Geoffrey Gomes Birding & Naturalist Tours

Caves

There are several cave systems in Trinidad. Most are situated in forested areas and visiting them is an excellent opportunity for birding. A good average for a typical morning of birding while on your way to and from a cave is sixty to seventy species.

Trinidad is home to the rare (and strange) Oilbird. This is the only nocturnal fruit eating bird in the world. These birds roost in caves during the day and fly/forage on their three-foot wingspans to the rainforest and palmforest canopies during the night, flying as much as sixty miles in their search for food.

The Dunstan, the Cumaca and the Aripo are the caves featured on these tours all interesting and rewarding for general birding on the way to and from them and, of course, the caves themselves are spectacular opportunities for viewing these large and rare Oilbirds.

The caves are also alive with bats and one, the Tamana, is the most famous bat cave in the Caribbean. Here one is treated to the elemental and the sublime in the wind generated from the wings of a couple of thousand Trinidadian Funnel-eared Bats and Geoffroy's Long-nosed Bats flying in the inner entrance chamber. The greater depths of this cave are not for the faint of heart, but the inhabitants of these depths, representing several fruit-eating and insect-eating species can be seen in the hundreds of thousands leaving the cave at dusk on their nightly foraging forays in the surrounding forest.