Far too often we feel that uninhabited land is of no importance to anyone and its “use” displaces no one. Faraaz Abdool makes a plea for the visible and invisible creatures of Tobago’s Rocky Point peninsula.
From space, it is a rough peninsula dotted with vegetation between two notable beaches – Mt Irvine and Stonehaven – on Tobago’s Caribbean coast. From a vehicle coasting along the contours of the smoothly surfaced Shirvan Road, Rocky Point’s largely undisturbed secrets pass by in seconds. A closer look reveals aspects of this easily ignored spit that can teach us about the significance of this location. If we aren’t careful, we could easily lose the habitat of some special Tobago birds.
The dry forest at the side of the road is the typical near-coastal vegetation of south west Tobago. Dominated by medium-height trees, only the loudest birds can be heard over the pounding surf. But the wind carries songs of the endearing barred antshrike to waiting ears – these plump birds are almost always found in pairs. What observers often find interesting about this species is that the pairs consist of two birds that look radically different; they only resemble structurally!
[caption id="attachment_991174" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A male white-fringed antwren pauses briefly in his hectic foraging routine. Photo by Faraaz Abdool[/caption]
This is due to sexual dimorphism within the species, where males and females have distinct plumages. The function of this is still being investigated, as it has been found that the purpose varies among species as well as throughout the spectrum of sexual dimorphism. For the barred antshrikes, it is likely that the pairs of birds we see are monogamous and co-dependent.
Another sexually dimorphic bird that can easily be seen here is the closely related white-fringed antwren. Males are chocolate brown above and jet black below – the barrier between the brown and black is demarcated by a thick white line that starts at the base of the bird’s bill and traverses the boundary along its flanks toward its tail. Females have the same black and white wings as the males, but they are brown above and buff below. Irrespective of sex, their furtive behaviour as they hop from branch to branch is a constant.
The trees and shrubs are also home to several other more plainly plumaged birds. The scrub greenlet is one that many of us would hear almost throughout the day, but hardly ever lay eyes on. This little olive-grey bird is on the cusp of becoming its own species – the Tobago greenlet. Scientific studies are continually analysing the genes of all ten thousand species of birds across the world, and periodically advancements are made in understanding the taxonomy of these creatures. As it stands, the subspecies of scrub greenlet found on Tobago is not only endemic to this island but may be sufficiently distinct to warrant its status being elevated to that of a separate species. Once officially designated, it would be the only bird on earth that is found only on Tobago.
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