Barbudan guides prepare to ferry visitors into the mangroves of Codrington Lagoon National Park. (Photo courtesy Antigua & Barbuda Tourism Authority)
Into the bird sanctuary
As small, shrubby islands begin to appear out of the brackish water, the lagoon takes on a dank, vaguely methane smell. In the denser mangroves where our guides tie up to buoys, the odour is also fishy — the result of the dietary preference of the giant black seabirds that throng the lagoon’s northwest corner, where they come to mate and nest every year between September and April. When the guides silence their motors, we’re surrounded by the birds’ amorous “drumming” and clicking sounds, their wheezing, grating signals.
Lead guide Tetworth Richardson stands in his boat to tell us about this place, a Wetland of National Importance and a national park since the early 1980s. The lagoon is home also to brown boobies, laughing gulls, the threatened Barbuda warbler, critically endangered leatherback and hawksbill turtles and many other species, but the most charismatic of them all are the magnificent frigatebirds, national bird of Antigua and Barbuda.
More than 5,000 nest here, says Richardson. “And it’s early in the season,” he adds, “so you can see the black-headed females hoverin’ above, checkin’ out the groups of males, who are inflatin’ their red throats, wavin’ their necks and clickin’ their beaks to say ‘C’mon down girls!’ ”
When a female chooses her mate, the pair settle onto a bough to meet and neck for a while; then, the male deflates himself and flies away to collect sticks and other materials for their nest, which he gives to the female to use in construction.