Wild Tobago

Faraaz Abdool invites us to look for birds in the Main Ridge Forest Reserve. You don’t even have to look that hard to spot some of the splendid birds that call Tobago home. These photos of Tobago’s rainforest birds courtesy Faraaz Abdool. The Roxborough-Parlatuvier Road snakes over the spine of Tobago, through the oldest patch of protected rainforest in the western hemisphere. Protected since 1776, a few years after Tobago slipped under British rule, the Main Ridge Forest Reserve is home to many species of plants and animals, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. As a region, the Caribbean’s habitat has changed drastically over the years, with rainforest suffering the most. Thankfully, the almost ten thousand acres of rainforest on Tobago remain a reserve.  Due to its height and proximity to the ocean, Main Ridge supports a large variety of birdlife. One is likely to see a Collared Trogon on the side of the road and then look up to see a flock of Magnificent F...

Faraaz Abdool – engineer turned eco-photographer - talks about the growing niche market for Tobago tourism. What is birding and why is it so important to us? (All photos courtesy Faraaz Abdool) To most of us, the word “bird” is a noun, a word ascribed to various feathered animals that form part of the diorama of our daily lives. We see them every day: the Frigatebirds soaring effortlessly hundreds of feet above our heads and the Bananaquits quarreling over who sat on whose flower last. They all tend to fade into the landscape though. Until we observe some khaki-clad humanoid eagerly gesticulating, all attention focused on some inconsequential facet of what we see daily.  Blue-backed Manakin: The unique geography of Tobago allows one to see secretive forest birds like the Blue-backed Manakin and still be within a half hour of a pristine beach. This is birding, where “to bird” is a verb, meaning the pursuit of a particular bird (or birds) for the sole purpose of seeing...

What’s special about Tobago’s terrestrial flora and fauna? Start with the fact that the Main Ridge Reserve is the oldest protected forest in the western hemisphere, and everything gets better! Amy Deacon, Lecturer in the Department of Life Sciences at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine and Secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, looks at some of Tobago’s special creatures. Tobago’s Main Ridge Reserve was given legal protection in 1776; a historic act that marked the start of the global environmental movement, and helped ensure that the forest and its biodiversity is still thriving today. Over the coming weeks we will consider some of the highlights of this biodiversity, and what makes Tobago’s flora and fauna so special. In this article, we will consider some of the island’s most iconic bird species. The White-tailed Sabrewing stretches its wings. Photo courtesy Wendell Stephen Jay Reyes Over 220 species of bird can be found on Tobago, 27 of ...