Trinidad & Tobago (and then ... Trinidad again) (1 Viewer)

I was most delighted when, this past January, a certain young lady I'll call DMM (a.k.a. “Ms C.”) asked me that most welcome of questions – “So, do you want to go vacation in February?” As far as I am concerned, this question is always a rhetorical one; the only real question that really counts is the inevitable follow-up one “Of course, but where to?”

Our parameters were: Approximately seven days away, somewhere that could be reached easily from Toronto Pearson, and having convenient coral reefs. (Note: DMM is a part-time university student, and so she gets a “reading week” in February; she hasn’t much other time when she is free to get away. Also, since she has returned to school, she’s become a big enthusiast on undersea life, and all the various phyla that you just don't get on dry land.)

We’d had very poor luck with the snorkelling on a previous trip to the tropics (too much wave action), so, to make up for that, I suggested somewhere in the Lesser Antilles. However, during my research into the various possibilities in that area, I discovered that one of our smaller airlines was offering seat sale prices to Port of Spain, Trinidad – so that became our destination. Because of D.’s interest in biology, we opted to spend slightly more than half the time on Tobago (the less-birdy of the two islands) to give us more time on the reefs.

Dramatis personae:

Peter – me, myself, your humble scribe.
DMM – life-long birding (and everything) companion; biology wunderkind; “brains behind the operation.”
Chip, the Wonder Dog – our faithful sidekick and guide on Tobago. Known simply as Wonder Dog for short (although why this is considered shorter than "Chip" is unclear), he is a small beaglish canine who resides in the B&B in Tobago we stayed at.

A chorus of touts, prospective guides, sea pilots, attendants, etc.

Some practical matters

Flight:
We travelled by Westjet, leaving Toronto Pearson on a Friday, Feb. 15 at 11:30, arriving at POS at ~ 0600 Saturday Feb. 16.
This was a bit of an awkward time to travel, since I don’t sleep very well on planes, but it did have a couple of big advantages: (a) once we did get into POS, we had the whole day ahead of us for ‘positioning’ (i.e., renting the car, getting on the ferry to Tobago, finding the place we were going to on Tobago). (b) with this itinerary, we paid “seat sale” rates – C $493.16* pp/double, which is ridiculously cheap! To give you some context, the cheapest direct flight I could get from Toronto to Antigua (my original choice) was over $1200 pp/double!

Accommodation:
Gloucester Place, Parlatuvier, Tobago (henceforth, “GP”) This is a small B&B on the leeward (roughly speaking, “North”) side of Tobago, into which we were booked for our first four nights. Chosen based on the very positive Tripadvisor ratings, and the location: close to good diving areas in the Caribbean, while also being very convenient to the Tobago Forest Reserve (the TFB is the best place on the island for upland birds). With breakfast (and all the tea you could drink), $130/night/double.

Asa Wright Nature Centre: Famous lodge and preserve in Trinidad’s Northern Range. At first, I was looking for anywhere but here to stay; the prices are very steep, and besides, everybody stays here! In the end, it won out, because (a) there was not a large selection of places to stay in Trinidad that are right in the forest and (b) they have a “stay three nights, we throw in a free Oilbird!” deal. $215/day, all meals included. Also included, the services of the guide for the Oilbird walk; any other tours would have been extra.

A few particularly useful things we took along:
An International Travel Maps Map of Trinidad & Tobago – After some less-than-stellar results with various companies' GPS maps over the last couple of vacations, I thought it would be good to have a paper map from a reputable company. This map proved to be quite accurate and useful on Trinidad, not so useful on Tobago though (greater amount of detail required). www.itmb.com

A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad &Tobago, 3rd Edition (ffrench, R. 2012: Cornell U.P. ): If you have only seen the 1st or 2nd editions, I suggest giving this one a look. The new edition’s plates are a vast improvement over the older ones – for one thing, birds are no longer presented in teeny-weeny eyestrain-o-vision, they actually more or less fill up the pages. I had several opportunities, on the this trip, to compare directly with Kenefick, Restall, and Hayes (the field guide that I was originally going to buy). I found that, while the latter had some plates that I thought were better, I would have missed the more extensive text in the ffrench book. (One valid criticism of the plates in this new edition – for some reason, the hummingbirds almost all look extremely pudgy! There are several different artists involved here, so this does not apply to the other groups.)

Where to watch birds in South America (Wheatley, N., 1995: Princeton U.P.). We just scanned and took along the pages that pertained to our destination. As we discovered, the text in here is in serious need of an update – I know there are more modern sources out there, I just didn’t have time to look for them before our departure. I found the information helpful anyway, especially with those species which are found on Tobago but not on Trinidad.

A Field Guide to Coral Reefs: Caribbean and Florida (Kaplan, E. 1982: Houghton Mifflin Co.). This is just a general book, doesn’t exhaustively cover all the fauna down there (I don’t think any one book could!) but was helpful for figuring things out, at least usually to family. I only wish that it could have included more of the fishes in it – and have been waterproof!

A couple of things we didn’t take:
A spotting scope: This was a bit of a gamble. I wasn’t sure what kind of situations we’d be in, in Trinidad; but I bet that we’d be in forest most of the time, and so would resent having to haul one around. It turned out that I was right; there were only three occasions when a scope would have been useful, and in one of those (Caroni Swamp), we were in a tour boat, and a tripod would have been quite impossible to use. (The other places were the Asa Wright Centre, which had a scope available, and the Nariva Swamp, which had not much to look at anyway.)

My Tilley hat: Sounds trivial, but it was a real pain not to have some sort of hat; primarily, as it turned out, to keep the rain out of my eyes!

*Note: Unless otherwise specified, all dollar amounts in this report will be in Canadian dollars. At the time of travel, one Canadian dollar approximately equal to one U.S. dollar. When quoting something in Trinidadian dollars I will use the prefix TT.

Day1: Trindad, then Tobago (part the first)

We arrived at Piarco (the site of Trinidad’s International Airport) slightly early, just before 0600 local time. It was a nice clear day, just beginning to warm up, as we “de-planed”; but still a bit too dark for us to see any birds right away. Once we’d got through immigration, we were able to see at a window, and caught sight of some vaguely “swallow-y” things perched on light standards around the airport’s apron – by range, these (we decided) could only be Gray-breasted Martins, so that became the species that kicked off our trip list, such as it was.

Through extensive research, a careful consideration, I had our day (and, to large extent, the whole week) all arranged: I had booked a small 4-wheel drive from Avis, had it confirmed by return email; determined that there was a car ferry from Trinidad to Tobago that day, and that we could easily make it; found, booked, and paid for accommodations for Tobago; looked up the ferry schedule for the time of the return journey; DMM had booked three nights at Asa Wright; and I had even booked a small hotel, very close to the Piarco airport, on our last night before the flight home. We had Trinidadian (TT) dollars to pay for the ferry, maps to everywhere, and even the address of the office in Port of Spain where we had to go to buy the ferry tickets.

In other words, we had a PLAN!

Of course, we have travelled enough to know that plans often do not always sail along smoothly, once they are launched upon the cold waters of reality. Sometimes (to extend the metaphor a bit) leaks must be plugged, and courses re-plotted. This plan, however, didn’t just get kicked around a bit by the waves of mischance; no, this one sailed straight into an iceberg, broke into pieces, and sank without a trace, about 15 minutes into her maiden voyage.
It turns out, you see, that although Avis had our car, and even had the right car, we could under no circumstances actually use it on Tobago – despite the fact that both islands are, in fact, part of the same country. (I would speculate, that the rental companies simply don’t want to bother covering service calls on the other island, on which they don’t keep an office). In any case, we had our first four nights on Tobago already book and paid for, so a change of itinerary was out of the question – we had to get over there, somehow. Time to improvise.

It wasn’t that easy to find (the departures area being full to the brim, even at that hour, of long lines of people heading home post-Carnival), but eventually we got the ticket counter and bought two tickets to Tobago for the bargain price of TT$300 return. The tickets gave a departure time of 1015 hrs, but the agent said they were ‘standby’ tickets – so, we checked our baggage right away, and were told we could take the next flight with space. So, forgoing a stop for breakfast (even airport food would have been welcome at this point) we headed straight for security and the departure lounge; and it turned out, caught the 0815 to Tobago (air travel between the islands is quite unlike the kind of flying I am used to – more informal, like catching a bus is at home; if there’s room, on you get.)

The result was that we got into the Tobago airport at approximately 0845 – or, approximately 10 hours ahead of schedule! Now, we still had to contend with the headache of finding a rental car, and we were in Crown Point rather than Scarborough (where the ferry docked, and much closer to our destination) but so far, our “disaster” was going pretty well. First bird for Tobago came pretty quickly - Caribbean Martin, a lifer. It seemed they were nesting in a kind of “carport” roof just outside the Arrivals. They were accompanied by a trio of brown, decidedly un-swallow-like birds – possibly “their” brood of juvenile Shiny Cowbirds?

After finally getting some breakfast into ourselves (smoked herring on a sort of flatbread for me – perfect!), we just carted our bags over to the nearest auto rental joint, and picked up the most basic sedan they had (we had no big adventures in mind here on Tobago). The car was a bit of an oddity – a Nissan Lancer which, for some reason, talked to us every time she started up, and at other random times as well. Why she did this is a complete mystery, because she spoke only in Chinese, as far as I could tell (and - didn’t talking cars go out of style, sometime around 1989?) Most of the instrumentation was labelled in Chinese characters as well, so we could not (unfortunately) figure out how to shut her up!

Parlatuvier, our destination, was still some distance away, on the leeward side of the island. Also, we had to figure that there were still lots of things that could go wrong, so – we made straight for it, without doing any exploring on the way. The drive from Crown Point to Scarborough was straightforward – it’s a nice, flat road, and almost wide enough for all the traffic it was required to handle. The drive north across the island from Scarborough (Northside Road, appropriately enough) looks just a straightforward, but most decidedly is not.

On the map, it appears that there is only one main road to follow, and you’ll be fine if you stick to that; in reality, there are a whole network of roads that lead off it in various directions. Most of these look about the same width as the main one you’re supposed to follow (i.e., much too narrow), so it virtually impossible for a novice to know which choice to make at any given intersection. That is how, at one point, we started recognizing landmarks … and found that we’d looped right back to the main highway in Scarborough!

Anyway, after losing about half an hour doing this, we finally did end up on the correct road, passing through Moriah to the Caribbean side. I found the terrain here to be surprisingly rugged for such a small place; it was mostly composed of knife-edged ridges divided by deep ravines cut by fast-flowing creeks. Most of Tobago, we discovered, is like this, with the flat areas mostly confined to the east end around Crown Point.

Day1: Trindad, then Tobago (part the second)

The owners of Gloucester Place had asked us, via email, to phone them prior to our arrival. So, on our way there, we stopped in the little resort/fishing town of Castara to hunt for a phone. That search proved to be fruitless, but we did take the opportunity to stock up on a few groceries for the next few days. More significantly, we parked by the local soccer field, which turned out to be quite a birdy place; it had a creek along one side, and some good forest in behind it. The Blue-gray Tanagers were the first birds we noticed, but there was also a Green Kingfisher in the creek, White-tipped Doves foraging in the undergrowth (with the local chickens), and a couple of Pale-vented Pigeons sharing a dead tree with a Red-crowned Woodpecker. Best of all was a male Barred Antshrike - a truly bizarre-looking thing, and seemingly out of place in this almost suburban setting. Castara is also a good site (along with just about any bay in Tobago, I guess) for the Magnificent Frigatebird - there were many patrolling the skies as we drove up.

Not finding a ‘phone, we just drove on to GP and hoped for the best. We got there in the early afternoon; fortunately, the owners were in, and very welcoming to us, even though we’d showed up about six hours early. GP is a very modern house, set into a hillside high above the Caribbean. This situation has both advantages and disadvantages; on the plus side, the view is very good, and the house catches cooling breezes; on the down side, there is no easy access to the shore – theoretically, it was possible to walk to the beach in the town of Parlatuvier (less than a km. away) but it would be a heck of a climb to get back home again.

Our room looked out onto a long hedge of so-called “Firecracker bushes” named for their masses of small, tubular red flowers. The bushes were only about 1 m. from our windows, and were full of birds. Mostly these were the ubiquitous Bananaquits, but also the occasional hummingbird and (Tropical) Mockingbird. The hummers in these bushes were a real challenge to ID at first, as they didn’t seem to have any particular colour. In the end, we figure out they were Coppery-rumped, although they never seemed to get as colourful as the field guide showed them, even when seen in good light.From a bird-watching perspective, it is the grounds at GP that are its strong suit; in addition to all the flowering bushes and banana plants, there are a number of large fruiting trees that attract a whole host of birds; again, these were mostly Banaquits, but we were sure they’d have other goodies, it we just watched patiently. However, having gone the last 32 or so hours without a heck of a lot of sleep, we weren’t in much of a mood for watching much of anything, patiently or otherwise. After a quick dip in the (very scenic) pool, we went for a long nap, not emerging until late afternoon, at which point it was time to go foraging for dinner.Since we had no means (or material) for making our own dinner, this meant a trip (the first of many) to Castara, about 8 km back down the road we’d driven this morning. One the way, we took a very short diversion down to the beach at a place called Englishman’s Bay; we paused there partly to look at the bay as a potential snorkelling spot for the next day, and partly because we’d read about a good roti shack there, called Eula’s. Well, the sea looked to rough to be good for snorkelling, and Eula’s turned out to be open for lunch only, but the trip wasn’t all for nothing; just as we were leaving, DMM spotted a rather large bird underneath a large stand of bamboo just behind the restaurant – our first Trinidad Motmot (recently split from Blue-crowned). It was standing on the ground, pecking at something, god knows what it was finding to eat there…

In any event, it was now getting on towards sunset, so we left our Motmot to his dinner and continued on to Castara for ours. Plenty of places to eat there (and all locally-owned, thank goodness), but it seemed to us that they all offered the same menu: dinner. You can get the chicken dinner, the fish dinner, or maybe the shrimp dinner, but those are it for choices. Fortunately, it’s all quite good. After dinner, we hopped into our Chinese-speaking friend, and steered her back towards GP in the pitch dark. Luckily for us, the road here is in very good shape, and only sparsely travelled, so driving at night is not at all a stressful experience.

Just a few minutes’ drive the other side of Castara, our headlights swept across something fluttering about a weedy area beside the road – something with big white “eyespots” in its wings. A nightjar of some kind, what a stroke of luck! But then – with a sinking feeling – we realised that our headlamps, which we’d brought with us against just such an eventuality- were still packed in our luggage, back at GP! (What stupid, stupid people we are!, I cursed, inwardly). The best we could do was to pull off the road obliquely, and try to aim the car in the direction we’d seen it; the bird did oblige us by flying through the beams a few more times, but our views were far from ideal.

Based on the wing spots, and the tail shape, I concluded that this was likely a Lesser Nighthawk, a species I am just slightly familiar with (from Mexico). (Later on, however, we read about the various candidates in ffrench; the text states that there are just “a few records for Tobago” for this species; whereas the White-tailed Nightjar is “commonly seen by the roadside.” In the end, I cannot say what it is we saw. Stupid, stupid!)

A little further along, in the tiny, barely-there community of Parrot Hall, our luck changed considerably for the better; a very different sort of nocturnal bird crossed our path, a Common Potoo. This bird had the decency to be hunting along a stretch of road with a few streetlights on it, so at least we could keep track of where it was, and eventually get some really good looks at it. It even sat for a few portraits, albeit rather poor ones...

And so to bed (and none too soon…).

The day’s haul (life birds in boldface):

1. Gray-breasted Martin
2. Carib Grackle
3. Tropical Kingbird
4. Caribbean Martin
5. Shiny Cowbird
6. Cattle Egret
7. Spectacled Thrush
8. Blue-gray Tanager
9. White-tipped Dove
10. Green Kingfisher
11. Tropical Mockingbird
12. Spotted Sandpiper
13. Pale-vented Pigeon
14. Red-crowned Woodpecker
15. Barred Antshrike
16. Bananaquit
17. Black-faced Grassquit
18. Copper-rumped Hummingbird
19. Green Heron
20. Laughing Gull
21. Trinidad Motmot
22. Black-crowned Night-heron
23. Common Potoo


Photos: Our somewhat circuitous route to GP; a “common, garden-variety” bird on Tobago, the Barred Antshrike; GP and environs; perhaps we can’t tell what it is, but at least we have its address; a slightly better view of the Common Potoo.

A very entertaining read so far Peter, just how a trip report should be. Brings back happy memories, I went to T&T six years ago and split my time between the two very different islands. Bananaquit has my vote for the most abundant non-flocking bird I've ever seen. It still didn't stop birders at Asa Wright asking the guides every day again and again "what's that little black and yellow bird there?" If only you'd let me know beforehand I could have given you tips on how to impress the staff at Asa Wright Nature Centre by pronouncing Asa Wright's name properly (she was Icelandic you see).

Edward said:

A very entertaining read so far Peter, just how a trip report should be.

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Thanks very kindly.

It still didn't stop birders at Asa Wright asking the guides every day again and again "what's that little black and yellow bird there?".

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Groan. Oh, that would be hard to take after a while... (at Pelee, it's female Red-winged Blackbirds.)

If only you'd let me know beforehand I could have given you tips on how to impress the staff at Asa Wright Nature Centre by pronouncing Asa Wright's name properly (she was Icelandic you see).

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(*smacks head*) I am kicking myself! Truly! Never again I shall fail to consult you... ||

(However, considering how the Trinidadians pronounce 'Blanchisseuse' and 'Sangre Grande', I'm not sure they'd be that fussed over hearing the correct pronounciation of the name in Icelandic.)

Day 2: Gloucester Place & vicinity

Day two of our expedition found me waking up at cock-crow. This always seems to come too early in these rural areas in the neotropics, as if the roosters are in some other time zone; in this case at about 3:30 a.m. Getting back to sleep was hopeless, so I crept quietly downstairs to do some writing (by headlamp) on GP’s very well-furnished patio. As the dawn twilight grew, I amused myself by watching bats; a small squadron of of them was patrolling the tiled loggia along the western face of the house. I couldn’t understand, though – why were they so very interested in this place in particular? Then, an answer came – I saw them, one after another, land on the exterior wall and scramble into the tiny gap along the top of the French doors – a-ha, they were coming in to roost! Amazing, just how small these animals can make themselves, when they need to.Just as the bats were going to their various beds, my lovely D. was rousing herself from ours. As it was still about two hours until breakfast, we had a small pre-breakfast (papaya we’d bought yesterday in Castara) and then went on an introductory tour of the GP gardens. We were joined on this jaunt by our new-found friend, Chip the Wonder Dog. Not actually the property of the owners (belongs to the caretaker), Wonder Dog is nevertheless fiercely loyal to the house (and all who reside there). If you embark on any hike, he will inevitably invite himself along, and will, in fact, shortly appoint himself leader (well, he does know all the local trails, after all). Fortunately, he is mostly a very quiet dog, and therefore doesn’t stir up the wildlife too much.

The property, as you can see from the photo above, is on a significant slope. Down one face of the slope is a small creek, and we headed down to this first. There was some good forest down there, with some impressively loud squawks (parrots? cracids?) coming from it, so it looked promising. We didn’t find the source of the calls, but along the creek itself, we did find a new species – a Ruby-topaz Hummingbird, darting every-which-way over a small pool, apparently hawking gnats. I had been hoping that we’d be able to follow this ravine down to a point where we’d be able to look out over the sea, but unfortunately the creek bed itself was not easily negotiable, so we headed back up. On the way back up towards the house, the source of the “squawks” was revealed, in the shape of a pair of Orange-winged Parrots doing a fly-by. As the sky was getting brighter, the garden was livening up considerably, so we started to see some more birds (other than the teeming Banaquits): Rufous-breasted Hermits, Palm Tanagers, House Wrens, and both male and female Barred Antshrikes.

However, we still had a while to wait before breakfast, so we decided to walk up along the road a bit. We had been told, last night, that there was a slightly larger creek, about 200m. to the east, which had a bit of a hiking trail along it, leading to a small waterfall. It was indeed a good path, wide and largely clear; we thought at first that it must have been kept clear by one or the other of the local cattle (some of which wander around unsupervised); but it may also have simply been the case that the banks’ vegetation had just been kept down by periodic flooding (it was currently the dry season on Tobago). The woods along this creek included a number of Cecropia trees, which we’ve found (elsewhere) to be very attractive to frugiverous birds. Here, they hosted a whole troop of Rufous-vented Chachalacas – large, gangly, turkey-like birds. This species was of particular interest to us, because it was one of a very small number of “Tobago Specialties:” that is, birds we’d be able to find here, but not on Trinidad. Other “new” birds discovered on this walk were Yellow-bellied Elaenia and Scrub Greenlet.

After a wonderful, large breakfast back at GP, we put the birding on the back burner, devoting the rest of the morning to snorkelling. We drove up to Castara again (Smooth-billed Ani, Giant Cowbird – didn’t have blinkers on, after all!), where there is a highly-regarded reef along the eastern side (known variously as “Heavenly” or “Little” Bay). I’m afraid I really don’t know much about fish, but there certainly was a lot of variety to be found there – a number of large, spotted fish with odd “noses” (Spotted Filefish, we later learned), Sergeant-majors (even I could recognize that one), and several species of very colourful damsels. For my friend the biology major, however, the most exciting thing we saw all day was a sort of rusty coating on the sea bottom – apparently, this was a species of coralline algae, which represented something new for her “phylum” list.

Following our adventure on the reef, we drove back to Englishman’s Bay for lunch; yesterday’s Motmot was not to be found, but we did see a number of Brown Boobies wheeling around some offshore rocks. Lunch eaten (very good), we drove westward a little bit past “home”to the village of Parlatuvier itself. We had been told that, near the mouth of yet another small creek down there, we would find a small wetland; I thought this might be a potential spot for herons and shorebirds. It turned out to be not much of wetland, just a small area of flooded grass, but it did yield a few Cattle Egrets and a lone Yellow-crowned Night-heron. It might be better in the wetter parts of the year, though.

There are some very steep hills just inland from Parlatuvier, and there is one fairly good-looking road leading up into them; so, just on a whim, we explored it. I was hoping that just maybe it would take us to some “old” growth forest up in the hills, and so some different birds. After just a couple of kms. though, this road deteriorated into something quite beyond our little Nissan’s capabilities, and we had to retreat. However, we did get fairly high up (it was a steep road!) –high enough to get fairly close views of a flock of swifts that we’d been seeing from GP. With a lot of work (and squinting) we finally decided that these were (or, at least, some of these were) Short-tailed Swifts.

Today’s tally:
24. Ruby-topaz Hummingbird
25. Orange-winged Parrot
26. Rufous-breasted Hermit
27. House Wren
28. Palm Tanager
29. Yellow-bellied Elaenia
30. Rufous-vented Chachalaca
31. Scrub Greenlet
32. Smooth-billed Ani
33. Giant Cowbird
34. Brown Booby
35. Yellow-crowned Night-heron
36. Short-tailed Swift
37. Crested Oropendola

Photos: Wonder Dog, at your service; DMM and Wonder Dog checking out the forest along a creek; a Rufous-vented Chachalaca trying to hide and eat simultaneosly (did the 'hiding' part pretty well!); one of the teeming hordes of Banaquits on the GP property; a Tropical Mockingbird.

Day 3: Parlatuvier – Little Tobago –Parlatuvier

One of the “must-see” sites, when one is visiting Tobago, is the islet of Little Tobago. It is located off the eastern tip of the main island, and is famous as a protected area of nesting seabirds, especially the Red-billed Tropicbird. We had a vague notion that birdwatchers could catch a tour boat over to Little Tobago from the town of Speyside, but in this case (unlike practically everything else) we hadn’t done our homework on this; so we had no established plan for today.

However, one thing we did know was that we were not going to take this on without a full GP breakfast inside us – so, we needed to kill about an hour-and-a-half until that would be served. Accordingly, we let Wonder Dog take us for another hike up the local creek. On this trip, we climbed up above the waterfall that had been our destination yesterday morning, and found the upper part of the creek to be a truly delightful walk – still an easy, flat walk, but though the midst of some very nice second-growth. We added Rufous-tailed Jacamar to our “trip list”, and had another interesting mammal sighting – a bat fluttering around just under the canopy, apparently quite unperturbed by the fact that it was now almost 0700, and the sun was well up. (We later learned, from one of the guides at Asa Wright, that T&T is home to several species of Sac-winged bats, and that these are habitually diurnal. Who knew?)

Back at GP, after breakfast, we mentioned our intended excursion to Little Tobago to our hosts. In response, they helpfully pulled out a brochure from one of the boat tour operators, which they just happened to have handy. Tours run daily at 10 a.m. & 2 p.m.], it said. The current hour was about 0845 – how long does the drive to Speyside take? I asked. About an hour – came the reply – so, if you leave right now, you just might make it in time for the morning departure. Oh. Hmm. Somehow, I’d expected more choice of departures than that.

A mad flurry of grabbing various bits and pieces of hardware and tossing them into the Nissan ensued. Then, in a spray of gravel (well, as much of a spray as a car with a 1.9 L engine can manage), we headed off towards Speyside. The route took us along the very scenic Parlatuvier-Roxborough Rd., which cuts through the Forest Reserve that straddles the hills that forms Tobago’s backbone. It was wrenching to drive right through all that primary forest without stopping to look at it, but I really didn’t want to have to wait for the afternoon boat tour; besides, a hike in the Reserve was set to be tomorrow’s adventure (that was in “The Plan”). We crested the central hills, and turned left in the town of Roxborough, and were making fairly good time – only to then run into construction on the Windward Road into Speyside. So much for that, (I thought), we’ll never make it for 1000 now – and we didn’t .

But ultimately, it didn’t matter, because the brouchure we’d been shown was … let’s say, just a little fanciful. The reality (at least in our experience) is that the tours do not really got to a set schedule; the operators of these boats (we saw two) just wait until enough people show up to make a boatload, and then go. So, as we drove up to the Blue Waters Inn (from whence all the excursions depart, apparently) we were hailed by a tall man name Jordan (“Glass bottom boat tour, sir?”). He was just walking down the road that lead to the hotel, trying to drum up customers for his colleague Randy, who operates one of the boats. I suspect that they were very happy to see us, since even with the pair of us added in, there were only five passengers in a boat that could easily have seated twenty.

As we headed down the jetty to prepare to board, Jordan helpfully pointed to the Osprey circling overhead, and a whole mess of Ruddy Turnstones on the beach. An odd thing struck me then – how odd it was that, in the midst of the boreal winter, and on an island surrounded by beaches, this was only the second species of shorebird we’d seen. Obviously, we weren’t visiting the right beaches – too clean. Still, the Turnstones were finding something to eat…I don’t do well at sea, as a rule, but fortunately, it’s a pretty short jaunt across to Little Tobago, and most of it well sheltered from the swells coming in from the Atlantic. Landing there is a bit of an adventure – there is a long concrete jetty, but the boat cannot actually moor there – we had to leap from boat to shore in time with the waves (assisted by the crew of course). Once we were actually safely on the island itself, Randy (the young man who’d piloted the boat) took charge as our guide. He was very knowledgeable about the local fauna (both marine and terrestrial) and could speak to the history of the islet itself. This was of only of passing interest, though, because for me the really big deal here were the Red-billed Tropicbirds – we saw our first as it rounded of the island, just as we reached shore. Now, that was a very satisfying sight, as we’d repeatedly dipped on this bird in the past.

Initially, there is a steep climb up the west slope of Little Tobago – being in the lee of the trade winds, this is rather a hot and stuffy walk. It doesn’t have much to see in the way of birds, either – I imagine this is because the birds that nest here, being pelagic species, want the have a good headwind to take off into. In any event, once we were over the top of the ridge, we started seeing tropicbirds everywhere! They were on the ground, concealed (but not very well) on the hillside; there were some fuzzy hatchlings, some young ones in mostly basic plumage, and one adult with the full tail (which had to be bent over double, in order to fit in the small space). I thought it was interesting, and perhaps a bit odd, to see so wide a range of ages represented; but then I realized that this was just my own “boreal” bias speaking. In a balmy climate like this, there’s probably much less pressure to fit all the egg-laying and chick-rearing into a short time span, as is the case for birds at home.

Little Tobago was also hosting a good number of breeding ‘sulids’ at the time of our visit: Brown Booby (on the rocks) and Red-footed Booby (in the trees). The Red-foots were, indeed very easy to spot, even at a distance of a couple of hundred metres across a bay, the red webs on the feet really stand out! Randy also pointed out several burrows in the ground, which he said were occupied by Audubon’s Shearwaters. Unfortunately, with this species (along with all other shearwaters, I would imagine) the “changing of the guard” only takes place at night, so there was no way for use to see them; Randy did point a light down one of the burrows, revealing a bird shape of some sort, but it could have been almost anything…

Last stop on Little Tobago was at a look-out up on one of the higher cliffs. This place gave us a terrific opportunity to watch the Tropicbirds, and both species of booby in flight – and also to see some spectacular pursuits by the local frigatebirds. It would have been just an excellent place for photography, if I had the skill (and more importantly, the patience) for that sort of thing. One small disappointment of whole Little Tobago excursion was the complete and utter lack of any tern sightings. I had hoped that we might see something like Sooty Tern, or maybe even a Brown Noddy – they do breed there, according to ffrench – but we didn’t see one single tern, of any species. (We may just have been there at the wrong time of year.)

Our drive back “home” to GP, we took the north-end route, via Charlotteville. I mention this because the road along the leeward side, from Charlotteville to Bloody Bay, is a sort of “middle of nowhere” road that goes through a great deal of something that comes pretty close to wilderness (by Tobago’s standards). We didn’t see anything much along there (clouds of unidentifiable swifts zipping by was about it), but we were there in the late afternoon; a morning visit might have been more productive.

We finished the birding portion of the day with a brief stop at Bloody Bay, which gave us few more birds: Belted Kingfisher, Southern Lapwing, and Gray Kingbird.

38. Rufous-tailed Jacamar
39. Red-eyed Vireo (“Chivi” Vireo)
40. Blue-black Grassquit
41. Osprey
42. Ruddy Turnstone
43. Brown Pelican
44. Red-billed Tropicbird
45. Northern Waterthrush
46. Brown-crested Flycatcher
47. Red-footed Booby
48. Little Blue Heron
49. Belted Kingfisher
50. Southern Lapwing
51. Gray Kingbird

Photos: The route to Speyside and back; a Red-billed Tropicbird hatchling; an older juvenile; adult in flight; surprised-looking Brown Booby chick

Peter C. said:

For my friend the biology major, however, the most exciting thing we saw all day was a sort of rusty coating on the sea bottom – apparently, this was a species of coralline algae, which represented something new for her “phylum” list.

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Phylum list? She's a keeper for sure!

Great report so far Peter.

Hi Peter, the Kenefick guide writes that an observation in 2006 of a Lesser Nighthawk was the first in Tobago for more than 50 years. This document: http://rbc.ttfnc.org/acceptedrec.pdf

have no additional observations of this species on Tobago, so I think your observation must have been http://www.birdforum.net/opus/White-tailed_Nightjar

Niels

Chacalaca alarm

"Day two of our expedition found me waking up at cock-crow. This always seems to come too early in these rural areas in the neotropics, as if the roosters are in some other time zone; in this case at about 3:30 a.m. "

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Had you stayed at Blue Water it would have been the Chacalaca's waking you at 04.00 every morning.

dandsblair said:

Had you stayed at Blue Water it would have been the Chacalaca's waking you at 04.00 every morning.

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Wouldn't be surprised - god knows, they're loud at GP as wel l:eek!: - just not as early, for some reason.

njlarsen said:

Hi Peter, the Kenefick guide writes that an observation in 2006 of a Lesser Nighthawk was the first in Tobago for more than 50 years. This document: http://rbc.ttfnc.org/acceptedrec.pdf

Niels

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Thanks for the info. Niels.

I had a feeling this was probably the case, but ffrench seems deliberately vague in the text about the status of this species. He seems to hint that there are more old records, but he also hints that they were potentially based on mis-identifications. And, it might make a difference that he was writing quite a while ago, when those old records would have been a lot closer than they are now!

Okay, Easter dinners (and a few other things) are safely behind us; now, to get back to our story....

Day 4: Gilpin Trace (Tobago Forest Reserve)

Have I mentioned before that I hate being guided? I suspect I might have done … well, something I hate almost as much is, having to dodge guides offering their services at me. I’ve not much first-hand experience with this, but I was made well aware that there are plenty such on Tobago – just walking along the road outside GP over the last two days, we were twice stopped by well-meaning (i.e., out-to-make-a-quick-buck) individuals, offering to find us manakins and White-tailed Sabrewings. Just strap on a pair of bins and step outside, you attract them like flies to a corpse.

From the guide books I’d read, I knew that the entrance to Gilpin Trace – the major birding trail in the Tobago Forest Reserve, which we were headed for today – was heavily guarded by a cohort of such helpful individuals, all waiting to pounce upon the unwary (and, I suppose, even the wary) traveller. For us, this presented a problem. But we had to go here, as this site was the only place that we knew of where we could find certain of the “Tobago Specialties” which we had not yet seen; in addition to the sabrewing, it was also supposed to be good for White-fringed Antwren and Blue-backed Manakin. Anyway, in order to get around the guide problem, I came up with another Plan; skip breakfast entirely, and head straight for Gilpin Trace first thing in the morning, with the goal of arriving on-site a few minutes before dawn. It made sense to me that, though the guides might well be dedicated enough to be themselves up at 0600, they would be unlikely to expect very many potential marks, er, “clients” to be there so early, so why bother showing up?

This time, the Plan worked like a charm – or, at least, the “evade the guides” part did – when we arrived at the trail head, we found it completely deserted. In fact, we were too early, as it was still much too dark (at 0545) to hike into the forest, even with the aid of a headlamp. We tried anyway, but had not gone very far at all when we ran into an entirely new problem – the skies opened up and hit us with a real downpour. And in our haste to get away this morning, we had neglected to bring along our raincoats! Then, I remembered seeing one of our travel umbrellas rolling around loose on the floor of the car yesterday; so, we trudged back out to the road to look for it. By the time we had groped around enough in the dark to determine that this was not to be found, the rain had slackened quite a bit, so we just said to hell with it, and went back down the trail again. (This is where it would’ve been very useful to have had a hat! Even when the rain eventually stopped completely, the drip, drip, from the canopy, directly into my eye sockets, was very annoying…)

By this time, there was quite a lot of birdsong about, but it took a while before we actually saw anything. Our first bird was nothing more than a silhouette - a small, short-billed, short tailed, stocky sort of silhouette, gobbling down berries in a tree right above our heads. It may or may not have been greenish. Hmmm, sure looks like a manakin - but I’m sure not going to call it based on that kind of sighting. Our bird was joined by another, and then another, and then a fourth. Bless him, this last bird turned his head sideways to reveal a little red cap - hurrah, Blue-backed Manakin!

Gilpin Trace follows the route of an old roadway over the central range, so one occasionally comes across physical features that hint at its former use, such as ruins of bridges and road cuts. At the first such cut, we encountered a real “mystery” bird; I just glimpsed something small and dark fly up from the ground near an earthen bank, and disappear around a bend; when we followed, we discovered it perched, quite in the open , and calling frequently. In dimness under the canopy, I could not see much about it, but I was really struck by the bill – oddly long and straight, like a pencil – and the short, broad tail. It was soon joined by another bird, which was similar, but had an even shorter tail – a newly-fledged offspring? After a short time the two of them flew off together, and we did not see them again. However, our only possible conclusion was that we had just seen the elusive Gray-throated Leaftosser; a bird that I wasn’t expecting to find at all, never mind on Tobago. Holy smokes - only two birds identified, and already we were having a great day!

But following the leaftosser, we hit a bit of a drought (a metaphorical one, that is - of birds; of actual rain, we had no shortage at all). We were keeping our eyes peeled for a White-tailed Sabrewing, intently scrutinizing each and every heliconia we came across, hoping for even a glimpse. When we finally did get one, though, it was not visiting a flower - we found it perched on a leafless branch, right above the path - ridiculously easy to see. Apparently, it was a male on territory, because it “sang” occasionally, and the only time we ever saw it fly was to chase away any other bird (hummer or not) that came near. After that first individual, the sabrewings seemed to be everywhere, and we saw at least half a dozen over the next 250 m. or so (maybe them were in a loose sort of lek?). It probably helped that, thanks to this co-operative male, we knew the song now. Certainly, given that you’re there at the right time of year, you won’t need a guide to find these!

Walking along further, we encountered a number of Rufous-bellied Hermits, sometimes in pairs, which seemed to be keen to approach us and inspect us carefully. I guessed that our route was taking us right into their nesting territories, and the just wanted to see how much of a threat we might be. A couple of times, this guess was supported by evidence, because we came across two hermit nests, which were very easy to see from the trail - one of them still under construction! (It positively amazes me to see what these birds are capable of building, with nothing but that huge, awkward bill and a pair of nearly non-existent feet.)

Just a few more birds came along after that. First, there was another very puzzling bird – we could see it quite well, but it didn’t seem to match anything in the book; a small, very plain passerine, apparently gleaning insects. It had a bit of yellow on the lower belly and vent, but otherwise was quite lacking in any colour but grey (and there are very few dull birds on Tobago, really). Turned out to be the very aptly-named Plain Antvireo – our field guide depicts this bird without the yellow, so that threw us (we think it was a young male). And then we had a brief but startling encounter with a White-necked Jacobin (a very nice-looking hummingbird), which just “buzzed us” quickly before moving on.

However, by this time, the morning was getting on a bit (about 0945), and the amount of “chatter” from the forest was definitely starting to wane, so we thought it might be a good time to head back towards the road; we’d got almost all the species we’d been hoping for, save the White-fringed Antwren - and, who knows, that may have been just as likely to be found on the way back as it would by going on. As it turned out, we found only one (new) bird on the way back up Gilpin Trace, a very stealthy Collared Trogon. DMM heard something, and thought, that it “just sounds like a Trogon” - we then spent about five minutes figuring out where it was. We never did get our Antwren, but I certainly wasn’t complaining - despite the rain, and the comparatively small number of species seen (for a tropical location), I was having the best birding day I’d had in three years - nothing like discovering a new location with challenging new birds in it!

What we did see n the way back, however, was people – gobs of them (well, not Point Pelee-sized gobs – but some, anyway). Made me feel vindicated that I’d insisted on a very early start – we’d successfully beaten not just the guides, but also the rush! Most of the groups stopped to talk to us a bit – and they all seemed very impressed that we had undertaken such an arduous adventure on our own (!?). One guide came right out and said “oh, you must have been here before!” – as if, being the poor helpless waifs that we were, we couldn’t possibly have found the place on our own. I felt just a little inclined to say to tell her “Ah – well, there are guide books, and we can read” – but that would have been a terribly churlish thing to say to people who were, after all, just being friendly.

And the winners are...
52. Blue-backed Manakin
53. Gray-throated Leaftosser
54. Fuscous Flycatcher
55. White-tailed Sabrewing
56. Plain Antvireo
57. White-lined Tanager
58. Collared Trogon
59. Great Black-hawk

Photos: Forest along Gilpin Trace (plenty of tree ferns and lianas); an awful (but i.d. – able!) photo of a White-tailed Sabrewing; two views of a Rufous-bellied Hermit working on its nest.

Peter C. said:

Anyway, in order to get around the guide problem, I came up with another Plan; skip breakfast entirely, and head straight for Gilpin Trace first thing in the morning, with the goal of arriving on-site a few minutes before dawn. It made sense to me that, though the guides might well be dedicated enough to be themselves up at 0600, they would be unlikely to expect very many potential marks, er, “clients” to be there so early, so why bother showing up?

This time, the Plan worked like a charm – or, at least, the “evade the guides” part did – when we arrived at the trail head, we found it completely deserted. In fact, we were too early, as it was still much too dark (at 0545) to hike into the forest, even with the aid of a headlamp. We tried anyway, but had not gone very far at all when we ran into an entirely new problem – the skies opened up and hit us with a real downpour. And in our haste to get away this morning, we had neglected to bring along our raincoats! Then, I remembered seeing one of our travel umbrellas rolling around loose on the floor of the car yesterday; so, we trudged back out to the road to look for it. By the time we had groped around enough in the dark to determine that this was not to be found, the rain had slackened quite a bit, so we just said to hell with it, and went back down the trail again. (This is where it would’ve been very useful to have had a hat! Even when the rain eventually stopped completely, the drip, drip, from the canopy, directly into my eye sockets, was very annoying…)

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I can seriously relate to that. Just the kind of thing I'd do! A great report and a place on our short-list but we opted for South Africa instead this year.

redeyedvideo said:

I can seriously relate to that. Just the kind of thing I'd do! A great report and a place on our short-list but we opted for South Africa instead this year.

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Thanks for the comments, Dave - I envy you, being able to "opt for South Africa" :t:. Wish D. and I could do that... there're just a few African endemic families we've not encountered yet.

I assume you have been looking at our Opus page for the leaftosser with one picture included and one more in the gallery: http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Gray-throated_Leaftosser

Niels

Peter C. said:

Thanks for the comments, Dave - I envy you, being able to "opt for South Africa" :t:. Wish D. and I could do that... there're just a few African endemic families we've not encountered yet.

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Not such a problem for us - finances aside. We just fly due south until we run out of land, much like some of the European species we saw on our last visit!

Anywaze, this isn't about me - next episode please. :t:

p.s. I agree with Isurus..

njlarsen said:

I assume you have been looking at our Opus page for the leaftosser with one picture included and one more in the gallery: http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Gray-throated_Leaftosser

Niels

Click to expand...

Niels - Thanks for that link - but no, you have assumed incorrectly - that would have implied that I am the sort of organized person who does his homework on time!

I had not looked at that page at all, before you mentioned it -but how interesting, that is exactly the kind of place we saw ours fly up from. Who knows? given the geographical location, it may be THE same earthen bank on Gilpin ... maybe we saw a descendant of this very bird, wouldn't that be something...

REVI - I appreciate the interest, truly, thank you. I am working on it - unfortunately, there are dishes to wash, cars to take to the shop, cars to retrieve from the shop ... for some reason, S.W.M.B.O.* doesn't feel inclined to do all that, so as to give me time to write ... funny, that.

Peter C.


*C.F. "Rumpole"

Day 5 (part the first): Gloucester Place – Asa Wright

Took one more, very short, birding hike before leaving Tobago – this time up the river that ran though the town of Parlatuvier itself. There’s a trail to (yet another) waterfall, which one the owners of GP had told us was a good place for Rufous-tailed Jacamar (we’d seen one already, but I’d have liked to have got a photo as well). Unfortunately, we found no jacamars at all, and our only “new” bird was a lone Great Blue Heron. Still, it was not a bad place for birds – there is one big fruiting tree, only 100m from the main road, which was positively alive with Red-crowned Woodpeckers, Spectacled Thrushes, and various tanagers. Who knows, with more time, we might found something really interesting in there.

After one final GP breakfast, we drove back to the Crown Point – a much less eventful drive, this time. We had to return our car to the agency by 1030, so while we weren’t in a terrible hurry, we couldn’t exactly dawdle along the way – so, we didn’t see any more of Tobago. However, our flight wasn’t scheduled until 1315, so we figured we would have several hours to dawdle around there. But as we checked our luggage, the Caribbean Airways desk guy asked us, “would you like to take an earlier flight? It’s sitting on the tarmac right now.” I was a little anxious about the checked bags making it over to Trinidad with us, but we decided to risk it; ended up getting the 1115 flight - another two hours shaved off our schedule!

By some miracle, our checked bags did arrive with us; and, after a bit of a break for lunch, we wandered down to the car rental desks. Since we were planning to do some more adventurous driving here on Trinidad, I asked for something in the “small SUV” class, and we were given a Nissan Xtrail. This was actually a lot more car that I was looking for - very large and roomy (by our standards), but it had very good ground clearance, which was the one characteristic I was really looking for.

We headed immediately for the Asa Wright Centre; fortunately, there are not a whole lot of choices of routes to follow west to east across Trinidad, so we couldn’t get really lost. A bit of a “traveller’s tip” though – if you are driving into Asa Wright from the West (Port of Spain or the airport), as we were, don’t turn at the first sign directing you to the Blanchisseuse Road; this will take you along a series of very narrow streets. You’re much better (as we found later) to go via the Arima bypass, just east of town – adds a couple of Km., but will save you a fair amount of time (and anxiety).
Having finally wound our way through scenic suburban Arima, we finally came to the well-signed intersection with the Blanchisseuse Road. Once on this, the drive up to Asa Wright is very straightforward – if just a little bit terrifying. On our map, this road is given a thick line, marking I as a major artery; in reality, it is one of the narrowest, diciest mountain roads I have ever driven on, just minimally cut into the slope. Nothing quite like navigating a single-lane blind corner, with a 500-foot drop on the outside edge, to add a frisson of excitement to one’s day!

Thankfully, the entranceway to Asa Wright itself is clearly marked, so no problem knowing when we’d arrived. Along the (rather long and winding) drive in, there are a number of large signs prominently displayed, which read, “Absolutely NO parking on the driveway” – to which the wag in the passenger seat wisely appended “…no matter how good the bird is!” The habitat along the driveway is very good.

Images: The Northern Range from the air (AW is in there, somewhere); our accommodation, with the Oropendola colony in the background.

Day 5 (part the second): Asa Wright Centre

Upon check-in, our first priority was to determine what time tea would be served; relaxing with a cup of on the verandah of the Main House, taking in all the feeder birds, is what this place is world-famous for. Learning that tea would not bed served for another couple of hours, we chose to steer well clear of the verandah for now – I had this (admittedly completely illogical) thought that we should "save" those birds for later, when we could get the full “Asa Wright teatime” experience. First things first – drag the bags up to our room to drop them off. (Almost everything at Asa Wright is either up- or down- hill from wherever you are). Our room was a rather charmless cinderblock “duplex”, but it did have the compensation of have a large tree right outside that was full of Oropendola nests. Plus, right from the threshold, we could hear a Bearded Bellbird “bwonk”-ing from somewhere down the Arima valley. (I had never see or heard this species before – but the call was just so odd, I had no doubt about the identity of the source.)

To fill up the time until four o’clock, we hiked down the “Chaconia” trail a little way. This trail goes downhill past the main house, mostly through stands of bamboo and second-growth forest. But the good birds started before we even got on the trail – at the “motor pool” a driver called our attention to two birds. “Look,” he said, “there’s the male, and over there, that’s the female” – he was pointing at a pair of Great Antshrikes, right beside the driveway! Though I knew, from seeing them on plates in field guides, that they were the “big bruisers” of their clan, I was not prepared fro how massive they were in reality. “Great” just isn’t an adequate description - that bill looks like it could snip my arm off).

Along the Chaconia itself, we were pleasantly surprised by how many birds were still singing, given that it was the middle of the afternoon. One of these singers, loud and persistent, sung a variation on a familiar tune – like an American Robin on amphetamines – this was the Cocoa Thrush. We also encountered a couple male Golden-headed Manakins (dee-lighful!) and a very intriguing cinnamon-brown passerine bathing in a rivulet I thought – hoped - it was some sort of interesting ovenbird (as in, furnariid), but it was only a female White-lined Tanager (I hadn’t studied up on the birds of Asa Wright very thoroughly – if I had, I would have known there really isn’t much variety in the ovenbird line here).

Tea time on the verandah mostly lived up to the hype; on the plus side, the views one gets of the feeder birds are truly top-notch. You can look down onto the birds, so no neck-strain here, and many of them come right up to the feeders hanging from the eaves. And there’s no doubt that there are many great looking birds in attendance, e.g.: Green and Purple Honeycreepers; Bay-headed, White-shouldered and Silver-beaked Tanagers; and Violaceous Euphonias. Hummingbirds are numerous as well, although just a few species (primarily, the Jacobin) dominate the feeders. However, the sheer variety of species was less impressive than I have seen at some other birding lodges. I suppose it’s fair to say that previous trips have spoiled us rotten; I've little doubt that, had this been my introduction to neotropical birds, I would have felt differently about it.

That said, there were a some individual birds here that I was absolutely thrilled to see – particularly the Tufted Coquette and the Turquoise Tanager, both lifers, and both being very beautiful. (The coquette is extraordinarily small, even for a hummingbird. Perhaps you have seen reports of a hummingbird - in some completely impossible location - which come about because somebody mistook a hawk moth for one? Well, I can well imagine the reverse happening for the Tufted Coquette – someone thinking it was just an elaborately-colour bee…) The really good thing that the Asa Wright veranda did afford us, was scope views of birds perched on tree tops, well down the valley; there is a “house scope” there and it is quite a good one, too. We saw Scaled Pigeon and Bearded Bellbird through it, and, as both species are dedicated canopy-dwellers, I doubt that we would have ever seen them otherwise. (We also got our only Channel-billed Toucan through the scope, but that was later).

Today’s birds:

60. Great Blue Heron
61. Black Vulture
62. Great Antshrike
63. Golden-headed Manakin
64. Cocoa Thrush
65. Violaceous Euphonia
66. Turquoise Tanager
67. White-chested Emerald
68. Black-throated Mango
69. Tufted Coquette
70. Bearded Bellbird
71. Scaled Pigeon
72. White-shouldered Tanager
73. Purple Honeycreeper
74. Green Honeycreeper
75. Bay-headed Tanager
76. Silver-beaked Tanager
77. Common Black-hawk
78. Great Kiskadee

Photos: The feeders at AW; a female White-lined Tanager at the feeding table; a Violaceous Euphonia, ditto; a surprisingly well-camouflaged female Green Honeycreeper; a White-chested Emerald.