Yerettê is the home and garden of Theo and Gloria Ferguson who, over the last 36 years, have created a hummingbird experience. Located in the Maracas Valley it was a 30-minute drive from Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain.
Visits are by appointment at 8am, 11.30am and 3pm, with refreshments available according to the time of day. Groups are limited to 25, but there were just eight of us including two Mancunians, three Americans and a Ukrainian girl living in Canada.
Arriving at 11am, we had time to help ourselves to tea or coffee and wander around their delightful garden full of colourful plants and around 40 hanging feeders of sugar water.
We then sat on the veranda for Theo’s talk, although talk may be the wrong word, as he put us through our paces asking lots of questions to establish our existing knowledge.
Hummingbirds are only found in the America’s and of the 360 species, 19 have been spotted in Trinidad and Tobago, with 15 visiting Yerettê.
Whilst most people know that it is the smallest bird in the world, and the only one which can fly in any direction, sideways, upside down and vertically, other facts flew thick and fast. My favourite were:
The smallest hummingbird is the tufted coquette which at 2 grammes is the equivalent of four pills.
It flies at 340 times its body length in one second which is faster than an aircraft.
Their resting heart rate is around 500 beats per minute (a human is 70), but some can enter a state of torpor, reducing it to 50 beats to conserve energy and survive cold temperatures.
They beat their wings 60 to 1000 times per second.
Their eggs, the size of a tik tac, take two weeks to hatch but the birds reach full size within three weeks.
Having captivated us for nearly two hours, we enjoyed lunch cooked by Gloria, sitting at individual tables dotted around the garden and veranda. Although there was a light and a full option, we had the latter which included pumpkin dal soup with bread, salad, jerk chicken with rice, vegetables and a bread fruit bake.
After lunch we enjoyed a slide show of photographs all taken by Theo, who is obviously a keen and talented photographer with lots of patience.
Having browsed the gallery of photographs which were for sale, Theo encouraged us all to sign up to their Facebook page and become hummingbird ambassadors with my husband quipping he would be a hum-bassador.
This was a delightful visit and even more impressive when we learned that both Theo and Gloria are in their eighties. It was truly their lifetime’s work.
