Rainforest hike featuring bird watching

After getting back from partying at three in the morning ‘last night’ I got roughly three hours of sleep before waking up and leaving for a rainforest bird watching hike at six. While I felt like a zombie getting ready I was able to get another forty-five minutes of sleep on the ride to the Gilpin Trail where our guide, Darlington Chance, was waiting to give our group a tour of the idyllic rainforest. The temperature was several degrees cooler once in the forest and under the shade of trees which had been growing for decades if not hundreds of years. The forest had gone through a period of regrowth after a hurricane in the mid-1900’s had removed many of the older trees, giving birth to new growth and new life in the forest. Many of the larger creatures that used to call the forest home had been hunted to extinction on Tobago if not on both of the islands, these included monkeys and bears. The island boasts more than 200 species of bird, more than fifty of which are indigenous only to Tobago, as well as a vast array of butterflies, snakes, and other unique creatures such as crabs that live in the walls and Trapdoor Spiders. The hike was five kilometers, though due to the slow nature of it being a tour and to the muddy terrain it took about four to five hours. We saw the following birds: the Bananaquit, a sugar eater, the Blue-Crowned Motmot, known as the king bird of the jungle because it’s the only species with a crown, the White Tailed Sabrewing Hummingbird, the largest hummingbird between the two islands, indigenous only to Tobago, and many of which were building nests that were visible from the trail, the Yellow Legged Thrush, the White Necked Jacobin, the White Necked Thrush, the Golden Olive Woodpecker, and a flock of parrots. The hummingbirds build their nests by using spider silk to attach weaving materials to leaves in bushes, creating nests that sit atop them or that hang beneath.

We got back to the guesthouse at about one and I immediately took a nap before accomplishing some basic chores for the week: cooking my meats ahead of time, organizing vitamins, doing laundry. I made myself a BLT with avocado and a side of guacamole with all of the extra avocado. After dinner I fell back asleep and didn’t wake up until the next day.

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