Wildlife Photography Hides in Montserrat

Montserrat is among the Caribbean's most extraordinary wildlife photography destinations for two reasons that would not typically appear in the same sentence: one of the world's rarest birds, and an active volcano that destroyed half the island's forest in 1995. The Montserrat Oriole (Icterus oberi) is a Critically Endangered species found only on this single island — its range now contracted entirely to the Centre Hills forest in northern Montserrat after the Soufrière Hills eruptions buried the southern forests under pyroclastic flows. Montserrat National Trust guides who have monitored individual Oriole territories for years lead pre-dawn excursions to specific forest sites where the male's black and gold plumage is photographed in primary cloud forest rarely visited by other tourists. The Mountain Chicken (Leptodactylus fallax) — the world's sixth-largest frog, Critically Endangered and now found only on Montserrat and Dominica — is the subject of an intensive recovery programme by Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust; night excursions into the forest streams in the wet season provide photography of this remarkable amphibian. The Soufrière Hills Volcano, still active, creates an otherworldly photography environment: the abandoned capital Plymouth buried under 12 metres of ash, visible from the exclusion zone perimeter, is the Caribbean's most haunting landscape subject.