Built by birders, for birders.
The story, the guides, and the principles behind every Honeyguide Birding tour.
Honeyguide Birding
Honeyguide Birding was born from a simple realisation: the best birding experiences aren’t assembled from a checklist — they’re built by people who’ve spent a lifetime paying close attention to the bush.
We exist for travellers who want more than a tour. A bespoke, premium experience shaped entirely around them, where every detail is resolved before they arrive, and all that’s left to do is watch. We don’t run standard itineraries. We craft journeys, pair you with the finest guides in the region, and hand over the kind of serenity that only comes from being properly looked after in wild places.
The People Beside You in the Field
Gilbert
Gilbert’s first office was a small nature reserve called Ben Lavin in the old Northern Transvaal, where childhood mornings meant rising before light to explore bush still wet with dew. Holidays were spent further afield in the Kruger, where family and friends working there opened doors most visitors never get near — long before “birding” was even a word he knew to use, he was already paying the kind of attention it demands.
That instinct never left, even as life took him through theatre and professional sound, then into the precision and pressure of enterprise IT. Each chapter sharpened the same eye for detail and craft, but none of it replaced what the bush had given him first.
Fifteen years ago, that pull resurfaced — undeniable, and impossible to keep delaying — and Gilbert made the decision to go back, properly this time. Honeyguide Birding is the result: a return to where his attention was always sharpest, built into something he could finally share.
Glynis Coetzee
Some birders spend decades building a list. Glynis compressed that journey considerably — arriving at over 700 South African species in just three years, and placing tenth out of nearly 300 participants in the 2023 Cape Town Bird Club Challenge.
Her professional background includes oversight responsibility for avifaunal specialist reports on South Africa’s first offshore floating wind energy project. She manages a Cape Town guesthouse focused on avitourism and is completing her FGASA field guide registration.
Karis Daniel
Karis completed a PhD at UCT centred on SABAP2 — the citizen science atlas underpinning southern African bird distribution — following ecology research at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She is also a licensed SAFRING bird ringer.
Mark Hawthorne
Mark spent thirty-two years in the Table Mountain National Park, establishing the Sunbird Environmental Education Centre and the People’s Trail. He specialises in the Cape Floristic Kingdom, Afromontane Forest, and Succulent Karoo. His knowledge of fynbos endemics is exceptional.