Birds and the Visitors who follow them
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...