The Birds along the Damajagua in the Dominican Republic

On my nature walk through the Damajagua Forest in the Dominican Republic, I wasn't surprised to see a wooden sign that said the forest supported more than 200 jobs. There had to be over a thousand tourists on the trail, nearly every one of them wearing a helmet, life preserver, and rubber water-shoes rented at the very busy visitor center at the trailhead. In fact, many of the visitors were off of my own cruise ship, on a separate excursion described as "an adrenaline-filled adventure" on seven of the Damajagua River's waterfalls. Whooping it up on a birding tour? Fortunately I soon discovered that the noisy crowds belied the fact that the forest was home to an interesting variety of native flora and fauna.

Damajagua is more of a wide stream than a river, cascading down the forested southern slope of a verdant mountain range defining the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. The water apparently flows into the Rio Bajabonico which the guided tour groups crossed on a long pedestrian bridge. Most of us visitors had arrived from the nearby cruise ports in Amber Cove and Puerto Plata, the latter of which was settled by the Spanish not long after Christopher Columbus visited the area in 1493 on his second voyage to the Americas.

Shortly into our hike, I heard the squawks of a woodpecker, or a carpentero, as our Spanish-speaking guides referred to it. Later I researched that it was a Hispaniolan woodpecker, endemic only to the so-named island that the Dominican Republic and Haiti share. Little did I know that later that afternoon, I'd soon be encountering several more birds only found on the island.

The walk up the trail to the waterfalls is through a lush forest with both native and non-native plants and trees; guides pointed out indigenous palm and mahogany as well as introduced cacao trees. The trail crossed the Damajagua several times, requiring our group to sludge through cool, shallow water clouded with the silt from the limestone rock prevalent in the area. After a half hour of facing throngs of wet, excited "adventurers" heading downstream, we reached our destination: the first charco, or pond, on the waterway. It was fed by perhaps the last of the seven waterfalls the adrenaline tour members were sliding down while wearing helmets and life preservers. My nature tour was also encouraged to slide down this waterfall and to swim in the pond, but I opted to scan the area for birds.

I quickly discovered a hummingbird peering down at the throng of visitors. It was a female of one of the three endemic species that populate the island of Hispaniola. I suspect I was looking at a Hispaniolan emerald, but she could have been a Hispaniolan mango. I doubt she was the third possibility, a vervain, as my subject was not as tiny as that bird is renowned to be.

There were some distant bird calls but they were drowned out by the noise from the splashing tourists. But soon my tour group of around thirty people and our three guides were the only people left at the sight, the last of any possible thrill-seekers returning down the trail. One of the guides, Berto, acknowledged my interest in birds by pointing out some motion in the foliage and even making some calls. In fact, he even suggested we hang back at the end of our wagon train of hikers to do some quiet birdwatching.

Before we even left the pond, Berto spied a bird and directed my lens toward it. "Es un cuatro ojos cabeza negra," said Berto, before continuing, "I'm sorry, but I don't know the English name." Four eyes and a black head was an apt description for the endemic bird - I later learned was a black-crowned palm tanager - as the four white spots on its black head could have been confused with eyes at a quick glance.

Berto pointed out another bird: there, up, right... in his limited English. The simple words easily led me to my next subject which turned out to be a type of vireo, possibly a black-whiskered. Later, further down the trail, I photographed two different birds which I eventually learned were North American warblers still wintering on the island: an American redstart and a black-throated blue warbler.

We finally caught up with a couple of stragglers in our group when Berto pointed out in a palm tree the Dominican Republic's national bird, the cigua palmera, which is a palmchat in English. It was an olive-brown bird with a streaked breast, rather unassuming to be a symbol of a country, I thought. However I discovered shortly after that it's only found on the island of Hispaniola and that it's the only species in a unique bird family with its closest relatives the silky flycatchers and waxwings.

As we neared the Bajabonico river, a herd of cattle joined our trail, trotting in our same direction. After letting the livestock pass, I realized that I was lucky to be able to witness any of the birds I was seeing in their natural habitat; the land was a valuable resource not just to the fauna but to the more numerous humans who lived here.

Before crossing the bridge, I observed a pair of gallinules dabbling in the river. Mockingbirds were eyeing the water from trees along the bank. The most common bird I see on the islands of the Caribbean, the bananaquit, tweeted repetitively. Encountering these familiar birds drew a sharp contrast with the extraordinary birds I had just seen under the canopy of Damajagua's trees. The fascinating endemics like the palmchat, emerald, tanager, and woodpecker were beckoning me to come back to the Dominican Republic as soon as the next ship sailed.