Powder-blue iguanas; huge manta rays pampered by peckish wrasse; macaws with the rainbow plumage of a pride flag: the Caribbean isn’t all beach resorts and sunloungers, reggae and rum. Nature flourishes amid myriad habitats across these diverse islands. Scuba divers have long finned Caribbean waters in search of spine-tingling shark encounters, while countless migrating birds pass through on an avian superhighway. As the following pages reveal, this is a hotspot of endemism, home to rare, critters found nowhere else, such as the ‘mountain chicken’ – actually a frog – and it is a last refuge for many globally threatened species.
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
Avian pirates
Magnificent frigatebirds – yes, that’s their taxonomic name – are the badass pirates of the Caribbean. These mid-air muggers snatch food from other seabirds’ beaks in a behaviour called kleptoparasitism. Don’t judge these angular-winged seabirds only on their thieving habits, though. At Barbuda’s Codrington Lagoon, they act out spectacular courtship and nesting displays. From September to April, males woo potential mates amid the mangroves by inflating their tomato-red crops to the size of a football - a dazzling ‘come and get me, girls’. It’s quite the spectacle - not least because this 5,000-strong nesting colony is the largest in the western hemisphere.
And don’t miss… Antiguan racers
By 1995, these sandy-brown snakes teetered on the brink of extinction, ravaged by introduced species of rats and mongooses, until only around 50 survived. Conservation efforts have secured their future, with more than 1,100 now living across several sites. Take a trip to the protected Great Bird Island and you might be lucky to spot one.
ARUBA
Caves and crags
It’s unusual for a country– in this case the pretty island of Aruba – to designate 20% of its landmass as a national park. But the rugged, arid Arikok National Park –an enticing melange of caves, scrubland,
