Earlier this week I made a couple trips to the valley that is ringed on one side by Bell Hill, Goat Mountain, Pea Tree Hill and Pigeon-Pea Hill and on the other by Anse Marcel. The area doesn’t have a specific name as far as I can tell. During my first jaunt there in late afternoon, the calls of cattle were surprisingly loud and echoing off the hillsides, creating an ominous feel. The area is more or less undeveloped, although there are dirt roads leading to different parcels of land that are used as goat or cow pasture.

On my way out the second time, I found a large number of brightly-colored sphinx moth caterpillars on a tree with pretty yellow flowers (Plumeria, commonly known as frangipani). Subsequent research identified them as tetrio sphinx (Pseudosphinx tetrio), the adult being unfortunately much less colorful than the caterpillar. I also got a decent photo of one of the scurrying, ground-dwelling lizards and a caterpillar pooping.

I lucked into a couple interesting spider sightings: one of the large spiders with a freshly caught butterfly and a small green, yellow and red spider that was lying in wait on small blossoms ready to capture any insects that came by for nectar. I also found a very small anole with turquoise eye shadow and some bright orange fungi.

At the top of an unnamed hill I also found the same tree that is at the top of Goat Mountain and the peak near Molly Smith Point. There were two of them at the peak of the hill and one had interesting two-pronged seed pods in various stages of growth. Rounding out the set are various butterflies, caterpillars and a few shots of the local terrain.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 9:13 am and is filed under Explorations, Les Fruits sur la Terre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.