Notes on Birds Observed in Trinidad

Abstract

OuR knowledge of tropical birds is so largely derived from the journals of travellers and naturalists, whose arduous explorations in the less accessible parts of the tropics have been attended by hardship and exposure, that most of us are discouraged from even attempting to visit the fascinating regions they describe. The brilliantly colored Trogons, Toucans• Jacamars and Hummingbirds which figure so conspicuously in cases of tropical birds, thus seem to us to be more or less unreal inhabitants of lands forever beyond the bounds of our experience. The truth is, however• that we may be comfortably and safely established in a tropical forest in less time than it frequently takes to reach the nearest European port. The Island of Trinidad belongs politically to the British West Indies, but faunally it is a small bit of the South American continent which has been detached in recent geological times. Its bird-life therefore is very similar to that of the Venezuelan mainland and is quite unlike the comparatively meagre, insular avifauna of the true West Indian islands to the northward. A visit