Madagascar is one of the major zoogeographic regions of the Earth. Ninety percent of its forest species and all of its native land mammals are unique, among them the many species of lemurs, a primate group now largely confined to Madagascar. More than half of the 250-plus bird species are endemic, including five families of birds found only here and on the nearby Comoros: the mesites, the monotypic Cuckoo-Roller, the ground-rollers, the asities, and the vangas. The couas comprise an endemic subfamily, and the Madagascar greenbuls are sufficiently distinct to perhaps merit their own endemic family as well.

Our tour visits all of the major habitats of the island, from gallery forests at Berenty and spiny forest near Toliara to dry deciduous forest near Mahajanga in the northwest and lush rainforest at Perinet, Mantadia, and Ranomafana. This broad coverage of the best locales gives us an excellent chance to find all the endemic bird families as well as some 110 of Madagascar's endemic birds--the few others being either nearly extinct, virtually unknown, highly localized, or inaccessible to groups.

To walk the misty forest of Perinet to the dawn chorus of Indris crying, couas calling, and vangas scolding, or to hike the gallery forest of Berenty followed by troops of Ring-tailed Lemurs while Black Parrots and Cuckoo-Rollers fly overhead and giant fruit bats rise on noisy, leathery wings is truly to feel one is returning to a living remnant of the Eocene era--the Earth as it might have appeared fifty million years ago.

Extension
The islands of Reunion and Mauritius are synonymous with rare birds. The Dodo, a huge, flightless, aberrant pigeon, hung on in Mauritius until about 1681 but, with the arrival of humans, these islands were markedly altered. Native forest habitat in Reunion covers a tiny fraction of its original area; in Mauritius the situation is even more critical as what little forest remains is highly threatened by introduced shrubs. It is therefore not surprising that Mauritius has some of the rarest birds on Earth--Mauritius Kestrel, Mauritius Parakeet, and Pink Pigeon (each the focus of intense conservation efforts). We have a good chance of seeing all the surviving endemics of Mauritius and Reunion, as we have on past tours. The beautiful and wonderfully tropical Seychelles, with a further eleven endemics, are offered as an optional extension to the main tour.

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