Grenada - October 2025

Grenada was all about doing nothing. Nada. I am not especially good at this, but I promised Mrs L I would make an effort and try not to get antsy. It was half term, we were both exhausted, surely I would just be able to flop about and do very little? Indeed Grenada was chosen specifically for that purpose, it is not an especially birdy island, there would be no particular call for me to charge off around the place. I figured one morning would be enough to mop up the endemics and that I could sit around and drink rum punch for the rest of the time. This worked out very well.

The Pitons on St Lucia, great views as we came in to land.

Our plane stopped off in St Lucia on the way for just over an hour, with most people getting off. I had last been here in 2013 for another relaxing holiday - in fact we had stayed right between those two peaks in the photo above. Nonetheless I was able to add three St Lucia ticks from the steps of the aircraft duing the change-over - Collared Dove, Eared Dove, and a distant Great Blue Heron flying across the skyline. 

Soon we were on our way again, arriving into Grenada late afternoon. Just enough time to make our way to Mount Cinnamon Beach Resort on the southern end of Grand Anse Beach for a pre-dinner drink. Rum punch of course. Ah, the Caribbean, it had been too long. It was warm, there were palm trees, the monotonous calming influence of the clap of the waves began to set in and Mrs L and I did a lot of happy sighing. 

Looking back up the beach

This will not be a day by day account as nothing happened, and anyway who wants to hear about someone else's holiday? But just os you can get the picture our routine went something like this. Awake before dawn we would sit on our balcony with a coffee and watch the day break. The hotel was on a steep slope and we were quite near the top and so had lovely views down the length of Grand Anse and across the bay to St George's. Being up the hill we were also close to the forest edge, and I saw a good number of birds from here. After the regular early morning squall we would mosy down the hill to the hotel veranda and have a long and leisurely breakfast. From here we would cross the road and walk through the gardens down to the beach, staking our claim to a couple of loungers or armchairs. I dozed. Mrs L read. From time to time we would go for a quick swim, or snorkel the artificial reef just off shore. At around midday the smell of grilling fish would usually get us to move the few feet to the beach restaurant, and the first drink of the day would probably appear - despite being on holiday I was extremely insistent that I did not start drinking in the morning, and in fact the whole holiday was one of admirable restraint on that front despite the abundance of rum and fruit. During the afternoon we might have another, but otherwise this proceeded exactly as the morning, dozing on the beach interspersed with swimming. At around half four we would slouch back up the hill and shower before walking to the next bay along to Quarantine Point and Morne Rouge Beach be able to watch the sun set, have a couple of drinks and do a lot more happy sighing. And then at dusk we would walk down Grand Anse Beach to find something to eat, with Umbrella's Beach Bar being the usual spot, though a big thumbs up to a chicken shack close by. Repeat five times. It was fantastic and I genuinely did relax.

The white posts in the sea mark the artificial reef. I got amazing views of Royal Terns and Brown Booby simply by smimming up to them.

Our balcony notched up a decent list of birds over the week. Antillean Crested Hummingbird and Green-throated Carib were both seen, along with Spectacled Thrush, Black-faced Grassquit, Tropical Mockingbird and Grey Kingbird. I saw Broad-winged Hawk a few times as well, but the best bird was probably a Summer Tanager which shot through and into the forest one morning. There was a Grenada Wren about half way to breakfast, and Lesser Antillean Bullfinch and Carib Grackle scoured our table for crumbs which I was happy to give them.

Mount Cinnamon gardens. Our room is one of the ones at the top on the left

Breakfast view

Spectacled Thrush at the hotel

View down Grand Anse Beach from our balcony

I did a fair amount of birding from my beach lounger. Magnificent Frigatebirds and Royal Terns were always present, and a Brown Booby liked to perch on one of the reef buoys. A small group of Semipalmated Plovers were usually at the far end, and the occasional Osprey, Brown Pelican and Little Blue Heron would do a fly-by. I also picked up Spotted Sandpiper, Great Blue Heron and Yellow-crowned Night Heron, as well as Caribbean Martin and Barn Swallow flying down the beach. Various Doves pottered around underneath the trees, and of course Bananaquits were a constant presence.

Map of the southern tip of Grenada. Everything is very close to many of the regular hotels on Grand Anse. It took about 40 minutes to walk between Mount Hartman and Lower Woburn along the wiggly road marked "Ruth Howard".

Mount Hartman Visitor Centre

The real draw of course is the presence of a small number of endemics on the island, including the critically endangered Grenada Dove. Our hotel was very close Mount Hartman, site of their main stronghold and where most people see them. One morning, I forget which, I took a cab over there after breakfast to wander the trails. The Mount Hartman Dove Sanctuary it is fair to say has seen better days, it was all rather sad. As expected the gate was open but the place was quite overgrown and in a bit of disrepair, and it was hard to say when the Visitor Centre might last have received a visitor. The trails start to the right behind the building, and it is said that the best way to see the Doves is to always turn left whenever it splits as this will take you right up the hill. That said I could already hear a Grenada Dove singing to the left of the Visitor Centre before I had even started into the dry forest, so that was half a tick. A busy Grenada Wren was one of the first birds I saw, and there were lots of Scaly-naped Pigeons around. I heard Grenada Dove in two more places along the trail, but only once did I get a glimpse of one scuttling along the ground and I was too slow with the camera and thus this trip report misses out any visuals of the star attraction. Hard work! I did just about get a photo of the Wren, and also the Grenada Flycatcher, Mount Hartman being the only place I saw it - so all three endemics in the same place. If you can spare a couple of hours away from the beach this is the spot where you will clean up and be back well in time for lunch. The trail, very steep in places, eventually spat me out at the top of the hill from where I had good views of the landscape and some Mangrove Cuckoos. 

Mount Hartman view

Grenada Dove habitat

Grenada Flycatcher

Grenada Wren

Seeing as I had so much time left I walked a couple of mile around the back of the hill to the next bay along where there was allegedly a tower hide near the village of Woburn. There was indeed a small tower, and from it I saw nothing at all. Just next to this was the shortest boardwalk ever built, all of about 20 feet, and from here I did see a few new things - American Moorhen, Lesser Yellowlegs, Turnstone and Green Heron, as well as some more Semipalmated Plovers. A group of Smooth-billed Ani responded to me making some off squeaking noises. I took a cab back to the hotel as it would have taken ages on foot.

Lesser Yellowlegs

The only other birding I did was about ten minutes up the beach from the hotel at a small park. Camerhogne Park itself doesn't have much going on, but there is a fenced off area immediately adjacent to it that had a few overgrown shallow pools, more persistent puddles really, and I was amazed to find Least Sandpiper, AGP, Pec Sand, Solitary Sand and Wilson's Snipe across two short visits.

Least Sandpipers

Wilson's Snipe

I ended up seeing 51 species. This hugely surpassed my expectatons, I thought I might get 30 if I was lucky as my experience in Barbados and St Lucia was that birds were pretty thin on the ground. Maybe I just tried a little harder, but it didn't really feel like it as for most of the time I was under a tree on the beach. But the birding does not end there. I managed to engineer a return to London via Trinidad, which gave us half a day to get up to Asa Wright, somewhere I wanted to go for upwards of 20 years.