Guernsey Press

Bananaquit drama

He's seen some sights, but eight days in Trinidad yielded some of the best bird watching there is to be had. Tim Earl describes the winged 'celebs', including spectacled bananaquits and tufted coquettes, that put on a fantastic display within spitting distance of his veranda...

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He's seen some sights, but eight days in Trinidad yielded some of the best bird watching there is to be had. Tim Earl describes the winged 'celebs', including spectacled bananaquits and tufted coquettes, that put on a fantastic display within spitting distance of his veranda...

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LIGHT creeps slowly into the veranda at the Asa Wright Centre in Trinidad.

Although the sun rises fast in the tropics it has to ascend a range of hills before peeping into the centre's nooks and crannies.

But light is not the only thing to be moving as day breaks: people are emerging from their cabins behind the centre, creeping along the corridor leading to the veranda, sitting on stools and peering down onto tables below.

For this is the Asa Wright experience: a combination of dawn, fruit-laden feeders and birds of a thousand hues await the eager naturalists.

The centre is an old coffee plantation owner's house converted into an eco-hotel. It has retained the panelled walls and ceilings, the dining room caters for large parties daily rather than occasionally and the veranda has a drinks and coffee bar installed.

Early risers help themselves to coffee grown on the estate or make a cup of tea before enjoying an hour or so watching one of the greatest birding sights in the world.

Tables outside, below the veranda, are loaded with watermelon, banana and mango, feeders containing a special sugar-mix are hung over the tables and around the veranda's edge.

The stage is set for the show to start and exactly on dawn the cast begin to appear.

Most of the players are from New World families: exotically coloured tanagers, tyrant flycatchers (several of which will eat fruit, it's part of their five a day), manakins from a nearby lek (group of males), woodpeckers and the stars of the show – no fewer than seven species of hummingbird.

One's first taste of the Asa Wright experience is overwhelming and I go to great lengths to ensure that my clients relax.

'Enjoy the experience,' I tell them. 'Do not try to identify everything, just watch the show.'

And we do just that.

Over our eight-day stay at the centre (before going off for four nights at a tropical beach resort in Tobago) we all become familiar with the 50 or so more common species at the feeders.

Hummingbirds are the most difficult, despite flashing in front of our eyes only a few centimetres away.

Most males and females have completely different plumages and many species are similar making the need for close examination essential.

Even their names are exotic: white-necked jacobin, rufous-breasted hermit, black-throated mango, blue-chinned sapphire and long-billed Starthroat.

The latter was a rare visitor to the centre, but we found a female hawking insects above a stream close by one day.

It was like watching fairy Tinkerbell in a showing of Peter Pan as she hovered daintily 10 metres above the water. This position gave the bird the ability to move in any direction in pursuit of her insect prey.

Hummingbirds need nectar (or the special sugar-water mix in the centre's feeders) as fuel, but insects provide them with the protein, vitamins and calcium needed for daily living, especially egg laying.

Their nests are minute and highly camouflaged. They are often hung from broad-leaved plants to get protection from the frequent heavy downpours that mark tropical rainforest.

The hummer that gave me most pleasure at the feeders was a fabulous but tiny bird (perhaps four centimetres long) called a tufted coquette.

The male is fantastic with an iridescent green body, emerald throat feathers, a bright red tuft on his head and orange plumes, each tipped black, sprouting from the throat. The female is less colourful with no tuft, and both sexes have a cream crescent across the base of their backs. Wow!

Other visitors to the feeders include two species of thrush – cocoa and spectacled – bananaquit and honeycreepers, all brightly coloured and highly numerous little birds.

The experience does not stop at the veranda, however.

Trails wind around the hillsides taking visitors to locations for a number of wonderful species.

None is more amazing than the oilbird, the only nocturnal vegetarian species of bird. It competes with fruit bats for a living and like other bats uses echo-location when flying around the fruiting palms on which it feeds.

Large, brown birds with huge eyes, they sleep during the day in caves, peeping out over ledges when approached. Their roost near the centre is almost a cavern as the roof has collapsed in places, allowing a little light in.

The risk of disturbance makes visiting the caves a tricky business and access is strictly limited. Only people staying at the centre for more than three nights qualify for an escorted visit.

Access is with a guide and limited to only two people at a time. Flash photography is banned and noise kept to a minimum.

So tight are the rules that when I visited the Asa Wright Centre on a familiarisation trip put on for tour leaders in 2006 we were not taken to see the birds.

I was worried that the strict rules would detract from the experience of seeing these wonderful creatures, but need not have done.

We were escorted by guide Barry Ramdass, who managed the event superbly. I was last in but the wait was well worth it.

Other species near the centre include bearded bellbirds, which are a member of the cotinga family. A remarkable group that include cock-of-the-rock, one of the most sought-after birds in South America.

Bellbirds used to be called anvil birds because their calls sound like a blacksmith's hammer on iron. The call is made from high in the rainforest canopy where the birds gather in a loose lek to impress females.

Lekking is carried out by a range of species including black grouse, capercaillies and, in the New World, cotingas and manakins.

The males gather in often-ancient sites to display while the females look on before choosing a mate.

Besides the bellbirds, the centre also has on the property a lek for white-bearded manakins, which make the most extraordinary cracking sound by flicking their wings.

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