The Grand Turk’s Bird Walk and Bird Drive Trails were opened this summer with the sponsorship of the Turks and Caicos National Museum, in partnership with the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum. The birds of the Turks and Caicos are an intimate part of the wetlands ecosystem and birding there is deemed to be exceptional. Summer 2011 was the first time people were introduced to the Bird Walking and Driving Tours, which officially opened on Bird Week in Turks and Caicos.

Flamingos are a big hit with birder visiting Grand Turk, but there are numerous favorites, such as ospreys, black-necked stilts, egrets, brown pelicans, pipers, and blue herons, among so many others.

As Pat Saxton (Turks and Caicos Islands National Museum National Museum) enthusiastically writes, “The Bird Trails [are] the first of their kind in the Caribbean, and were presented by Dr. Mike Pienkowski [a leading ornithologist in the United Kingdom] at the July 2011 conference of the Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB) in Freeport, Bahamas. When I took the position of director of business development for the Turks & Caicos National Museum, little did I know I would have the opportunity to learn so much about birds, and how they depend on our salinas. I also never knew that TCI is one of the best birding places on earth, where one can see many different species of birds even without the use of binoculars.”

For more information, see http://www.timespub.tc/category/astrolabe/