Qualla: Little Tobago

Little Tobago: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kp93, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1909, forty-seven greater birds of paradise arrived on a small, uninhabited island off the northeast coast of Tobago. They had traveled from New Guinea on a German ocean liner, purchased and transported by Sir William Ingram, a British politician and businessman with cocoa estates in Trinidad. His plan was audacious: save the species from the plume hunters who were decimating its populations by establishing a colony an ocean away, on a 290-acre island he had bought the previous year for exactly this purpose. For more than half a century, the experiment worked. Then Hurricane Flora arrived.

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Image: Kp93 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Little Tobago: The Plume Trade's Price

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0. The greater bird of paradise was in trouble, and the reason perched atop the heads of fashionable women across Europe and America. In the early 1900s, the bird's extraordinary plumage -- long, cascading golden flank feathers that males display in elaborate courtship dances -- was...

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Image: Charles J. Sharp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Little Tobago: Paradise Found

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dominic Sayers from London, England, CC BY 2.0. The birds adapted. Little Tobago's warm climate, dense vegetation, and absence of predators proved hospitable enough for the colony to sustain itself year after year. After Ingram's death in 1924, his heirs honored his vision by deeding the island to the Government of Trinidad an...

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Image: Dominic Sayers from London, England | CC BY 2.0

Little Tobago: The Storm of 1963

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jimfbleak at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hurricane Flora struck on October 3, 1963, one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes of the twentieth century. The storm devastated Little Tobago's dry forest canopy, shredding the vegetation that sheltered the bird-of-paradise colony. There are no reliable sightings of the birds ...

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Image: Jimfbleak at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Little Tobago: What Remains on the Island

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kalamazadkhan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Little Tobago lost its birds of paradise, but it did not lose its wildness. The island remains an Important Bird Area designated by BirdLife International, and it shelters one of the richest seabird colonies in the southern Caribbean. Red-billed tropicbirds nest on its cliffs, th...

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Image: Kalamazadkhan | CC BY-SA 4.0