Trinidad

Asa Wright Nature Center on Trinidad, which accommodates guests and arranges bird tours, has blue-crowned mot-mots with lacy tail patterns coming to tea from woods ringing with bearded bellbirds’ calls. Regular residents along trails from the center—often visible simply from its front porch—include collared trogons, golden-headed manakins, green, red-legged, and purple honeycreepers, speckled, silver-beaked, and turquoise tanagers. Shining rufoustailed jacamars nest in stream-bank holes. Raucous parrots sweep through the canopy.

Scarlet ibises stream in flights of hundreds to nightly roosts in Caroni Swamp. Oilbirds roost in nearby caves, glowing eyes reflecting visitors’ lights.

Red-bellied macaws scream back at hooting red howler monkeys and weeping capuchins in Nariva Swamp, a Ramsar Wetland of International Significance with savannah hawks and redbreasted blackbirds. Dawn visits are best, preferably in a silent kayak.

Golden tree frogs peep and orange-billed nightingale-thrushes sing along trails hung with giant bromeliads and orchids in Northern Range Sanctuary Forest, among many parts of the two islands designated as parks, reserves, and protected areas by the ministry of agriculture.

TRINIDAD as well as...

Asa Wright Nature Center

Caroni Swamp

Nariva Swamp

Northern Range Sanctuary Forest