I am forwarding the following at the author's request.
Blake Maybank
Nova Scotia, Canada
=====================================================
Last May I wrote asking for people's experiences with biting bugs in
Queensland, Australia, in July (their winter). I received many answers,
with most people reporting no problems at that time of year.
I wanted to let you all know that we agree that there were almost no
mosquitoes or other "bitey things," as one fellow called them in the
Brisbane and Cairns areas where we spent three weeks birding in
July/August. I bought a can of RID, the most recommended bug spray, just
in case, but I only used it a couple of times and ended up giving it to
the airline rep when we checked in at Sydney (you can't take flammable
items like that on board). But I was happy not to have needed it!
Several people wrote asking us how we planned this trip. We used a
couple of books but didn't find them terribly helpful. Mostly we used
trip reports from other birders, gleaning mentions of places they'd
stayed and enjoyed. We bought a few from the ABA and read several from
these sites:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~birdtrips/TripReports.html
http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=birdchat which is Birdchat
archives
I also checked sites on the web. I'll list a few of the best ones:
http://www.ausbird.com/
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard/abi.htm (good for season info)
http://www.camacdonald.com/birding/paaustralia.htm
Then I looked up individual sites to paste together a trip for us for
that season of the year (Australian winter, in our case, made us want to
stay to the north to take advantage of the best birding season there).
For example,
http://www.abberton.org/ (which we enjoyed a lot!)
http://www.oreillys.com.au/
http://www.birdwatchers.com.au/
Thanks to all who responded--we really appreciated the help and
information! We had an amazing trip.
Carol Bishop
Placentia, CA
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