Fine FeatherTours

Del Richards has been birding across every Australian state for more than 40 years and has run Fine Feather Tours out of Mossman, North Queensland, for 27 years. Mossman sits an hour's drive north of Cairns on the Captain Cook Highway, next to what Richards' own site calls the richest birding area in Australia — more than half the country's bird species recorded within 200 kilometres, across eight habitats from lowland rainforest and mangroves to savanna woodland. Richards works the Daintree River, Mitchell River and Mount Lewis, and gathers records for the endangered Gouldian Finch in Far North Queensland. He has contributed to Australian field guides, guided for Bird Quest, Ribble Bird Tours in the UK and Rockjumper in South Africa, and leads a tour every two years for the Audubon Society of Portland, Oregon. He is a foundation member of Bird Trails Tropical Queensland. A keen photographer himself, Richards builds in time for guests to take their own images rather than treating photography as secondary to the species list. He guides every tour personally, working the same stretch of the Wet Tropics he has worked for nearly three decades.