Bucket Lists: If it’s Nature, Just GO

Places I’ve never been to before:

  • The Pantanal (obvious reasons). JAGUARS!!
  • Patagonia (stunning mountain scenery, guancaos and hopefully pumas!)
  • Australia and New Zealand for the dazzling avifauna (cockatoos and parrots, fairy wrens, bowerbirds, kiwis, etc)
  • Japan for the snow monkeys
  • South-east Asia for the birds and plants
  • The edges of the Congo basin for the apes, birds (such as turacos), and plants
  • Yellowstone/Grand Tetons/Denali/Banff/Jasper for the wolves, bears, and hopefully mountain lions!
  • Everglades (although I hear that virtually anywhere in Florida if there is even a shallow puddle of water, there’s an alligator in it)
  • Technically I’ve been to Zambia as I went to their side of Victoria Falls, but that’s right on the border. As such, I’d like to go deeper into Zambia and see their gems such as Luiwa Plains. Oh, and shoebill storks!

Places I’ve been to:

  • Miami/Florida Keys - the last time I was there was when I was a small kid, so I’d like to go again to appreciate the flora and fauna this time.
  • Okavango Delta - I want to return again this time armed with a telephoto lens, as everything is very wide spaced apart and quite often far away. Not surprising as it’s such a vast area. Very beautiful place. Want to be in more wildlife-desinated area e.g. Moremi Reserve. Hopefully I will see painted wolves/African wild dogs there.
  • The Caprivi Strip is beautiful and I want to see & explore more of it.
  • In the same vein, I barely scratched the surface of Chobe when I was there very briefly on my road tour.
  • Namibia - the country as a whole is visually stunning and has a wealth of unique plants. Maybe see wild cheetahs while I’m at it.
  • Kruger National Park, but this time I’d like to explore further north of Satara (never been to Pafuri) - excellent birding opportunities in the north of Kruger. Maybe I will have good luck and see cheetahs and painted wolves/African wild dogs there, as this was when I both first saw them in the wild as a kid in the early 2000s, but the photos have been mislaid somewhere.

I think I’ll stop now haha.

2 Likes

All of them. That’s a bit unrealistic so I’ll list several; 1. The Amazon 2. The Pantanal 3. Kruger NP 4. All natural area of the USA 5. India and 6. Ethiopia. Still a bit unrealistic but it’s a start.

Boy… too many to count. I’ve been really fortunate that I’ve already been to and seen a lot (won’t list them) as a result of personal trips and my work, but some that are remaining (and not including places I want to return to and spend more time in) and high on the supertanker list:

  • Australia (SW the parasitic Christmas Trees, Northern AU tropical rainforest as well as intertidal zones in one of the largest tropical tides in the world, NW stromatolites, Eastern tall temperate eucalyptus forests that rival redwoods in height, Tasmania forests in the western portion)
  • New Zealand (southern region where the Tree Daisy - Olearia hectorii - lives)
  • The Białowieża Forest in Poland, the largest of the old growth forests in Europe.
  • Russia (the Kamchatka Peninsula, as well as the coastal broadleaf forest north of Korea, and the Manpupuner rock formations in the Urals)
  • The beech forests of the Carpathian Mountains
  • South Korea (mountain forests and expansive intertidal mudflats)
  • Patagonia both east and west sides
  • Papua New Guinea (mountains and lowland wetland forests)
  • Coral reefs in eastern Indonesia
  • The Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forests in Iran, one of the few temperate rainforests in the world
  • The Salalah Khareef in Oman during and the month or two after the monsoons
  • Socotra island
  • Interior Congo jungle
  • Virunga mountains
  • Okavango Delta
  • Most of Botswana and Namibia
  • Almost anywhere in Antarctica, as well as undersea off the coast
  • Atlas mountains (it’s a shame that the bears are extinct there)
  • The Canary Islands, specifically the cloud forests
  • Any and all meteor impact craters
  • Greenland, both coast and interior
  • Iceland
  • Coastal Norway
  • Eastern India, in particular the Assam region
  • Bhutan
  • Northern Myanmar, along the Chinese border
  • The Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan intersection
  • Lake Baikal
  • The methane outgassing craters in Siberia
  • The remote Aleutian Islands
  • Many of the Pacific Islands especially Pohnpei, Fuji, Kiribati, and Tahiti, both for what’s on land and for the diving
  • The Kerguelen Islands as well as South Georgia Island

Honestly, I could spend all day listing places I’d like to visit; and if we expanded it to places not on this planet the list would only grow larger.

3 Likes

That’s actually a pretty manageable list.

My bucket list:

  • Go on a boat in the ocean
  • Get better at identifying species
  • Whale-watching trip
  • Tavel the world and meet new people and see new animals
  • Going camping again(due to Covid I have not been able to go for a long time)
  • Read what is on everyone’s bucket list

Better stop! I could go on forever if I wanted to!

2 Likes

-Florida, or somewhere down South to see alligators
-Go to any rainforest
-Go scuba diving somewhere in the ocean
-See whales, sharks and lots of other marine animals
-See the giant redwoods in California
-Go birding at Presque Isle, Lake Erie or Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (Probably the most reasonable of my list, as they are the closest locations for me)
-See a peregrine falcon dive
And a lot of other things I can’t think of right now

2 Likes

I have seen only a few, moribund horseshoe crabs in the Gulf. But I live along the Mississippi Sound, shallow muddy shores not like Florida coast.

1 Like

Jeez… I’ve got a lot that need to be narrowed down, but here are the tops of my list:

Located in my state(MS):
-Dusky Gopher Frogs are possibly the highest amphibian on my bucket list in general. I love them, and greatly respect the people working to save them. Hope to work with them in the future.
-Black Pine Snakes and Eastern Diamondbacks in Southeastern MS. Amazing snakes that I haven’t gotten a chance to see in the wild(Also still looking for that pesky copperhead lifer)

Out of state:
-New Zealand. I dream to see wild tuatara and the insane endemics that live there
-Tongass National Forest
-Hawaii-specifically happy-face spiders are on my bucket list. Along with the native birds and insane flowering plants
-French Guyana or Ecuador to see and document the immense diversity of nature found there, especially dwarf caiman
-The redwoods in California
-Florida in general. Invasive species capitol of the world.
-Whale watching trip to see Humpbacks- a contender for my favorite organism on the planet
-Also witnessing Leatherback Sea Turtles laying eggs. Extremely high on the bucket list.
-Hiking the Appalachian Trail
-Finding people to go herping with, both in state and out of state. Really hoping to find pygmy salamanders when I go to the Smokies early this summer.

1 Like

Serengeti, Kilimanjaro just to see the Dendrosenecio, Roraima Tepui, USA west coast- Yosemite, Sequoia, Sonora Desert, Yellowstone-, herp in Georgia or Louisiana, Borneo, Huascaran, Uyuni, Pantanal, Costa Rica and the patagonia

2 Likes

This is hard because I wouldn’t complain about going anywhere, so pretty much every place/animal is on my bucket list. Probably at the top of my list would be:

  • Andes complex (Columbia/Ecuador/Peru) for the avian diversity.
  • Aleutian Islands because of the overall unique ecosystem.
  • Australia, because it’s Australia, need I say more.
  • Israel during the fall migration season.
  • Green Mountains of Arizona to see all of the Mexican species in the US.

I will say that something low on my list is a safari in the Serengeti because I think tv stations like Animal Planet spend too much time talking about them when I think cougars, bears and moose are just as cool as lions, elephants and giraffes.

2 Likes

I’ve been to Point Reyes quite a few times (looking for long-tailed weasels). I haven’t had any luck finding them or the owls so far (but I did see a coyote last summer ^^). Now’s a good time to go. The elephant seals are out on Drake’s beach, and I’m sure there will be pups soon. The males are a little worse for wear, though. The park has shared several recent photos on social media of seals with big chunks of blubber missing from shark bites.

Speaking of sharks, the Estero trail is a good hike to see bat rays and leopard sharks when the water is high enough. I saw some sea otters there, too, the last time I hiked it! Let’s hope we get a lot more precipitation before the summer!

1 Like

I hope that doesn’t mean you would allow yourself to miss out on seeing African wildlife! (And there’s more to African ecosystems than the Serengeti) They’re really amazing in person.

I used to live in Houston, TX. There’s a great little State Park nearby called Brazos Bend that has alligators along the trails (sometimes on the trails), plus a good amount of other wildlife (including some enormous spiders, so word of warning to arachnophobes). I got to pet a baby alligator in the visitor’s center ^^ They also have an observatory there that does events every once in a while. I went to a lunar eclipse event they had before the pandemic and got to see it through their big telescope. It’s a great spot.

2 Likes

I really liked the Estero trail (among many other amazing trails in Pt. Reyes); we did see a lot of great flowers, too. I should find my old photos.

Let’s hope we get a lot more precipitation before the summer

Amen

I didn’t know we had long-tailed weasels there! I will have to keep a better eye out. I think I’ve seen a weasel once in my life - they are very sneaky.

You should take a walk out to Abbott’s Lagoon at dawn or dusk. It’s a fairly popular hike, but there are Burrowing Owl nesting sites in the fields and I am not alone in spotting the Great Horned Owls. Lots of people with binoculars. Coots, herons, white-tailed kites, red-tailed hawks are also common. It also looks like a long-tailed weasels has been spotted out there just recently https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68790178 !

I will add the Estero hike to my short-term bucket list! I hadn’t realized you could see the rays and sharks from there (I’m usually too busy looking up…)

Yes please.

1 Like

Horrible pictures, but we saw a (presumed) Great Horned Owl on the Limentour trail when we hiked to the beach.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69419921

1 Like

If you search for them on iNat there are a few observations along the Tomales Point trail. I saw quite a few burrows along the trail, but didn’t spot any weasels. Unfortunately, it was fairly busy that day, so they may have been hiding from the crowd (Too bad I couldn’t join them :) ).

If you get the chance to travel this year, I saw several of their short-tailed relatives in Grand Tetons/Yellowstone last October. They definitely were not sneaky, though. They run between their little burrows like they’ve got rockets on. I’m sure it was just in my head, but I could swear I heard a little ‘nyoom’ sound every time they darted past me. Makes it hard to get a decent picture though.

3 Likes

Ha!! I have a similarly horrible Great Horned Owl photo that I took on my iPhone through my binoculars: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67835013

Always makes me so happy to see them!

1 Like

Like this obs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6695648
Nyoom!!

Yellowstone is on my bucket list. It’s drivable from here, just need to get in the car and go one of these days!

1 Like

I’ve spent most of my life trying not to ‘grow up’, so don’t be in a rush! Responsibility is one thing, ‘growing up’ is another.

1 Like