Caroni Swamp

The evening the mangroves turn red with ibis

Go at dusk or do not bother. The reason to be in the Caroni Swamp is the scarlet ibis coming back to roost, thousands of them, arriving through the late afternoon and settling into the mangroves until the trees are red. Around four o'clock the birds begin returning, and the roosting close to sunset is the event.

The ibis is one of Trinidad and Tobago's two national birds. The other is the cocrico, the only game bird native to Tobago, which does not occur on Trinidad at all. Where the ibis spend their days is a good story with a caveat attached: many of the guides say the birds fly to the Venezuelan mainland to feed and return to the swamp at dusk, and that is what the guides say rather than something the sanctuary states as fact.

The swamp itself is the largest mangrove forest in Trinidad and the second largest wetland in the country, about 12,000 acres where the Caroni River meets the Gulf of Paria, south of Port of Spain and northwest of Chaguanas. It is an estuarine system: 5,611 hectares of mangrove and herbaceous marsh cut through by channels, with brackish and saline lagoons inside it and wide intertidal mudflats on the seaward side.

That mix of habitats packed close together is what makes it productive rather than merely scenic. Marsh, mangrove and mudflat sitting side by side give food and cover at every stage, and the swamp works as a nursery for marine and freshwater species alike. The birds are the spectacle; the nursery is the function.