Field Guides Birding Tours

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

Wonderful introduction to South America's bird riches (including bellbirds, toucans, manakins, and motmots).
2008
December 27-January 5, 2009 with Megan Crewe		 2009
February 7-16 with Megan Crewe
December 27-January 5, 2010 with Megan Crewe

$3550 (December 2008 and February 2009 fee). 10 days
From Port-of-Spain. Limit: 10
Good accommodations (with birding right outside our doors at Trinidad's Asa Wright Nature Centre), 2 sites, easy to moderate terrain, warm climate. Our staff travel agents can book your air travel for this tour. Contact us at (800) 728-4953 for more information.

See one of our triplists: February 2008
Tufted Coquette
Tufted Coquette
by participants R & S Stilwell
The islands of Trinidad and Tobago, often considered part of the West Indies, lie just off the coast of Venezuela, and to the birder not yet familiar with the riches of the Bird Continent, they offer an almost perfectly balanced introduction.  Here many of the typical Neotropical bird families are represented—motmots, jacamars, toucans, woodcreepers, ovenbirds, antbirds, manakins, cotingas—and we’ll encounter some classic Neotropical scenes: the whirring flash of a tiny male White-bearded Manakin, instantly transposed from one perch to another during a courtship dance; the explosive call of a Bearded Bellbird overhead, its string-like throat wattles dangling loosely; and the eerie descent into the cave of the Oilbirds, those aberrant, fruit-eating relatives of the nighthawks and nightjars.

Trinidad, sixteen times larger than Tobago, is the more diverse of the two islands.  Based at the comfortable Asa Wright Nature Centre with great birding right off the veranda (and great food and drink right inside it), we’ll explore the rainforest of the island’s Northern Range, the drier savanna and scrub habitats near the old Waller Field air base, and freshwater marsh at the edge of the island’s huge Nariva Swamp.  But we won’t have to go far to enjoy our stay: Asa Wright’s grounds are full of birds, with tanagers, honeycreepers, and motmots crowding the feeding trays, hummingbirds buzzing at the garden flowers, and maybe a Mottled or even Spectacled Owl calling outside at night.  One afternoon we’ll travel to Caroni Swamp, where at dusk the spectacle is unforgettable, as long lines of luminescent Scarlet Ibis drift in to their roost, perching like so many ornaments in the mangroves. 

Tobago has special attractions of its own.  We’ll search for Rufous-vented Chachalaca, the very rare White-tailed Sabrewing, and the beautiful Blue-backed Manakin.  We’ll also make a boat trip to the island of Little Tobago where Red-footed and Brown boobies and elegant Red-billed Tropicbirds nest.

Trinidad and Tobago have long been field laboratories for some of the most familiar names in tropical biology:  Chapman, Finsch, Cherrie, Gilliard, Bond, Beebe, and the Snows.  Discover for yourself the allure of the tropics.  You’ll see what brings naturalists and birders back again and again.

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