Follow the flock stars to Tobago
For the BEST Caribbean bird-watching experience...
What do you do if you meet an alligator on a golf course? I wasn’t sure of the rules when my ball landed within metres of one at the Magdalena Grand Beach & Golf Resort, on Tobago’s Atlantic coast.
In fact it was a caiman – a scarily close relation of the alligator – basking in the sun by the 18th green.
I’d been assured caimans don’t like the taste of golfers, so I edged gingerly towards this one, as I wanted to get a closer look at a dozen southern lapwings that were feeding by the reptile’s pond.
This is bird-watching, Caribbean-style. For lazy birders like me, it’s ideal. You see rare creatures – alongside common beauties – while doing other holiday things, such as golf, without much effort. So as I executed a lazy backstroke at Castara Bay on Tobago’s Caribbean Sea side (the waves are bigger facing the Atlantic), I gazed up at brown pelicans divebombing, flanked by magnificent frigatebirds – the black, spindly pterodactyls who steal fish off other birds.
One morning at Cuffie River Nature Retreat, a hotel deep in the remote, forested interior, a little egret elegantly paraded by the swimming pool as I lolled on my sun-lounger.
The resort – which slots into a gap in the forest between two rivers – was built from scratch by owner Regina Dumas on the footprint of her father’s old cocoa plantation. Here, hummingbirds outnumber humans. The birds whirred around the sugar-water feeders as I tucked into my breakfast. They were metalliccoloured blurs, their wings beating 50 times a second. The birds’ names capture their magic: my favourite, the ruby-topaz – its head turning a luminous red in the sun. With some 260 species, Tobago is the best bird-watching island in the Caribbean. The principal reason is Main Ridge Forest Reserve, a 30km long, 1,900ft-high spine that has never been cultivated.
The best time to visit the rainforest – and the island generally – is from January to April.
It’s dry season, as well as nesting season, meaning the birds are usually found in the same spot. Even then they can be hard to locate, so do visit the places where they are fed, such as Shurland Nature Park. Here, you can feed the hummingbirds yourself and feel the whoosh of air as they fly from your arm.
British Airways flies to Tobago from €688 return (ba.com). B&B doubles at Cuffie River Nature Retreat from €151 (cuffie-river. com) and Magdalena Grand Beach Resort from €197 (magdalenagrand.com).
For bird-watching, check out Eureka Natural History Tours (naturetobago.com).