Wild Tobago

 Faraaz Abdool considers human impacts in the kingdom of the air, and urges us not to put obstacles in the way of migrating birds .     Migratory flyways Are the bronchi Of Earth; Dictated by a gentle planetary waltz The ebb and flow of life itself, Migration is the Earth breathing . *   The rhythmic mass movement of life across the surface of the earth is one of Nature’s many marvels. Whether the thundering hooves of millions of ungulates across East Africa’s Greater Mara ecosystem, or the multi-generational odyssey of Monarch butterflies in the Americas, the spectacle of migration has been unfurling over millennia. Pushing its participants to their physiological limits, the indisputable need to shift location stirs in bodies large and small due to external environmental conditions we are only now beginning to understand. Humans too, would undertake these journeys in ancient times in search of greener pastures, long before there...

Birds with shared interests – safety, food, similar nesting spaces – often roost in and traverse the forest together. These mixed-species flocks are a boon for the birder, according to Faraaz Abdool. All photos by Faraaz Abdool   In tropical rainforests, we imagine that the trees must be positively dripping with birds. Massive, bromeliad-laden boughs thirty metres in the canopy should be cradling all manner of avian diversity. Our imagination conjures toucans skipping over tanagers and honeycreepers in pursuit of the finest berry, as hummingbirds linger on the periphery, eager to sip from the nectar of delicate epiphyte blooms. Sometimes, or often, we put ourselves in a place like this and find a deafening silence. In forests that span hundreds, even thousands of square kilometres, one can easily spend a couple hours scanning without result at the risk of neck strain. Hope rises again upon the arrival of a mixed-species flock. The self-explanatory “mixed-spe...

Faraaz Abdool tells us about female hmmingbirds dressed as male, and another bird where some males dress as female. All photos by Faraaz Abdool   In this age of polarising perspectives and the politicising of even the most benign things, nature proceeds as she always has - not according to our self-imposed rigid rules. After all, our understanding of nature is premised on observation, and if we observe more, we understand more. Problems arise when we take what we already know and assert that that is all that needs to be known. Nature is fluid, academic categorisation isn't - and so we need to remain open and willing to learn. Prime example is the rewriting of astronomy textbooks after analysing observations from the James Webb telescope in 2024. Without this willingness to accept that we still don’t understand the full gamut of existence, we are destined to stagnate in ignorance. In the world of birds, we constantly learn via observation. Species we acknowle...

Let’s go with Faraaz Abdool, photographer and wildlife advocate to find one of Trinidad’s irreplaceable wild treasures. The remote reaches of Trinidad’s heavily forested Northern Range conceal a unique treasure that can be found nowhere else on the planet. Here, verdant hills rise sharply from rugged coastlines, the seaspray-coated vegetation gives way as altitude increases to towering crappo followed by massive mora. These heavily buttressed trees are the stewards of the forest, their limbs festooned with moss and lichen. Their branches are punctuated by bromeliads that push forward spectacular flowers and host entire ecosystems within their leaf-vase structure. The air within these forests remains cool and moist throughout the year, the sounds of water - whether from rain, river, or distant ocean - are constant. Occasionally, just at the crack of dawn, a delicate whistle rises from the green tangle of the jungle and wafts over the canopy - an indication of the presence of Trinidad’...

  Faraaz Abdool puts the spotlight on the bird whose habitat is the mid-Atlantic and breeding ground the rocky islands off Tobago’s north.   The Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic is unique among all other seas as all its boundaries are oceanic. While the body of water itself was named after the ubiquitous sargassum seaweed found within it, there is a small, cryptic seabird that now carries this name: the Sargasso Shearwater. Its scientific name – Puffinus lherminieri - is in honour of the Guadeloupe-based French naturalist Félix Louis L’Herminier, who, with his son in his later years, spent considerable time studying the flora and fauna of the Caribbean.   An adult Sargasso Shearwater makes its way to its burrow. Photo by Faraaz Abdool Sargasso Shearwaters are pelagic birds, meaning that they are superbly adapted to life on the ocean. They are from the order of birds colloquially known as “tubenoses” which comprises four families of ocean wanderers: shearwaters, alba...