Frank Gardner: My birdwatching break in the Caribbean's green haven

Times

03-05-2025

The good thing about Tobago, I was told, is that it does not have any poisonous snakes on the island. Head off the beaten track in neighbouring Trinidad, I was warned, and you might encounter the venomous fer-de-lance pit viper, or its feared cousin, the Bushmaster. Wanting to get close to some tropical nature but avoid either of those beasties, thank you very much, I plumped for Tobago.
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is a small archipelago of Caribbean islands nestled close to the shores of trouble-stricken Venezuela. So close, in fact, that less than ten miles separate the country from the edge of South America and Trinidadians joke they can 'walk across'. Unfortunately, that is not all that crosses the Columbus Channel between the two countries. Guns, gangs and drugs flow both ways, leading to the government declaring a state of emergency across the country at the time of my visit, which has now been lifted.
That meant no curfew, but a licence for the police to stop and search people or premises without a warrant, and to detain anyone.
Yet Tobagoans, as the citizens of Tobago are called, assured me that their island has been largely spared the violent crime that has racked their larger neighbour, Trinidad. 'In Tobago,' says the FCDO travel advice at time of writing, 'violent crime is rare.' They are indeed two very different places. Tobago has just 65,000 inhabitants, compared with about 1.5 million on the bigger Trinidad. Tobago is also 15 times smaller.
I know it's a cliché, but it's incredible how quickly you feel the pace of life relax the moment you emerge from the airport into the Caribbean night. Windows down, warm air rushing past with the scent of fruit trees and blossom, the excellent driver sent to meet me from Victory Villa and Ibounced along the coast road that skirts the north shore of the island. People were sitting out on their front porches, drinking beer and chatting beneath giant banyan trees or next to pink and blue-painted one-storey homes — Tobago is hardly a high-rise destination.
In the tiny coastal resort of Castara hoardings advertised 'Tortillaz: Bring the Vibes' or 'Come for the day, stay for a lifetime'. And sure enough, there did seem to be a smattering of Europeans who had decided to do precisely that, their dreadlocked blond hair trailing down to the tops of their frayed cargo shorts. But I was keen to be somewhere more remote, somewhere close enough to hear the crash and roar of the ocean yet quiet enough to be far from the hum of traffic.
The Victory Villa, a small eco-hotel overlooking Englishman's Bay, perched high up in the verdant hills above Castara, seemed to fit the bill. Wayne Warner, the owner and manager, had assured me in advance that, although it was not ideal for wheelchair access, he would do his best to make it easy for me and he did. (I have used a manual wheelchair ever since being shot and partly paralysed in the legs while on a BBC assignment in Saudi Arabia in 2004.)
The last bit of road up to the villa was rutted and steep, so much so that Warner had to drive down to meet me in his 4×4. Now, I thought, as I dumped my camera kit in an immaculate room and emerged onto the terrace to gaze at Englishman's Bay, I have finally got off the beaten track. At which point a very British voice called out: 'Frank! Do come and join us.' It was the son of a well-known and highly decorated British general and his charming wife, and I didn't mind a bit. The Victory Villa, it seemed, was one of those small, discreet boutique sort of places where people breeze in for a few days before going sailing or heading off to another island.
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All right, so what about the hummingbirds? Those tiny, hovering avian beauties that I had flown 11 hours to come and see? Well, out of the world's 368 hummingbird species, Tobago has just six. (Trinidad has rather more, with at least 18 and its original Amerindian name is said to have meant 'Land of the Hummingbird'.) But in Tobago they are almost everywhere, with some spectacular species such as the exquisite ruby-topaz and the white-necked jacobin with its flared white tail 'skirt'.
Breakfast on the terrace above the bay on that first, gloriously cloudless morning was a challenge. Warner brought out a tray bearing homemade coconut bake infused with nutmeg, as well as fresh fruit juice, fried plantains, a pot of filter coffee and a plate of buljol: a simple local dish made of salted cod that is rinsed, shredded and boiled to make it less salty, and then seasoned.
Yet I found it impossible to concentrate on what was on the plate. Not only was the view quite breathtaking — an uninterrupted plunge down the lush hillside to an azure sea and waves breaking on pink rocks far below — but the air was alive with the whizz and whirr of a dozen hummingbirds. Warner, like many Tobagoans, had set out a row of feeders to attract the birds. I have to say that from a photographic perspective these are a mixed blessing. Filled with sugary water, they are irresistible to hummingbirds and word soon gets round, bringing them in from dawn until dusk. They undoubtedly help you to view these creatures up close. But as they are red and plastic and artificial, you really don't want them in your photo frame. The challenge for me was to either catch the birds on the wing (high shutter speed, less than half a second in which to react and press the shutter) or catch them on the few occasions when they were feeding on the natural shrubs and flowers dotted around the villa.
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'I'm aware of this,' Warner said, when I mentioned the artificial feeders, 'and I have a plan.' Gradually, he said, he is reducing the sugar content and will replace the synthetic feeders with plants such as purpletop vervain that naturally attract the hummingbirds. And purpletop vervain is what I found at the next place I stayed: the deliciously remote Cuffie River Nature Retreat. Literally miles from anywhere, this idyllic resort is surrounded by rainforest (it only seemed to rain at night) and run by Regina Dumas, a wonderful lady still full of vitality on the cusp of her 80th birthday.
No need for door keys or locked rooms here, just a gentle Caribbean breeze entered the room and sometimes brought with it a welcome visitor: a hummingbird passing through on its way to somewhere else. It's a family place, where I was invited to join in the birthday celebrations for Regina's niece and where the cook has all the time in the world to stop and chat, beside serving up delicious home-cooked dishes of kingfish, plantain and red snapper. Like the Victory Villa, this place felt more like a home than a hotel, thanks in large part to its warm-hearted owner.
Tobago is rightly famous for many things: sailing, scuba diving and just kicking back on its glorious beaches. I had optimistically brought my Padi licence with me but a recent storm had stirred up the seabed so visibility, I was told, was not what it should have been. Instead, I hired a nature guide a couple of times, which gave me a good feel for the island. Was I tempted to spend more time among the backpacker community of Castara, or visit the hotel resorts around Crown Point and Scarborough? Not really. I had come to see nature and here my guides excelled, taking me to see kingfishers, tanagers and spectacular tricoloured herons. From tall and dense rainforest to well-watered country clubs to rocky inlets where Caribbean waves crashed against the shore, I was given a grand tour of this small, tranquil island.
Back at the Cuffie River eco-resort mornings took on a pace of their own. At breakfast time the cook would put out slices of papaya to feed the many tropical birds that live here: tanagers, mockingbirds, woodpeckers and an extremely noisy creature that is the national bird. The cocrico is actually a rufous-vented chachalaca (yes, I thought you would want to know that) and they provide something of a dawn chorus as they gather in the trees to greet the rising sun with a collective cackle.
But apart from the hummingbirds there was another, rather special creature that inhabited this particular eco-resort. As the moon rose above the thick fronds of the rainforest at night a piercing whistle came from the darkened foliage beyond the veranda. 'Did you hear that?' asked Dumas, my host. 'That sound? That's the white-tailed nightjar. But you'll be lucky to see him.' As if on cue, this mysterious nocturnal bird suddenly appeared, darting left and right as it went about hawking insects in the moonlight, only to disappear like a ghost, leaving nothing but the silence of the forest and the rush and gurgle of the stream below. It was to be another peaceful night in the Tobago rainforest.
Have you visited Tobago? Share your memories in the comments
Frank Gardner travelled independently. Victory Villa has B&B doubles from £119 (thevictoryvilla.com); Cuffie River Nature Retreat has B&B doubles from £140 (cuffie-river.com). Frank Gardner is the president of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). His latest spy novel Invasion is out now in paperback (Penguin £9.99)