond · peak Jun-Sep; the first two weeks of Oct for the leaves
- Alta Verapaz, Guatemala: Cobán’s mossy cloud forest: quetzal country with Pink-headed Warbler in the pines above. · Highland cloud forest · peak Feb-May
- Amboseli, Kenya: Elephants against Kilimanjaro: swamps fed by snowmelt off the mountain hold big tuskers all year, and the open pan around them means you watch families cross in the open with the peak behind. · Dry lake bed, swamp & acacia woodland · peak Jun-Oct and Jan-Feb
- Anchorage & the Chugach Front, USA: The bowl and the mountain wall behind it, and everything within about forty-five minutes of town: moose in the Anchorage greenbelts the year round, beluga and salmon at Potter Marsh, Dall sheep and bears on the Chugach front, and the aurora over Eklutna once the nights come back. · Coastal bowl, boreal forest & the Chugach front range · peak May-Sep for wildlife; Sep-Apr for aurora
- Andasibe-Mantadia, Madagascar: The forest you hear before you see: indri, the largest living lemur, calling across the valleys at dawn, with diademed sifaka in Mantadia next door and chameleons and mouse lemurs on the night walks along the road. · Eastern montane rainforest · peak Sep-Dec (lemurs active; the rains ease)
- Aniakchak, USA: 586,000 acres on the Pacific Ring of Fire, and a fraction of the visitors of any other park unit. Its centre is a caldera six miles across and 2,500 feet deep, ringed by the jagged remains of the mountain that collapsed to form it roughly 3,500 years ago. · Volcanic caldera & Alaska Peninsula tundra · peak Jul-Aug
- Annapurna, Nepal: The classic Himalayan walk-in, from subtropical valleys to a pass at 5,400 metres: rhododendron forest in flower in spring, Himalayan monal and blood pheasant in the birch above it, and blue sheep on the dry Mustang side. · Rhododendron forest, terraced valley & high pass · peak Oct-Nov (clearest); Mar-Apr for the rhododendrons
- Antisana, Ecuador: A reserve of high paramo under a glaciated volcano two hours from Quito, and the country's most dependable Andean condor watching: the birds hold the Antisanilla cliffs, while black-faced ibis, Andean gull and silvery grebe work the Micacocha lake below. · High paramo, glacial lakes & condor cliffs · peak Year-round; driest Jun-Sep
- Arches and Canyonlands, USA: The Colorado Plateau at its most exposed, out of Moab: desert bighorn on the Island in the Sky rims, collared lizards on the fins, and a crust of living soil between the sandstone that takes a century to grow back from one boot. · Slickrock desert, cryptobiotic soil & river canyon · peak Mar-May and Sep-Oct; summer is dangerous on the slickrock
- Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, USA: Nineteen million acres in northeast Alaska with no trails, no roads and no human infrastructure, managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the only conservation unit protecting a complete spectrum of arctic ecosystems in North America in undisturbed condition. · Coastal plain, Brooks Range & arctic tundra · peak Jun-Aug
- Arenal & La Fortuna, Costa Rica: The volcano's rainforest skirt: night walks for tree frogs and vipers, hanging bridges through the canopy, sloths and toucans in the lodge gardens, hot springs after dark. · Rainforest & volcano slopes · peak Dec-Apr (the drier side of a rainforest year)
- Baja California, Mexico: Grey whales come to San Ignacio and Magdalena to calve and, for reasons nobody has explained, bring their calves to the boats. On the other coast the Sea of Cortez holds blue whales in winter, sea lion colonies at Los Islotes, and endemic desert islands Steinbeck's Log described - the whole peninsula is two seas and a desert between them. · Grey-whale lagoon, desert island & Sea of Cortez · peak Jan-Mar for the grey whales in the lagoons; Jun-Nov for the Sea of Cortez
- Bandhavgarh, India: One of the highest tiger densities in India, in a small park under a fort: tigers on the valley tracks, sloth bear on the termite mounds in spring, and a cliff line of caves above the sal. · Sal valleys, bamboo & sandstone cliff · peak Feb-Apr
- Banff and Jasper, Canada: The Bow Valley and the Icefields Parkway between them: grizzly and black bear on the avalanche slopes, bighorn sheep and mountain goat at the roadside licks, elk bugling through September, and the larch valleys turning gold for two weeks before the snow. · Montane forest, subalpine larch & icefield · peak Jun-Sep; late Sep for the larches and the elk rut
- Bardia, Nepal: Nepal's largest lowland park and its quietest: tigers tracked on foot with a guide along the Karnali, wild elephant in the sal, gharial and Gangetic dolphin in the river itself, and grassland phantas that hold swamp deer in the hundreds. Far enough west that most Chitwan traffic never reaches it. · Sal forest, phanta grassland & the Karnali river · peak Oct-Apr; Mar-Apr for tigers at the water
- Blue Spring & the St. Johns, USA: A 72-degree spring run off the St. Johns River that fills with wintering West Indian Manatees; paddles launch from the river outside the refuge boundary. · Spring run & St. Johns River floodplain · peak Nov-Mar (manatees pack the run on cold mornings)
- Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda: Half the world's mountain gorillas in one forest, on ground steep enough to earn the name: a permit, a tracking team, and an hour with a habituated family, with 350 bird species and 23 Albertine Rift endemics in the same trees. · Afromontane rainforest on a steep ridge system · peak Jun-Aug and Dec-Feb (the drier trekking windows)
- Cajas National Park, Ecuador: A high-Andean lake district above Cuenca: hundreds of glacial tarns in the tussock paramo, polylepis groves holding hummingbirds and tapaculos, and trails that start near 4,000 metres. · High paramo, polylepis woods & glacial lakes · peak Year-round (drier Jun-Sep; weather turns fast at 4,000 m)
- Campbell River & Bute Inlet, Canada: Discovery Passage at the head of the Strait of Georgia and the long fjord behind it: grizzlies on the Orford River salmon run in Bute Inlet, guided from the Homalco Nation's own territory, with orcas, humpbacks and Steller sea lions in the tidal passages on the way up. · Tidal passages, salmon estuary & coastal rainforest · peak Aug-Oct for the grizzlies; Jun-Sep on the water
- Cape May, USA: The Atlantic flyway's funnel: autumn cold fronts pour hawks and songbirds over the point, Red Knots stage on the horseshoe-crab beaches in May, and the back-bay boats work the marsh in between. · Migration cape: salt marsh, back bays & dune forest · peak Sep-Nov (the autumn flights); May shorebirds on the bayshore
- Cape Peninsula, South Africa: A mountain of fynbos - the smallest and most crowded plant kingdom on earth - running down to two oceans: African penguins on the beach at Boulders, sunbirds and sugarbirds in the protea, and Cape fur seals and great whites offshore. · Fynbos mountain, kelp coast & seabird island · peak Sep-Apr; Jun-Nov for the whales
- Chambal & Dudhwa, India: Two halves of northern India that most itineraries skip: the Chambal is a clear ravine river holding gharial, the last big population of them, with Indian skimmer and marsh crocodile on the sand bars, and Dudhwa is terai grassland north of it for swamp deer, rhino and tiger. · Ravine river, sand bank & terai grassland · peak Nov-Mar
- Chiapas Highlands, Mexico: Highland endemics above San Cristóbal, with market lunches between mixed flocks. · Pine-oak & cloud forest · peak Nov-Apr
- Chiloé & the Lake District, Chile: Albatrosses and penguins off Chiloé, Magellanic Woodpeckers in the old growth. · Fjords & Valdivian rainforest · peak Nov-Mar
- Chitwan, Nepal: The Terai lowlands where Nepal keeps its rhinos: greater one-horned rhino in the elephant grass, gharial and mugger on the Rapti sandbanks, tigers that a few people see, and one of the densest bird lists in Asia. · Terai grassland, sal forest & river oxbow · peak Oct-Mar (the grass is cut in Jan and everything is visible)
- Chobe, Botswana: One of the largest elephant populations on the continent, watched from a boat: herds coming down to the Chobe river to drink and swim in the late afternoon, buffalo on the floodplain, and the Savuti's lions inland. · Riverfront floodplain, mopane & Savuti marsh · peak Jul-Oct on the river; Dec-Mar on the Savuti
- Churchill, Canada: Polar bears waiting on the Cape Churchill shore for the bay to freeze, and in summer tens of thousands of beluga in the river estuary: the one place on the continent where both are watchable from the ground, with the aurora overhead when the nights come back. · Hudson Bay coast: tundra, willow flats & estuary · peak Oct-Nov (polar bears on the shore); Jul-Aug (beluga)
- Colorado Rockies, USA: Dancing grouse at dawn, rosy-finches in the high bowls, and ptarmigan above the treeline: the classic spring circuit. · Sagebrush leks to alpine tundra · peak Apr-Jun (lek season)
- Cotopaxi, Ecuador: Open paramo running up to the ice of one of the world's highest active volcanoes: Andean condor over the ridges, carunculated caracara and Andean lapwing on the grassland, and wild horses on the plain below Limpiopungo. · Paramo grassland under a glaciated stratovolcano · peak Jun-Sep and Dec-Jan (the drier, clearer windows)
- Crater Lake and the Oregon Cascades, USA: The deepest lake in the country in a caldera with no inlet and no outlet, ringed by hemlock and whitebark pine: Clark’s nutcracker working the cones, black bear on the pumice flats, and a rim that holds snow into July. · Caldera lake, mountain hemlock & volcanic ash flat · peak Jul-Sep, once the rim road clears; deep snow Nov-Jun
- Crooked Tree Lagoon, Belize: When the lagoon drops, the birds concentrate: boat mornings among storks, snail kites, and Limpkins. · Lagoon & lowland broadleaf · peak Mar-May (low water)
- Crystal River & Kings Bay, USA: The manatee capital: hundreds of West Indian Manatees winter in the 72-degree springs of Kings Bay, and Three Sisters Springs is the swim-with-them heart of it. · Spring-fed bay, seagrass & cypress shoreline · peak Nov-Mar (manatees gather at the springs)
- Cuyabeno, Ecuador: Blackwater forest reached by canoe: pink river dolphins in the lagoon, monkeys in the flooded canopy, and caiman eyes in the torchlight on the night ride back. · Flooded blackwater forest & oxbow lagoons · peak Year-round; the lagoons are fullest Apr-Jul
- Death Valley, USA: The lowest, driest and hottest ground on the continent and a great deal more alive than it looks: pupfish that have held on in single spring-fed pools since the lake dried, kit foxes at dusk on the fans, and a wildflower year every decade that turns the whole valley floor gold. · Salt pan, alluvial fan & pinyon-juniper range · peak Nov-Mar; a wet winter brings the wildflower bloom in Feb-Apr
- Denali, USA: Six million acres on one road: grizzly and caribou on open tundra where nothing hides them, moose in the spruce at the entrance, and Dall sheep on the ridges the park was founded to protect. · Taiga, braided river bars & alpine tundra · peak Jun-Sep (the park road season)
- Disko Bay & the Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland: The fastest-moving glacier outside Antarctica empties into the bay, and the wildlife works the water between the bergs: humpback and fin whales feeding through the summer, ringed seal at the ice edge, and white-tailed eagles over the basalt cliffs of Disko Island. · Calving icefjord, Arctic coast & basalt island · peak Jun-Sep
- East Greenland, Greenland: The largest fjord system on earth, and the emptiest coast in the Arctic: musk ox on the tundra above Scoresby Sund, narwhal and walrus working the ice edge, polar bear tracks on the shore fast ice, and the icebergs that calve off the Sermilik glaciers past Tasiilaq. · Arctic fjords, tundra & the inland ice · peak Jul-Sep (open water); Feb-Apr (aurora and sea ice)
- Etosha, Namibia: A white pan visible from orbit, ringed with waterholes you park at and wait: black rhino coming in after dark, elephant dusted the colour of the pan, and springbok, oryx and zebra in numbers, all against a horizon with nothing on it. · Salt pan, mopane scrub & artesian waterholes · peak Jun-Oct (game concentrates at the holes)
- Everest & the Khumbu, Nepal: Sherpa country under the highest mountain on earth: monasteries at 4,000 metres, Himalayan tahr and musk deer on the slopes above Namche, and the possibility of a snow leopard nobody plans a trip around. · High valley, glacier moraine & alpine scrub · peak Oct-Nov and Mar-May
- Fiordland, New Zealand: Ice-cut sounds under a rainforest that grows on bare rock: fur seals and Fiordland crested penguins on the walls of Doubtful and Milford, bottlenose dolphins in the sounds, and kea working the car parks at the pass. · Glacial fiord, beech rainforest & alpine tussock · peak Nov-Apr; it rains two days in three regardless
- Galápagos Islands, Ecuador: The islands that taught the world evolution: giant tortoises in the highland ranches, marine iguanas on the lava, frigatebirds and boobies at arm's length, and day boats fanning out from the port towns. · Volcanic archipelago: lava shore, mangrove & highland forest · peak Year-round (warm-wet Dec-May, cool garúa Jun-Nov)
- Gates of the Arctic, USA: 8.4 million acres above the Arctic Circle with no roads and no maintained trails - the second-largest unit of the park system. The Arrigetch Peaks, whose name means 'fingers of the hand extended', are its signature: granite needles above a creek rising in the glaciers behind them. · Brooks Range granite, tundra & wild rivers · peak Jun-Aug
- Glacier National Park, USA: The crown of the continent, joined to Waterton Lakes across the Canadian line: grizzly and black bear on the huckleberry slopes, mountain goat and bighorn at Logan Pass, and wolverine in country that still has enough winter for them. · Cedar-hemlock valley, avalanche slope & alpine tundra · peak Jul-Sep, while Going-to-the-Sun is open end to end
- Grand Canyon, USA: A mile of elevation and four life zones between the rim and the river: California condors over the South Rim since the reintroduction, Kaibab squirrels on the north side and nowhere else, and rim-to-rim walkers crossing all of it in a day. · Canyon rim conifer to inner-gorge desert scrub · peak Apr-May and Sep-Oct; the North Rim closes mid-Oct to mid-May
- Grand Staircase-Escalante, USA: Coyote Gulch, Buckskin and the Paria: the deepest slot country on the plateau, where a canyon wren’s call runs the length of a slot you can touch both walls of and cottonwoods mark the only water for a day’s walk. · Narrow slot canyon, desert varnish & hanging garden · peak Apr-May and Sep-Oct; flash-flood season is Jul-Sep
- Grand Teton, USA: The range rises straight off the valley floor with no foothills in front of it, and the wildlife is in the flats below rather than on the peaks: moose in the willow bottoms along the Snake, trumpeter swans on the oxbows, bison and pronghorn on the sage, and elk wintering in their thousands on the National Elk Refuge at Jackson. The pronghorn that summer here walk a hundred and fifty miles south in autumn along a corridor they have used for six thousand years. · Sagebrush flat, willow bottom, lodgepole forest & alpine · peak Jun for moose calves and wildflowers; Sep-Oct for the elk rut; Dec-Mar for the sleigh ride
- Gunung Mulu, Malaysia: Caves at a scale that is hard to hold in the head - Sarawak Chamber is the largest known cave chamber on earth - and every evening two to three million wrinkle-lipped bats spiral out of Deer Cave in ribbons while bat hawks work the column. Above the caves, the Pinnacles are limestone blades standing out of the forest. · Limestone karst, cave system & lowland dipterocarp forest · peak Year-round; the bat exodus needs a dry evening
- Haida Gwaii, Canada: An archipelago that stayed ice-free through the last glaciation and has been going its own way ever since: subspecies found nowhere else, over a million nesting seabirds including most of the world's ancient murrelets, and Gwaii Haanas in the south where the Haida Watchmen keep the village sites and the poles at SGang Gwaay are being allowed to return to the forest. · Old-growth Sitka spruce, seabird cliff & kelp forest · peak Jun-Sep
- Hawai'i Island (Big Island), USA: Manta rays feeding in the lights after dark off the Kona coast, and native honeycreepers in the ohia forest on the windward slope. · Lava desert to wet montane rainforest · peak Year-round (humpbacks Dec-Apr)
- Hemis and Ladakh, India: The most reliable snow leopard country on earth, and reliable is a strong word for an animal that was barely photographed before this decade: Hemis in late winter when the leopards follow blue sheep down into the gorges, with Ladakh urial, ibex, lammergeier and golden eagle over the same ground. · Trans-Himalayan cold desert, gorge & high pasture · peak Jan-Mar for snow leopard; Jun-Sep for the passes and the flowers
- Hermanus & Walker Bay, South Africa: The best land-based whale watching in the world: southern right whales come into Walker Bay to calve and can be watched from the cliff path in town, with Bryde's whales and dolphin offshore and a cliff of fynbos behind. · Sheltered bay, kelp reef & coastal fynbos · peak Jun-Nov (southern right whales calve in the bay)
- Hwange, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe's biggest park, and in the late dry season one of the great elephant spectacles anywhere: herds queueing at pumped pans, big buffalo bulls behind them, and hides you sit in while it happens. · Kalahari sand teak, mopane & pumped waterholes · peak Aug-Oct (the game stacks up on the pans)
- Iguazú, Argentina: The falls at dawn: Great Dusky Swifts behind the water and bamboo specialists in the forest. · Atlantic Forest · peak Aug-Nov
- Joshua Tree, USA: The seam where two deserts meet, which is why the plant list is twice what either has alone: Joshua trees pollinated by one moth and nothing else, desert bighorn on the monzogranite, and roadrunners and phainopepla in the washes below Palm Springs. · Mojave yucca woodland meeting Colorado Desert · peak Oct-Apr; Mar-Apr for the bloom
- Kakadu, Australia: A World Heritage park listed for its culture as much as its wildlife, and the two are not separable here: saltwater crocodiles and magpie geese in tens of thousands on the Yellow Water billabong as the floodplain dries, black wallaroo on the escarpment, and rock art at Ubirr and Nourlangie painted over twenty thousand years. · Monsoon floodplain, sandstone escarpment & paperbark billabong · peak May-Sep (the dry, when the floodplain concentrates)
- Kanha, India: The forest Kipling wrote about and the reason the barasingha still exists: hard-ground swamp deer on the grassy maidans that were saved for them, tiger and dhole in the sal, and gaur coming out of the treeline at dusk. · Sal forest & open maidan grassland · peak Feb-Apr (before the park closes for the monsoon)
- Katmai, USA: The world's largest brown bear population, four hundred miles of wild Pacific coast, and the Valley of 10,000 Smokes - the ash and pumice flow laid down by the 1912 Novarupta eruption, one of the most powerful documented on Earth, and still unaltered. · Ash valleys, salmon rivers & wild Pacific coast · peak Jun-Sep (the salmon run)
- Kaua'i, USA: Laysan Albatross nesting on the clifftops at Kilauea Point, tropicbirds turning over Waimea Canyon, and one of the wettest forests on earth on the plateau above. · Sea cliffs, koa-ohia forest & the Alaka'i plateau · peak Nov-Jul (albatross on the north shore)
- Kaziranga, India: Elephant grass on the Brahmaputra floodplain holding about two-thirds of all the greater one-horned rhino left alive, at a tiger density no other reserve matches, with wild water buffalo, eastern swamp deer that survive almost nowhere else, and Bengal florican displaying over the grass in spring. · Brahmaputra floodplain grassland & wet evergreen · peak Nov-Apr; the park closes for the monsoon