Birds in the Caribbean 1 - Trinidad

White-necked Jacobin - Asa Wright Nature Centre, Trinidad

Following on from our Fox trip to the Netherlands that I wrote about earlier, we headed off to Trinidad and Tobago for ten days in late February. The itinerary worked out as two locations in Trinidad, followed by a transfer to Tobago for a four-day stay.

Our first stop was at the well-known Asa Wright Nature Centre, where it is possible to photograph all day long from a superb balcony in close proximity to your room. Being on the edge of the rainforest, that balcony was a godsend at times, but at others far from it as the secondary business of entertaining cruise ship passengers crowded out paying guests. Venturing out into the grounds yielded plenty of birds to photograph, or in some cases ‘try’ to photograph. Naturally, Hummingbirds are the major attraction, but plenty of other species to try for too. I won’t go into detail about what we got there, a quick look at our photostreams from the links on our homepage will show you that, but it was a rewarding location.

Whilst there, we had two trips out to the Aripo Valley and the Arena Forest, both of which were disappointing. Looking back it’s easy to think it would have been a better use of our time to remain at the Nature Centre perfecting our Hummingbird techniques. But to be honest, three days there would have been overkill.

Moving on we headed for a family run location by the name of Hacienda Jacana. This is a small site consisting of four two-bedroom houses overlooking a lake, frequented by a variety of herons, kingfishers and even a caiman. Unusually, the breakfast here is self-catered with provisions supplied by the owners, who will supply any special requirements on request. Dinner is prepared by the owners and delivered to the house at a pre-arranged time. The arrangement works surprisingly well and the dinners are superb. We spent some time photographing in the grounds, but had arranged a private guide for two days to take us to other parts of the island.

This plan worked quite well and again delivered some excellent images, but unfortunately on the first day, a Saturday, traffic conditions delayed us somewhat and a visit to a Nature Reserve had to be severely cut short to enable us to get to the Caroni Swamp to witness the Scarlet Ibis flying in to roost. This is a wonderful spectacle, but very hard to get useable images. By definition the light is going when they start to arrive and the boats moor up some distance from where they roost. To make life more difficult for us, it was raining at the time and a large plastic sheet was used to cover all of the passengers in the boat. Nevertheless, a sight we won’t forget.

Next day was a planned visit to the Nariva Swamp that really didn’t come off. Weather was less than optimum and no one had arranged the required permit to enter the site. Consequently there weren’t too many shutter clicks that day, although we were rewarded with a (admittedly distant) sighting of an Aplomado Falcon. The day drew to a close with a sighting of a pair of Blue & Yellow Macaws high in the trees in steady rain and that was Trinidad over.