Rich Hoyer on his just-completed tour to Jamaica

We had a delightful week of birding and natural history in Jamaica with everyone getting on the birds in record time and many spare moments left over to enjoy the butterflies, dragonflies, and the many other interesting animals and plants of the island.

On our first, very relaxed morning (you can't hurry anything on island time), we watched a Black-crowned Night-Heron catch a small Atlantic Bumper from the anchor rope of a yacht by the breakfast restaurant overlooking Kingston Harbor.

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Later that day we were delighted by a group of four White-tailed Tropicbirds investigating their cliff nests, followed by an authentic Jamaican lunch at a jerk centre. We didn't actually see any endemic birds until we arrived in the habitat at about 1:45 p.m., where we instantly saw a pair of the adorable Jamaican Tody.

Jamaican Tody

Then the endemics began showering upon us. By less than 24 hours later, we had seen 25 of the 27 endemics while birding the exact same 6 km of road, with the exception of the Jamaican Owl, which was only a short walk from our delicious dinner, expertly cooked in our villa by Clover and Andrea of Goblin Hill. They also made our breakfast for us, overlooking the San San lagoon below.

The final four days of the tour were spent getting better views of everything as well as those final two endemics (Jamaican Pewee and Blue Mountain Vireo were added on Day 3), seeing nearly every possible additional subspecies, and boosting the list with migrant warblers and water birds. Highlights in the latter categories were three new species for the long-time cumulative list: Forster's and Common Terns, as well as group of four Blue Grosbeaks, an extremely rare visitor to the island. We also had time to photograph any and all bugs we saw, a highlight being the gorgeous metalmark-like moth on the lampshade at Marshall's Pen, which we eventually identified after consulting the 1994 paper revising the genus: the endemic and little-known Phrygionis sumptuosaria.

Phrygionis sumptuosaria

Of course no Jamaica tour summary would be complete without mentioning the "Doctor Bird." 

Red-billed Streamertail, with Black-billed Streamertail better known as Jamaica's Doctor Birds