wildlife-spotting guides Archives

Sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco.

The best places to see sea lions in California: Your complete guide

The California sea lion is one of the most abundant and adaptable marine mammals on the Pacific coast. Intelligent, vocal and apparently unbothered by human attention, it has colonised harbour walls, marina pontoons and rocky outcrops from the Mexican border to the Oregon state line.…

Dolphins swimming in Port Stephens, New South Wales.

The best places to see dolphins in New South Wales, Australia

New South Wales has an extraordinary coastline — 2,000 kilometres of it. From the subtropical waters off Byron Bay to the cold-water estuaries of the far south coast, bottlenose dolphins are resident along virtually the entire stretch. Several bays and headlands also see common dolphins,…

A platypus in Broken River inside Eungella National Park, Queensland.

The best places to see platypuses in Queensland, Australia

The platypus is one of the most improbable animals on earth — venomous, egg-laying, duck-billed and beaver-tailed. It also happens to be genuinely difficult to find. Platypuses are shy, solitary, largely crepuscular and spend most of their time in burrows or underwater. Even in good…

The best places to see manatees in Georgia, USA

Georgia is not Florida. It does not have warm springs, dedicated manatee refuges or swim-with programmes. What it does have is a remarkably productive stretch of Atlantic coastline — the Golden Isles, the Lowcountry, the ACE Basin — where West Indian manatees spend the warmer…

Puffins can be seen all around the Icelandic coast.

The best places to see puffins in Iceland: Complete guide for bird-watchers in Reykjavik and beyond

The Atlantic puffin is, by any reasonable measure, an absurd bird. It has the colouring of a clown, the flight style of a panicking bumble bee and the waddling gait of something that has recently misplaced its dignity. It is also one of the most…

The best places to see flamingos in Andalucía, Spain: The complete guide for bird-watchers

The greater flamingo is not an animal that does things by halves. It stands in the shallows in enormous concentrations — hundreds, sometimes thousands, occasionally tens of thousands — and it is the specific contrast that makes a large colony so affecting: the industrial-pink mass…

The Phillip Island Penguin Parade in Victoria, Australia.

The best places to see penguins in Victoria, Australia: Your complete guide

The little penguin — the world's smallest penguin species, standing roughly 33 centimetres tall and weighing not much more than a kilogram — has an improbable relationship with the state of Victoria. It breeds along much of the Victorian coastline, tolerates human visitors with an…

The best places in Florida to see manatees: Your complete guide

The West Indian manatee is not built for drama. It drifts, grazes, surfaces for air and drifts again. It has the approximate silhouette of a submerged armchair. And yet people cross continents to see one. There is something in the manatee's profound lack of urgency…