And today, when we should be over a month into the dry season, we are experiencing regular and sometimes heavy rainfall.

Is the weather confused? Or is it just confusing us who probably notice it more than we adapt to it. We are seeing subtle changes in the flowering and fruiting of some of our forest trees. While we are accustomed to seeing the flaming Immortelle flowering at this time, there are some Chaconia blooming as well, and this should not happen until around July.

But we can feel the Dry Season pushing through! The strong northeasterly breezes, the spanking blue sky between the sudden showers, and the fact that the trails underfoot are becoming drier makes this transition period an especially beautiful time to be at Asa Wright.

The forests are cooler, the birds are brighter, and seem to sing more stridently, and the rivers and streams are full, and go crashing down through the valley. It’s a beautiful time to be here with us, so, are you on your way?

“Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.”

These lines are taken from the poem “A Farewell to Arms”, written by George Peele in the sixteenth century. The title was also used by Ernest Hemmingway in his novel of that name.

Ann Sealey, who retired in January, gave to Asa Wright and all of us here so much of her beauty, strength and youth for 32 years. But she departs leaving us with the benefits of her duty, faith and love for the place known as Spring Hill. And the roots of her service are deep and will remain ever green in our memories, and in the operations of the Centre.

When Ann joined us on January 13th 1980, as a kitchen helper, the Centre was a much smaller place. But she grew with us, and for the past four years served as Lodge Manager of the estate, overseeing all of the operations. She developed a full knowledge of all of our birds, animals, and even the flowers and the trees, and could advise visitors on all of these.
Ann’s duty to and her faith in Asa Wright were easily discerned. If we happened to be short-staffed, or if there was problem, Ann would literally roll up her sleeves and personally do whatever needed to be done to get us past the hiatus.

All of her staff gathered on the Verandah on Friday 13th to acknowledge her service and dedication to us, the Centre and to our Mission of conservation and preservation. Several stood with tears in their eyes to pay their tributes to a wonderful Servant and dear friend of the Centre

But Ann is not totally gone from our lives: She will be retained to assist us as and when needed, and to provide us with such advice and counsel as we may need on our journey. So an era has not really passed, but is slowly fading away. Bless you, Ann, and thank you for all that you were to us!

But we do! And here at Spring Hill we all work to ensure that our guests who have chosen to be in the forest at Christmastime enjoy our own traditional customs and fare.

Christmas is a “long season” in Trinidad and Tobago. It begins in early November with the traditional songs of the Paranderos, the people who play and sing the music of Parang. This is essentially music of our Spanish heritage, mixed with the rhythms of the first Amerindian peoples. There are songs of Advent, played on guitars, mandolins cuatros (a four-stringed instrument) violins and bass, supplemented with “chac-chacs” (maracas) and “toc-tocs” (claves). The songs are sung in Spanish, and the rhythm is largely Castillian waltz. Traditionally, Paranderos leave their homes to visit neighbouring villages, to sing and play their Parang, and to share in the food and hospitality of their hosts.

On Sunday 18th December, the Calbio Parang Group visited Asa Wright to serenade our guests. They sang the songs of Advent on the main veranda on a clear starry night, to the background sounds of our crickets, night frogs and pygmy owls.

On Christmas Day, our rain forest guests were treated to a day of sparkling sunshine, and enjoyed their Christmas lunch of turkey and ham, complemented with local traditional dishes of pastelles, pigeon peas and rum-soaked fruit cake.

The rains returned for New Year’s Eve, but the Old House at Spring Hill was warmed up with the scintillating sounds of Trinidad’s steel drum music. A small ensemble of steel played music for dancing on the verandah, and our visitors – all from cold climes – were able to dance in the cool open air! A steel rendition of Auld Lang Syne drifted down through the forest at midnight, while fireworks burst in the distant sky beyond our valley.

Happy New Year, from the Rain Forests of Trinidad and Tobago, to all of our wonderful friends!

The Silver-beaked Tanager belongs to the family of birds known for their beautiful colours: the Thraupidae (Tanager) family. As the name suggests, this bird’s beak, which is swollen at the base, appears to be a glistening silver in the field. Without sunlight shining directly on it, this bird appears to be black. However, when in the light, the Silver-beaked Tanager looks as if it were maroon-coloured velvet. One can see its bright crimson chest and throat. The female of this species is far less impressive with a black beak and dull reddish-brown feathers. This Tanager is found in South America and Trinidad where it inhabits forest borders, estates, semi-open areas, secondary growth and even some neighbourhoods. The Silver-beaked Tanager can be heard at dawn singing “che-wa” for its human and avian friends. It eats fruits of Melastomaceae, other small shrubs and several bromeliads. It will occasionally drink nectar and will also feast on insects. Instead of sallying for their prey, they simply flit forward to grab them.

Sometimes referred to simply as the “Silver- beak”, this bird will either be found in pairs or groups of an average size of seven birds. It moults from May to December with a peak in August and September. It calls regularly from January to July.

At this time of the year great swaths of our forests are turning brilliant vermillion! This is because the Immortelle trees (Erythrina poeppigiana) are flowering. These are large trees; they grow to a height of about 80 feet (25 metres), and begin to flower at the end of the rainy season, late December, each year.

The Immortelle flower is brilliant orange, and the whole crown of the tree is covered with these outstanding flowers. The view of our northern range hill slopes at this time of year is one of large bands of

orange spread across the deep green foliage. The Immortelle was also known to early cocoa planters as “madre de cacao”, or Mother of the Cocoa, because Trinidad and Tobago’s very fine cocoa thrives especially in the shade of the Immortelle trees. The Immortelle is also a “nitrogen fixing” tree, and is important to the biodiversity of the forest. The tree is obviously a good host to epiphytes, which grow liberally on its upper branches, and to the Crested Oropendolas, which builds their long hanging nests in

the canopy.

Known mostly to the layman for its beauty when flowering, the Immortelle is also called “the Flame Tree”, for obvious reasons.

But as lovely as is the spectacle of the flaming immortelles in the hills around the Centre, there is a slight downside to their presence: many of our humming birds, especially the White-Necked Jacobin, leave the precincts of our verandah to fly up into the vermillion canopies to enjoy the nectar of those flowers!

Nariva Swamp – can you see it? Board Member Bob Thomas obviously did!

This year the Annual Sunday Field Trip took Board Members to the east coast and into the Nariva Swamp. Following an interesting Bird Watching session in the flat farmland area, the group arrived at the Forestry Division’s Nariva Swamp Field Station where they enjoyed a PowerPoint presentation delivered by Reynaldo Phillip, Forester 1, on the work of the Division within the Nariva Swamp Wildlife Sanctuary.
Following a magnificent curry lunch catered by the Asa Wright kitchen staff, the party set off to embark by small dinghies through a maze of mangrove roots and swamp grasses to Bush Bush Island. A tour of the island revealed many interesting birds as well as clear views of the Red Howler and Capuchin monkeys.

Nariva Swamp – can you see it? Board Member Bob Thomas obviously did!

The Jade Vine has been threatened by continuous deforestation of its natural habitat in the Philippines. One study says that between 1990 and 2005, 32.3% of forest cover was lost in the Philippines. The Jade Vine was recently described by a popular website, Listverse.com, as one of the top ten incredibly rare flowers in the world.

–J.L. Ryan

References:

• Chicago Botanic Garden
• Kew Royal Botanic Gardens

You may know this bird by its former official name, the White-tailed Trogon. The White-tailed Trogon existed from Panama to Brazil but recently this species has been split. Those found west of the Andes remain the White-tailed Trogon while the birds east of the Andes are now called the Green-backed Trogon. These newly identified species were found to have different plumage, vocalisations and DNA.

Like all members of the Trogonidae

family, the Green-backed Trogon has short legs, short beaks and graduated tails. The female is a duller version of its mate. At 11 inches it is larger than a similar- looking species also found in Trinidad, the Violaceous Trogon.

The Green-backed Trogon inhabits humid and dry forest, secondary growth and forest edges. It eats fruit and arthropods and will sally for insects. These birds are

either found alone or in pairs and will nest in cavities in tree trunks or in termite nests where clutches of two to three eggs are laid.

Trogons are ventriloquists of the forest, often deceiving humans into thinking that they are somewhere they are not. When their series of notes, normally done about 6-15 times, is done softly they often convince persons that they are far away. Less often they may cluck or churr. When the Trogon takes leave of you, you will witness its dipping flight, the tail waving as it moves away.

– J.L. Ryan

References:

• ffrench, Richard. 1991. A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago.
• Hilty, Steven L. 2003. Birds of Venezuela.
• Green-backed Trogon. Cornell Lab or Ornithology. LINK

Asa Wright Nature Centre had the pleasure of entertaining Minister of Housing and the Environment,

the Honourable Dr. Roodal Moonilal, at Spring Hill on November 14. The Minister had earlier indicated a desire to visit us following Chairman Dr. Judith Gobin’s letter of invitation to the Prime Minister and Members of Cabinet outlining the work of the Centre and seeking respite from quarrying and deforestation activities in the Arima Valley.

Included in the Minister’s party were DeputyPermanentSecretaryMr.Anthony Ramnarine, Special Advisor Mr. Asgar Ali, EMA CEO Dr. Joth Singh, the Minister’s Secretary Ms. Rose Yatali and others.

Welcoming the group on behalf of the Centre were Dr. Gobin, Director Dr. Carol James, CEO Mrs. Veronica Simon-Wallace and Lodge Manager Ann Sealey. Present also were our staff, as well as delegates from the communities of Paria Brasso Seco and Verdant Vale.

Upon arrival, the Minister’s party was taken to the iconic Verandah to absorb the view of the Arima Valley and to enjoy Asa Wright’s special “Mountain Ebony” coffee. Following a brief tour of the 102-year-old Main House, everyone gathered in the beautifully decorated Jade Vine Arbor, where Veronica Wallace welcomed the Minister and his party. Dr. Gobin then addressed the gathering, giving the history and then describing the Mission and Vision of the Centre. She also spoke about the threats to the valley from quarrying and deforestation, and asked the Minister to recognise and support the need for sustaining our wilderness areas.

In reply the Minister, alluding to this being the International Year of the Forests, expressed his concern for what he had seen

on the drive up to Spring Hill – quarrying, deforestation, monoculture farming and the consequent destruction of the road. He outlined the areas which his Ministry had already begun to tackle, and what they were working upon. He urged Asa Wright to make use of the now-active Green Fund, and assured his support for our work.

Following an exchange of gifts, refreshments were served before the party visited the Jonnie Fisk Conference Facility (the “Mango Room”), which the Minister said could serve as a venue for a cabinet meeting or retreat.

The Bellbird thanks the Minister for his visit and for the assurances he left with us as he departed. Come back soon, Sir!

This was the first AGM under the Chairmanship of Dr. Judith Gobin, who was elected to that post at the 2010 meeting. The meeting welcomed our new CEO Veronica Simon- Wallace, who joined the Centre on July 1, and members declared their appreciation for the work of Ann Sealey, who

had held the Centre steady in the absence of a CEO.

Dr. Gobin acknowledged the resignations of Board Members Everard Medina, Rodney de Boehmler and Brien De Gannes. The meeting also acknowledged the resignation of long-serving Corporate Secretary Mary Jardine. All of these persons were thanked for their dedicated service to the Centre.

New Members elected at the meeting were Andrea Julien, Clarence Bacchus (resident members), Dr. Christopher Cox and Courtney Buechert (non-resident members).

Dr. Gobin expressed her enthusiasm in terms of working with the Board (old and new members) for the next three years.