After our last dinner at Asa Wright we returned to our room to pack up and get a good night's sleep before leaving in the morning. One thing I had hoped to find in our room each day, but had not yet was a gecko. For some reason, in my mind I felt like it would've meant good luck, and was rather disappointed that we didn't have our own room gecko. 
In the morning we were packed and ready to go by 7am, and head a hearty breakfast that was set out early for us. Our driver wasn't scheduled to pick us up until 8:30 so for an extra hour and a half, we wandered the grounds and took our last looks and photos of Asa Wright:
I also took a few quick movies. The quality isn't great but this gives a small idea of what the activity at the feeders is like:
At 8:30am we met Charan to pack the car and head back to Piarco Airport to catch a quick flight over to Trinidad. Just as we pulled into the airport, I spotted a bird on one of the chain-link fences that surrounds the airfield which turned out to be a Yellow-headed Caracara.
The flight to Trinidad is only about 20-25 minutes so you spend more time at the airport waiting than you do in the air! Our friends Linda & Dave from the lodge were on the same flight and we chatted about the things we'd seen, and the respective places that we'd be staying at in Tobago. At Trinidad we were met by Denise James, (the daughter of the well-known Tobago bird guide Adolphus James) who arranged for our transportation to the Blue Waters Inn in Speyside. Before leaving I asked her if she knew if her father was available at all to guide us one day, and she gave us her brother Gladwyn's number who does most of the guiding these days. Adolphus apparently still does some guiding when needed, but is passing most of the business on to his son. We had a very pleasant ride to Speyside which is at the far eastern part of the island with Ingle, (our driver) who was very knowledgeable about the island, the wildlife, history, people, etc. Along the way we were treated to stunning ocean views that gave us some impression of what we had in store for us the next few days:
The drive from one end of the island (where the airport is) to Speyside takes about an hour and a half, and as you can see, is a beautiful ride. We arrived at The Blue Waters Inn in the early afternoon, checked in, then went down for a quick lunch before deciding what to do with the rest of our day. One thing I had read about the inn, is that there are Ruddy Turnstones there that are not only very accustomed to people, they actually join you for lunch in the open air restaurant.
Of course, once the Ruddy Turnstones have found you, it's not too long before the Rufous-vented Chachacalas pick-up on what's going on and need to check into it themselves.
The Bananquits were abundant here too - about as ubiquitous as the Black-capped Chickadees at home in Massachusetts, so after a while I was only giving them passing glances to confirm ids. On the other hand, any time a Motmot was around, it had my attention:
After lunch, I made a call to Gladwyn to see about arranging a guide for Saturday, and since he was on his way to the inn to meet some other guests, we arranged to talk when he arrived. In the meantime, we decided to just walk the grounds a bit to see what was being seen locally. Walking up the entrance road, Pamela spotted a line of leaf-cutter ants on a tree and while I was trying (and failing) to get a nice close-up photo of them, she also found this amazing caterpillar:
Another guest pointed out a hummingbird nest alongside the entrance road. Sure enough, a female Black-throated Mango was sitting in her delicate little cup made of spider-web strands and what I presume were lichens of some sort:
Over the next few days, I looked at that branch every time we passed, either on foot or in car, and she was only there about 1 in 4 times, which makes me wonder if she was still laying eggs. I never did spot a male here, but there were plenty in the area - especially visiting the Swamp Immortelle tree right in front of the inn's entrance. When Gladwyn showed up and was able to check his availability, it turned out that he was completely booked for Saturday (the day we had free) but was available for the next day. I mentioned that we couldn't make it because we had been scheduled to go to Little Tobago Island with Frank's Glass-bottom Boat tours. He said it would not be a problem for them to re-schedule us for Saturday, and that he would take care of it for us. We were also able to confirm this with the folks in the office at the inn (where you arrange the trip to Little Tobago to begin with). I have to say, everybody there is very cooperative in making sure that you get the full experience, and everything went off without a hitch over the next few days. We made our arrangements with Gladwyn to meet the next morning, then decided to go for a swim in the beautiful warm ocean water- I mean come on, how could you resist this?
