The Penultimate Tobago
Time is moving fast down here. The last day of work is circled on the calendar and we are in the frenzy of crunch time. Daveka’s advisor wanted her to get in several banding sessions at each of the new stations we have set up (more on them later) before the holiday break so we are busy busy.
Several Gentle Readers have brought to my attention that little mention is made in my writings of the White-Tailed Sabrewing, ostensibly my reason for being down here. I will attempt to remedy this and fill you all in on some other bird news. Non-bird people can feel free to skip ahead if you so choose. There are a lot of questions about the White-tailed Sabrewing (hence forth known as WTSA, its bird code name). Daveka is interested in nest searching and behavioral observations (some feel this is a lekking species) and trying to color mark individuals and more, but many of these things are difficult to do and perhaps not the best efficient use of her energies (according to her advisor).
We have done some behavioral obs. This usually meant we stood in one spot while a bird sat in its one spot and chirped and sometimes flew away, but then came back. Kind of dull and we saw anything that seemed of interest. A local forest guide helped us find a nest (as far as we know only the 9th one known) and we watched it over several weeks for an hour at a time. We kept track of how long the female sat on it and how long she was away. It was in bamboo high above a stream. We had no way to see inside it, but guessed maybe she had eggs. However, the female was not around the last few times we checked it so we fear she has abandoned it.
For a while we tried color marking the birds using some acrylic paint. It was hard to know how big of a dot to paint on the birds’ backs, but we made guesses. Unfortunately, we recaptured some birds and the paint was mostly gone. This technique does not seem viable unless you were to see the painted birds shortly after the painting.
Daveka’s advisor came to visit and see the whole operation for the first time. After taking it all in and talking it over with Daveka some new plans have been implemented. Turns out the main interest in the WTSA by the government (who funded Daveka’s research) is to try to estimate the population size and range and come up with a management plan. Thus he thinks all the behavioral things should on the back burner and we focus on capturing the birds. The 4 banding stations we began with all have WTSA near them and Daveka hoped to make population estimates based on our recapture rates of these birds. Her advisor has suggested we set up more stations in varying distances from the original stations so when we recapture birds we can at least know that they range X meters from their original capture point. So, we have made 3 new stations at each original station and they are 100m, 200m and 500m away. Now we have 16 stations which has meant much moving of poles and ropes and stakes and cutting of new net lanes and its kept us quite busy. Daveka just worked up a status report for her advisor and informed us, after looking through the data, that we have some WTSA that have been recaptured about 2 Km from their original banding point.
On the plus side, it has been nice to see new patches of the forest and to recapture other birds, not just Sabrewings, away from the original stations. We’ve gotten some birds 500m away from their original banding point so that’s been cool. We’ve also met new guides (they seem to have their favorite trails so by moving we’ve met new ones) and taken new hikes. The pressure to get sessions in at all these new stations has meant that we are banding two sites per day. Dan and I do one and Daveka does another.
We are getting a handle on the aging/sexing of at least a few spp down here. Tobago has a lovely bird called the Blue-backed Manakin. Like all Manakins, the males gather at leks where they “dance” together to impress females. These are small chunky birds who are black bodied with a blue back (duh) and a cute red crown patch. We catch birds in various degrees of blackness (the young males and all females are all green) and we were unsure about how to age them. We have done some googling (you all know how I love to google) and it looks like the 4 other species in the same genus all take 4 or 5 years to reach their final adult plumage. We can’t figure out exactly how long the species here takes, but at least we now know that birds that are green with at least some black are older than one year and that birds that are mostly black with only a little green are probably 4 years old. We found mention of several papers in press on this subject and I will be very interested to read them when they are finally published.
In other bird news, we have seen our first tropical owl. The striped owl is known on Tobago, but not Trinidad (we are trying to see all such birds before we leave for Trinidad, we have about 4 spp to go). Its smaller than a Great Horned, but larger than a Barn, probably the size of a Barred Owl. We knew they were here, but never dreamed we would actually see one. One day while we were banding, a guide we hadn’t met came through with a group and we always sort of chat up the guides to learn if they’ve seen anything noteworthy. This guy was so excited he was jittery. He pulled out a picture he had of the bird (he used a digital camera placed up against binoculars so it was very close and clear). He said only he and one other guide knew where it roosted. While he was very excited about it and proud, he wasn’t about to give away its location to us when he gets people to pay him for his services. We tried to get what hints we could and decided we would look for it when we had a chance. The next day we were walking near where he hinted the roost was. We were walking in to meet Daveka to set up a new site and we heard voices. There was the guide with Daveka looking up into the tree tops. Dan and I dropped our bags and scurried over as fast as we could. Turns out there were TWO owls and Peter (the guide) happily pointed them out for us. They were quite high and pretty far out from the main trunk which seemed odd to us. The birds were in different trees about 10 meters apart. We oohed and ahhed for quite a while. They are beautiful birds with stripes running down the breast and big ear tufts. Peter looked through Dan’s binoculars and almost had a heart attack. He wanted immediately to know how much they had cost and how he could get them. (Dan is going to write up a list of contact info for Leica and maybe some other major brands and encourage this guy to write and ask for a pro deal.) All the while Peter’s paying guests stood by patiently. I think they were pleased with all of our enthusiasm. We promised not to tell anyone where the owls were, thanked Peter profusely and walked on air to our next site.
Dan and I also took a birding field trip to the southern part of the island to check out some marshes, wetlands and a sewage lagoon (the birders among you know that sewage lagoons are most excellent places for birding). We picked up quite a few new species including black-bellied whistling ducks, white-cheeked pintail, 
white-winged becard, least bittern, wattled jacana, least grebe and some shorebirds. We topped that day off with some relaxing on a fancy beach where a strolling steel drum player worked the crowd for tips He said he knew the anthem of many countries “where are you from? America? (starts in with the “Star Spangled Banner.”) “But what if I were from Portugal? Do you know the Portuguese anthem?” “No, you sing it for me and I will learn it.”
In non-bird news now, the most exciting local news has been that the Trinidad & Tobago national soccer team has qualified for the World Cup this summer in Germany. They had to play two games against Bahrain, one here and one over there. We went to watch both games in local restaurants. The hype leading up to them was amazing- ads on the radio and TV all the time. The country is really into soccer and it was fun to be caught up in it. The first game was in Trinidad and it was tied 1-1. However, in these matches the games were weighted so a goal at an away game counted for more than just one point. This meant that for the series, the score was really 2 for Bahrain and 1 for TnT. This put the pressure on for the second game which was played in Bahrain. That game was scoreless at the half and it that had the crowd pretty tense. TnT ended up scoring one goal midway through the half and then they just stalled and passed the ball around for the rest of the game, wanting to keep their lead. So, point-wise they ended up winning the series 3-2. After they had qualified Daveka said “watch, they’ll make it a holiday, we love holidays here.” The next morning when we went to work the streets were unusually quiet. After work, Daveka tried to go do some errands only to find the bank closed. Yup, the holiday was announced late the night of the win and we were seemingly the only people who didn’t know about it.
The tropical depression that was hanging around the southern Caribbean has finally moved out and we have been relatively dry for about ten days. Its been a nice change to come home without water in my boots. Of course less rain means warmer temperatures- I just can’t win. We lose quite a few days to rain so if the sunny weather can hold out it will really help us cram in as much banding as possible before the holidays. Of course, there are other hurdles, one of them being Betsy, Daveka’s car. It had been making some funny noises, but we tend to kind of ignore them since it’s a very old car that does some really hard driving. The most recent noise, however, was strange enough that we took a trip to see the mechanic who first showed us the brake pads (shoes?) he took off the car which were completely worn down (and she had just put them on in September—the hills here that we drive every day are insane). Then he looked further up behind the wheel and declared some ball joint looking thing utterly shot and needing immediate replacement. Daveka asked if it could wait 3 weeks until we were done. Nope, Ian (or maybe his name is Eon) said it should be done ASAP, we didn’t want to careen off the road into a ditch did we? Well, no, actually we don’t. The issue is that auto parts are hard to come by in Tobago so Daveka has to go to Trinidad to buy this thing and then come back and then he has to put it in the car. So, we will have a few unexpected days off this coming week.
We see quite a bit of the kids who live upstairs nowadays. They are three siblings (Akil, Hakim and Shadica) and one cousin (I.K.). They are three boys ranging from 7-11 and a girl who is 5. Their mom/aunt owns the restaurant in town where we get fried chicken and she works nights. A local boy babysits until she gets home. The kids were initially pretty shy, but now that they know us they are around a lot more and much bolder. They have a lot of energy and there is always much commotion when they are around. They usually pop in when they get home at night. Last weekend, Daveka and I took them for a hike in the bush (I don’t think they had been before). They all got covered in mud and ran around and were only minimally unruly. The youngest boy, Hakim, was really good at spotting things and found two
bananaquit nests. All enjoyed looking through binoculars and mostly had a good time. They kept wanting to walk further and further, but it was only about 10 minutes after we had turned around to come back that they started to say how tired they were! We ran into a few groups while we were out and all the guides commented about us having kids with us (“You brought the youth out today?!”). We have only seen one or two foreign groups with kids and we have NEVER seen locals hiking in the bush (unless they were hunters).
One musicological note for the day: There is a lot of reggae here which also means there is a lot of Bob Marley. I sort of wondered if down here closer to the home of reggae if there would be other less famous musicans and if Tobagonians would roll their eyes at Americans who say they like reggae but only know Bob. However, one night when we were at a bar we heard several Bob songs within a half-hour. When I commented on this Daveka replied “you can never have too much Bob.”
In the next week Dan and I plan to go down south again (mmmmmm sewage lagoons) to bird and Daveka has guests coming- Batman and his mom. She worked on a bat project a few years ago and the bat man is coming here to visit. As described he is about 40, Scottish, loves rum and cokes and is quite fun, bat mom is reportedly a hippy and cool. They will stay with us for I think two nights, but will be in Tobago for 5 days so we will probably see a lot of them. Rest assured that if their visit is noteworthy you will hear about it here in the next Tobago Report.
xxoo
Maren
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Several Gentle Readers have brought to my attention that little mention is made in my writings of the White-Tailed Sabrewing, ostensibly my reason for being down here. I will attempt to remedy this and fill you all in on some other bird news. Non-bird people can feel free to skip ahead if you so choose. There are a lot of questions about the White-tailed Sabrewing (hence forth known as WTSA, its bird code name). Daveka is interested in nest searching and behavioral observations (some feel this is a lekking species) and trying to color mark individuals and more, but many of these things are difficult to do and perhaps not the best efficient use of her energies (according to her advisor).We have done some behavioral obs. This usually meant we stood in one spot while a bird sat in its one spot and chirped and sometimes flew away, but then came back. Kind of dull and we saw anything that seemed of interest. A local forest guide helped us find a nest (as far as we know only the 9th one known) and we watched it over several weeks for an hour at a time. We kept track of how long the female sat on it and how long she was away. It was in bamboo high above a stream. We had no way to see inside it, but guessed maybe she had eggs. However, the female was not around the last few times we checked it so we fear she has abandoned it.
For a while we tried color marking the birds using some acrylic paint. It was hard to know how big of a dot to paint on the birds’ backs, but we made guesses. Unfortunately, we recaptured some birds and the paint was mostly gone. This technique does not seem viable unless you were to see the painted birds shortly after the painting.
Daveka’s advisor came to visit and see the whole operation for the first time. After taking it all in and talking it over with Daveka some new plans have been implemented. Turns out the main interest in the WTSA by the government (who funded Daveka’s research) is to try to estimate the population size and range and come up with a management plan. Thus he thinks all the behavioral things should on the back burner and we focus on capturing the birds. The 4 banding stations we began with all have WTSA near them and Daveka hoped to make population estimates based on our recapture rates of these birds. Her advisor has suggested we set up more stations in varying distances from the original stations so when we recapture birds we can at least know that they range X meters from their original capture point. So, we have made 3 new stations at each original station and they are 100m, 200m and 500m away. Now we have 16 stations which has meant much moving of poles and ropes and stakes and cutting of new net lanes and its kept us quite busy. Daveka just worked up a status report for her advisor and informed us, after looking through the data, that we have some WTSA that have been recaptured about 2 Km from their original banding point.On the plus side, it has been nice to see new patches of the forest and to recapture other birds, not just Sabrewings, away from the original stations. We’ve gotten some birds 500m away from their original banding point so that’s been cool. We’ve also met new guides (they seem to have their favorite trails so by moving we’ve met new ones) and taken new hikes. The pressure to get sessions in at all these new stations has meant that we are banding two sites per day. Dan and I do one and Daveka does another.
We are getting a handle on the aging/sexing of at least a few spp down here. Tobago has a lovely bird called the Blue-backed Manakin. Like all Manakins, the males gather at leks where they “dance” together to impress females. These are small chunky birds who are black bodied with a blue back (duh) and a cute red crown patch. We catch birds in various degrees of blackness (the young males and all females are all green) and we were unsure about how to age them. We have done some googling (you all know how I love to google) and it looks like the 4 other species in the same genus all take 4 or 5 years to reach their final adult plumage. We can’t figure out exactly how long the species here takes, but at least we now know that birds that are green with at least some black are older than one year and that birds that are mostly black with only a little green are probably 4 years old. We found mention of several papers in press on this subject and I will be very interested to read them when they are finally published.
In other bird news, we have seen our first tropical owl. The striped owl is known on Tobago, but not Trinidad (we are trying to see all such birds before we leave for Trinidad, we have about 4 spp to go). Its smaller than a Great Horned, but larger than a Barn, probably the size of a Barred Owl. We knew they were here, but never dreamed we would actually see one. One day while we were banding, a guide we hadn’t met came through with a group and we always sort of chat up the guides to learn if they’ve seen anything noteworthy. This guy was so excited he was jittery. He pulled out a picture he had of the bird (he used a digital camera placed up against binoculars so it was very close and clear). He said only he and one other guide knew where it roosted. While he was very excited about it and proud, he wasn’t about to give away its location to us when he gets people to pay him for his services. We tried to get what hints we could and decided we would look for it when we had a chance. The next day we were walking near where he hinted the roost was. We were walking in to meet Daveka to set up a new site and we heard voices. There was the guide with Daveka looking up into the tree tops. Dan and I dropped our bags and scurried over as fast as we could. Turns out there were TWO owls and Peter (the guide) happily pointed them out for us. They were quite high and pretty far out from the main trunk which seemed odd to us. The birds were in different trees about 10 meters apart. We oohed and ahhed for quite a while. They are beautiful birds with stripes running down the breast and big ear tufts. Peter looked through Dan’s binoculars and almost had a heart attack. He wanted immediately to know how much they had cost and how he could get them. (Dan is going to write up a list of contact info for Leica and maybe some other major brands and encourage this guy to write and ask for a pro deal.) All the while Peter’s paying guests stood by patiently. I think they were pleased with all of our enthusiasm. We promised not to tell anyone where the owls were, thanked Peter profusely and walked on air to our next site.
Dan and I also took a birding field trip to the southern part of the island to check out some marshes, wetlands and a sewage lagoon (the birders among you know that sewage lagoons are most excellent places for birding). We picked up quite a few new species including black-bellied whistling ducks, white-cheeked pintail, 
white-winged becard, least bittern, wattled jacana, least grebe and some shorebirds. We topped that day off with some relaxing on a fancy beach where a strolling steel drum player worked the crowd for tips He said he knew the anthem of many countries “where are you from? America? (starts in with the “Star Spangled Banner.”) “But what if I were from Portugal? Do you know the Portuguese anthem?” “No, you sing it for me and I will learn it.”
In non-bird news now, the most exciting local news has been that the Trinidad & Tobago national soccer team has qualified for the World Cup this summer in Germany. They had to play two games against Bahrain, one here and one over there. We went to watch both games in local restaurants. The hype leading up to them was amazing- ads on the radio and TV all the time. The country is really into soccer and it was fun to be caught up in it. The first game was in Trinidad and it was tied 1-1. However, in these matches the games were weighted so a goal at an away game counted for more than just one point. This meant that for the series, the score was really 2 for Bahrain and 1 for TnT. This put the pressure on for the second game which was played in Bahrain. That game was scoreless at the half and it that had the crowd pretty tense. TnT ended up scoring one goal midway through the half and then they just stalled and passed the ball around for the rest of the game, wanting to keep their lead. So, point-wise they ended up winning the series 3-2. After they had qualified Daveka said “watch, they’ll make it a holiday, we love holidays here.” The next morning when we went to work the streets were unusually quiet. After work, Daveka tried to go do some errands only to find the bank closed. Yup, the holiday was announced late the night of the win and we were seemingly the only people who didn’t know about it.The tropical depression that was hanging around the southern Caribbean has finally moved out and we have been relatively dry for about ten days. Its been a nice change to come home without water in my boots. Of course less rain means warmer temperatures- I just can’t win. We lose quite a few days to rain so if the sunny weather can hold out it will really help us cram in as much banding as possible before the holidays. Of course, there are other hurdles, one of them being Betsy, Daveka’s car. It had been making some funny noises, but we tend to kind of ignore them since it’s a very old car that does some really hard driving. The most recent noise, however, was strange enough that we took a trip to see the mechanic who first showed us the brake pads (shoes?) he took off the car which were completely worn down (and she had just put them on in September—the hills here that we drive every day are insane). Then he looked further up behind the wheel and declared some ball joint looking thing utterly shot and needing immediate replacement. Daveka asked if it could wait 3 weeks until we were done. Nope, Ian (or maybe his name is Eon) said it should be done ASAP, we didn’t want to careen off the road into a ditch did we? Well, no, actually we don’t. The issue is that auto parts are hard to come by in Tobago so Daveka has to go to Trinidad to buy this thing and then come back and then he has to put it in the car. So, we will have a few unexpected days off this coming week.
We see quite a bit of the kids who live upstairs nowadays. They are three siblings (Akil, Hakim and Shadica) and one cousin (I.K.). They are three boys ranging from 7-11 and a girl who is 5. Their mom/aunt owns the restaurant in town where we get fried chicken and she works nights. A local boy babysits until she gets home. The kids were initially pretty shy, but now that they know us they are around a lot more and much bolder. They have a lot of energy and there is always much commotion when they are around. They usually pop in when they get home at night. Last weekend, Daveka and I took them for a hike in the bush (I don’t think they had been before). They all got covered in mud and ran around and were only minimally unruly. The youngest boy, Hakim, was really good at spotting things and found two
bananaquit nests. All enjoyed looking through binoculars and mostly had a good time. They kept wanting to walk further and further, but it was only about 10 minutes after we had turned around to come back that they started to say how tired they were! We ran into a few groups while we were out and all the guides commented about us having kids with us (“You brought the youth out today?!”). We have only seen one or two foreign groups with kids and we have NEVER seen locals hiking in the bush (unless they were hunters).
One musicological note for the day: There is a lot of reggae here which also means there is a lot of Bob Marley. I sort of wondered if down here closer to the home of reggae if there would be other less famous musicans and if Tobagonians would roll their eyes at Americans who say they like reggae but only know Bob. However, one night when we were at a bar we heard several Bob songs within a half-hour. When I commented on this Daveka replied “you can never have too much Bob.”In the next week Dan and I plan to go down south again (mmmmmm sewage lagoons) to bird and Daveka has guests coming- Batman and his mom. She worked on a bat project a few years ago and the bat man is coming here to visit. As described he is about 40, Scottish, loves rum and cokes and is quite fun, bat mom is reportedly a hippy and cool. They will stay with us for I think two nights, but will be in Tobago for 5 days so we will probably see a lot of them. Rest assured that if their visit is noteworthy you will hear about it here in the next Tobago Report.
xxoo
Maren
posted by gimpadelic @ 7:50 PM
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