IAN RETURNED WHILE I WAS CHATTING UP Heather on the sundeck yesterday. It was pretty obvious he was a birder — who else would wear a shirt with a photo of a seldom heard and even more rarely seen Columbian tapaculo? They are from northern England and Heatheris as cute as her accent. She doesn’t give a hoot for birding but Ian’s birding CV pretty much matches Connie’s and we agreed to meet up and share expenses on some of the upcoming islands.
Peter, guiding on his day off Ian searching for the dove
The three of us were the first off the ship at St. George, Granada. (The second ‘a’ is pronounced like ‘day,’ not like the city in Spain.) We were introduced to Lincoln who agreed to drive us to the Mount Harmon National Park so we could explore the Granada Dove Trail, home to the — wait for it — endemic Granada dove. We were nonplussed when Ranger Peter told us the park is closed on Saturday! But he agreed to guide us around, even though it was his day off.
Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Four miles later we had seen a couple of doves fleetingly, but had no photos to show for it. I did get a good photo of the Antillean crested hummingbird, making it either a successfully disappointing day or a disappointingly successful day.
