The other day I went on a longer than expected adventure through the Wilderness area of the island. I started off a little before seven to check my beaches for turtle tracks. Feeling pretty good after doing that, I decided to head cross-country up Red Rock, the mountain behind Petite Cayes. At first, progress up a dry gulch was quite good, although things started to get pretty dense once the slope leveled out near the top.

Rather than turn back, I decided to push through and descend down towards Cul de Sac. This took several hours longer than I anticipated, through thorny scrub and fields of the bromeliad that has serrated leaf edges like knives. For a time I had to stop taking photos because if I stopped moving I would be swarmed by dozens of mosquitoes. I also became quite thirsty in the hours after I ran out of water.

Eventually, though I made it to the top of the ridge overlooking Cul de Sac and merely had to climb all the way down on a field of boulders to get to civilization. At four o’clock, covered with scratches and dirt, and having a large hole in the butt of both my shorts and underwear, made it back to the road, stopped at the first place I found and drank a liter and a half of water and immediately got severe cramps. Was it worth it? It’s hard to say, but I’m not going to try it again in the near future.

Below are a bunch of critters that either came to our porch light or were seen during nighttime walks. One night after a week of heavy rains we were swarmed by water boatmen, very small aquatic hemipterans.

Below are a few sets of photos from various excursions in search of wildlife. The first set is from the area near the Grand Case airport. There were quite a few creatures, but the mosquitoes were out in force, which made it hard to stop and take photos:

At the other end of town, I travelled from the cemetery area to Friar’s Bay and Happy Bay. Between the aforementioned bays I ran into a very curious cuckoo, the first one I’ve seen on the island.

Finally, here are a few stray shots from a visit to Pinel.

Below are a few sets of photos from our expeditions to survey for turtle tracks and nests. After searching a couple times at our designated beaches in the northeast of the island, we met up with friends and Pauline from the nature reserve to look at Baie aux Prunes where we found lots of tracks and a few possible nests. The saddest tracks were the wanderings of a turtle that fell over a wall and then had to crawl around searching for a way back to the beach.

Back at our assigned beach we found no tracks, but plenty of other stuff. I focused mostly on the seabirds that take advantage of the easterly winds in that location.

Grand Case has a lot of parties. Harmony Nights are a weekly mardi gras party that happens for a couple months in the late winter and early spring, but after that there are a variety of events. The other day there was another festival. I’m not sure what the occasion was, but there was a big party on the beach as well as bands and dance recitals near the community center.

I have a large backlog of photos to post, starting with a trio of explorations in the lowlands area of the island. The first part is a series of photos taken from inside Le Trou de David (David’s Hole). The bird in the last three photos is a yellow-crowned night heron.

The next stop of the day was La Belle Creole, an abandoned resort that Andres and I visited during intermittent showers. I was mostly taking photos of spiders, but Andres got quite a few nice juxtapositions of the crumbling infrastructure and encroaching vegetation.

Our last stop for the day was La Grotte du Puits de Terres Basses, the larger of two bat caves on the island. During this visit I mostly focused on getting shots of the bats, rather than the caves.

Catching up, this post includes some wildlife photos from the past few days. The first set is from an evening walk to the airport salt pond, mostly featuring various waterfowl:

The next is a few creatures from near the Bistro Nu in Marigot, mostly showcasing Anolis pogus:

At the Butterfly Farm near Galion, I spent a bit of time trying to capture some of the local bird species, with varying success:

Finally, a couple creatures from Quartier d’Orleans:

Madam J found me a frog and brought it home. I’ll leave it to her to tell the whole story, but I was very excited because it is the first time I had seen any amphibian on the island. There are actually two known species of frog and I’m not 100% sure which one this is. It was actually bigger than either species is supposed to be. We released him near the Bistro Nu, one of our favorite restaurants, which is located on an alley that is busy with frog calls at night.

We have been trained by the Reserve Naturelle of Saint Martin in the analysis of sea turtle tracks and nests. Once or twice a week, we are visiting the beaches of Grandes Caye and Petite Caye at the northeast corner of the island to look for tracks and possible nests as part of their nesting survey. Below are photos from our first two trips out there. We didn’t see any tracks or nests yet, but it is a pleasure to be out at the most beautiful and unspoiled corner of the island in the early morning.

Notable sitings from our first trip included a huge mass of laughing gulls at the dump, mysterious (non-turtle) tracks on the beach and a sampling of the Anolis gingivinus that live on the rocky beach area between the two beaches we survey.

Our second visit was great for seabird photos. I was able to capture a female and an immature magnificent frigatebird jousting in the air. There were also many reddish bees that were swarming where the vegetation meets the beach, sometimes stopping to do something that looked like fighting but could have been mating. The nearby flowers had a very curious shape, presumably to facilitate pollination, that can be seen below.

Below are some photos from a recent trip to Pinel Island, including a few shots of birds, a group I am currently trying to catch up on for my wildlife guide. The bananaquit photos were taken by the secret house on the island.