Epic Bird Tours, Inc. offers a wide and growing range of set-date and custom, private tours to many birding hotspots and must-see locales around the world. We work with local guides, ground agents and tour operators –often many of the same professionals who work with the larger and expensive bird tour companies. Our tour leaders are experienced, seasoned and adept guides, speakers of the local languages and familiar with the customs and culture of the localities being visited. Our knowledgeable tour leaders and guides make for a well rounded birding experience. They help the birder come to more deeply understand the ecosystems and ecologies of the birds being observed as well as the lives of the people and cultures who live with and among the birds. Epic Bird Tours, Inc. tour leaders and guides makes for a “total” or “holistic” birding experience.

What is more, we regularly offer “At Cost Tours” to various and unlimited birding destinations around the world. When we’re trying out a new lodge, or scouting out a new birding circuit or destination we invite the birder to come with us at-cost. More on this on our At Cost Tours page.

We are different from other birding companies not only because we consistently offer the lowest priced tours, but because we are a truly conservation minded, locally minded company. Part of the reason why our tours come to you at such a reduced cost is because of our different approach to birding tours. The guides, tour leaders, lodges, ground agents and helpers who make the tours and the finding of the birds possible are treated like our partners, and in many cases, are our partners. This is to say that costs and risks are assumed equally, with no price gouging.

Unfortunately, as it is in our world, the value of an ecosystem or habitat –no matter how endangered, is only worth saving when it is worth something more (or perceived to be worth more) than the raw materials which can be extracted from it. This is to say that the more money local people make from non-consumptive tourism of their forests, mountains, plains, deserts, marshes and seas the less likely is that they cut down, raze, plow, irrigate, drain and dredge these last bastions of earth’s immense diversity.

So, Epic Bird Tours, Inc. strives to and does operate as a partner of the local birding and tourist business rather than a “colonial-like” employer. The net result is inexpensive birding tours and a better planet.

Another way by which Epic Bird Tours, Inc. is able to offer such inexpensive tours is by making use of free internet resources. Those of you who have hired web developers to build and maintain large and growing sites know about the financial and logistical nightmare that is Web Development. We here at Epic Bird Tours, Inc. have managed to find a balance between free, DIY sites and professionally developed sites. Our main web page www.epicbirds.com comes to you as a standard, periodically updated and enhanced website. But wherever possible, especially on those pages which see constant, monthly, weekly even daily updates, we have managed to make use of such sites as Blogger.com, Flickr.com, Bubo.org and others. As with all websites, www.epicbirds.com is a work in progress. But we strive to make that progress affordable and sustainable…

Pace of Tours
Finally, it is pertinent to discuss the feel and general pace of our tours. Of course, I would impossible that our tours were all the same. Certainly the birds are different. Each tour is designed and operated by its own tour leader or tour leader/guide. Some, though few, of our tours offer the traditional, rather fast paced tours. These are tours where many different habitats, ecosystems, range-restricted and endemic or hard-to-find species. An example of this is our Colorado Grouse Tour with Mike Hendrickson. On that tour you are all but certain to see all of the grouse, rosy-finches you managed to miss in years past.

By contrast, most of our tours have a somewhat more relaxed pace. Less ground is covered and several, though fewer, habitats are birded. Instead, we trade the opportunity to see oodles birds by birding oodles of places, by birding fewer places better and longer. More time is spent at each locale, thus the birder sees more rare birds including those once-in-a-lifetime finds like a Harpy Eagle. More importantly, we tend to miss fewer of those common or often-seen-birds that are somehow missed on other tours. This translates into less expensive tours, a better knowledge of the birds being sought, a deeper connection to the ecosystems of the birds, while still seeing as many and sometimes more birds than would otherwise be seen by the traditional “industry standard” means. Moreover our tours are less tiring and feel like vacations, which is what they are.

As you look through our site you will undoubtedly have questions. Do not hesitate to e-mail us or call us. We are here to answer your questions and help you in any way we can.