Anybody have experience with birdwatching tours in the DR?

Just an additional question about resources dealing with being able to identify native bird species. What is available and where? Are there books or websites that are just DR or Hispanola focused or is it necessary to get a general these are the birds of the Carribean type book?

There's a book specifically about the DR's birds that's on sale in several places. Helen Kellogg Library is one. It's also available from this site, which is also one of the companies that organises bird watching tours in the SW. I haven't been myself, but I've heard good things about it and plan on doing a trip one day.

Great site and information Chiri - thanks so much.

We really do have to meet soon - maybe we should arrange a trip to see the birds

expatsooner said:

Great site and information Chiri - thanks so much.

We really do have to meet soon - maybe we should arrange a trip to see the birds

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Just a little trivia, but did you know that the grandaddy of all birdwatchers, Mr. Audobon himself was born here, in the island of Hispaniola?

Yes Keith.....

....for the past year, I would watch the 40-50 hummingbirds that would feed feed all day long in a beautiful flowered tree across from me in STI (Trinitaria) ....that was until this trip down when the owners decided that CUTTING THE TREE DOWN was a good thing.....

I will have to let HB in on who it was...I know he knows them on a social level.....

Mirador, Audubon was born here on this island? That is very interesting indeed.

Now that I know about these other guides, I am going to get one, but up till now I have been using Peterson's Birds of the West Indies, which on the whole is not too bad. It has helped me to identify a variety of different birds -- the Trogon (papagayo), Hispaniolan Parrot (cotorra), Hispaniolan Parrokeet (perico, of which there is a sizable flock that hangs out in a tree outside my condo), Hispaniolan Emerald Hummingbird (book says zumbaflor, but everyone just calls them picaflor or colibri), the Cuckoo (Pajaro Bobo), an Elaenia, Golden Swallow, Palmchat, (Sigua Palmera, our national bird), the amazing Hispaniolan Woodpecker (Carpintero), Flat Billed Vireo, and a few others. I would like to spot a Blue Hooded Euponia -- that is some bird. Almost all of these were spotted right here in the capital or out in the southern region of the Cibao. I would like to head to some of the National Parks to do some serious birdwatching, but that is not yet in the cards. Waiting for that call from the Nat'l Geo editors . . . . . . .

I have been trying to get my good friend Michael Touch, who is one of the ornithological curators at the San Diego Zoo to come down here and do a bird tour,but he has been concentrating on Costa Rica now for some years. Soon, though he may come. Who knows, maybe he will discover a new species.

Keith R said:

So no one on DR1 has actually gone birdwatching in the DR?

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WELL.. I doubt many would call going HUNTING bird watching, but it is. Hunting isnt all about killing. It is about being out there and SEEING everything, seeing everything and how they relates to the enviroment. When we hunted birds in the DR we would see all kinds of wildlife. I have seen so many different kinds of birds , that i would have to ask my hosts to tell me what they were. We went to some lake near the Hatian border in Monte Christi that we saw a tremendouns amount of birds. Tree ducks, and white crowned pidgeons, were what we were after , but we saw so much more.

we have gone down into Baharona and hunted desert like condidtions, and we saw plenty of different birds there. we saw maybe 5 different types of doves, parrots, and plenty of birds that I have no idea what they are!!!

I dont know of any tours.........but maybe one day Ill just shoot my camera, and see how many different species I can capture on film...

bob

LPF: So you watch them and then you kill them...you animal!!! Just kidding. To each their own...

I grew up in a conuco and one of the things I remember fondly was getting up in the morning and seeing all kinds of birds in our farm. Ruisenores (I love their "whistle"), zumbadores, Rolitas, and even the black ones we called judios (I suspect they are crows)...

Unfortunately this is one area where a lot of education is needed. A lot of people kill them and eat them even though there's hardly any meat on them.

suarezn said:

...Unfortunately this is one area where a lot of education is needed. A lot of people kill them and eat them even though there's hardly any meat on them.

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Not long ago, on a visit to a hamlet inhabited almost totally by distant cousins, located in a dry semi-arid region about 30 kilometers south of San Juan de la Maguana, where the only economic activity is subsistence farming, I noticed that one of my cousins, a youth, was noticeably more built than others of similar age. Driven by curiosity, I went about finding the cause. At first I thought that being the youngest in his family (of 17 children, according to his father) had given him preferential treatment from parents and brothers/sisters at diner time (the only daily meal). After exhausting several hypothesis, I decided to ask him directly. He went about showing me an ingenious trap that he had devised to catch rolas (Streptopelia turtur) made from small thin flexible branches with a fiber loop at one end, with an array of small sticks stuck in the ground that would act as a tripping mechanism for unwary rolas attracted by a few grains of rice placed inside the loop. When the trap was tripped, the thin flexible branch would straighten up, pulling the fiber loop and strangling the unfortunate bird. He extracted from behind a nearby bush a string of about 20 dead rolas, that looked like strings of blue crabs offered for sale on the road. He said that he secretly cooked them himself, for his own consumption. He offered me the string of rolas, as a gift. I refused?


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