When photographing butterflies, I typically end up with three main types of photos: photos of butterflies at rest on flowers or other plant parts, photographs of butterflies as they start to fly off somewhere else, and photographs of plants that, until just a moment before, had a butterfly on them. This series of photos is from the middle group, many of which were taken as I was trying to distinguish between the two whites (the florida white and the great southern white).

Visit the St. Martin Wildlife Guide to see four new species of lizard. I’ll be updating soon with the remaining two known species.

Time for a quick round-up of the latest sea news from the internet:

• Vampire squid are threatened by human activity. Also true of practically everything else in the ocean.
• Will blobfish invade? This seems to be basically a puff piece written so they could publish the picture of a really ugly fish.
• A giant prehistoric fish was discovered to be a filter feeder. This is perhaps not so surprising because most of the biggest creatures in the ocean today, such as whale sharks, manta rays and many whales, also feed this way.
• Japan plans to reject any ban on bluefish tuna harvesting. Why? Because they eat about 80% of the world’s catch and apparently they’d rather continue doing so no matter how endangered it becomes.

(Hat tip to Nadia for alerting me to most of these news stories.)

We made another trip to our favorite mangrove spot on Valentine’s Day, but once again encountered bad visibility in the area where the salt pond meets the ocean. This time, we headed out into the shallows of Baie Lucas and found a great many things in the bay. Clouds of mystid shrimp and schools of juvenile fish abounded. Another highlight was finding a batwing coral crab (Carpilius corallinus) doing strange stuff with a small rock in 18 inches of water. Red warty anemones (Bunodosoma granifulera) were also common.

We finished up back at the mangroves where we attempted to revive a number of mangrove upsidedwon jellyfish (Cassiopea xamachana) that had been stranded on the sand by the retreating tide. These harmless jellies have symbiotic algae in their tissues that help nourish them. At rest, they pulse upside-down to let the algae get more sunlight.

In early February we took my sister Michelle and her boyfriend Paul out on their first scuba dive at Creole Rock. As they were learning their skills I saw a couple southern stingrays, one of which was being followed by a bar jack hoping to get a taste of whatever the ray might manage to find for lunch.

Back in January we had the pleasure of watching checkered swallowtail (Papilio demoleus) caterpillars devour every leaf and twig that was sprouting from a poor tree stump in our yard. These interesting caterpillars start off looking like bird poo for the first few instars (i.e., the first few times they shed their skin). Later, they develop a lovely green color.

It all started with adult butterflies laying eggs on the stump. Butterflies visited daily, even when there was almost no foliage left. Soon the stump was crawling with caterpillars, and within a few more days every leaf had been eaten. Once this happened, the caterpillars resorted to a variety of strategies: eating green twigs that remained, leaving the stump in search of edible plant life, and pupating. When we left the apartment, the stump was home to a few caterpillars wandering over the barren stump and a chrysalis that was half-eaten by lizards.

Subsequently I read that it is not uncommon for caterpillars to strip trees entirely bare, particularly before the dry season, when many trees lose all their leaves anyway to conserve water. Just ask the frangipani, which loses all its leaves to tetrio sphinx caterpillars.

Here are a few shots of our crew on Harmony Night, February 2nd. From Octopus Diving, there’s Chris, Sally, Aure and Stuart. From Les Fruits de Mer are Madam J, Marc Au Marc and special guests Michelle, Paul and Kevin’s grandma.

Also with Jeff and Debbie, I went on the Extreme Zipline course at Loterie Farm. It was better than I had expected and quite fun, although we were all sore the next day. In addition to speeding down a dozen or so ziplines of various lengths, you traverse various rope bridges and tightropes and climb down many ladders. As a bonus, you get terrific views of the island from its highest peak. Since you are up in the trees, the vantage points are much better than if you walk to the top on one of the trails. As you can see from the video clip, some of the ziplines are so long people on the other side look like specks, if you can see them at all.

Here are a few shots from a walk we took to Eastern Point on the nature trail with Jeff and Debbie. Climbing down the rocks to the edge of Eastern Point we found a number of large, clear tide pools that were home to many small urchins and a few fish. It’s definitely a potential Extreme Shallow Snorkeling location, although as you can see, when the tide comes in waves crash violently into the pools.

While walking near an artificial pond at Happy Bay, I found this bird doing a curious song and dance. Of course, my Birds of the Caribbean book is still on the dive boat where I left it, so I’ll have to identify it later. Below are some photos of the male’s display, the female he was putting the moves on and a short video where you can hear his song.