This morning I took a walk from Grand Case to Marigot, traveling past Friar’s Bay, Ponte Arago and Galisbay. From Grand Case, I took the back road to Friar’s Bay, where I found a lizard I had not seen before beneath a tire beside the road. Initially, I assumed it was a juvenile skink, which was the only known lizard on Saint Martin it could have been. After consulting guides and the internet on my return, it seems to be a microteiid, two species of which are found in the Lesser Antilles: Gymnopthalmus pleii and G. underwoodi. Microteiids can be easily distinguished from skinks and ground lizards because they have only four toes on their front feet, so this looks to be a very interesting discovery.

Continuing past Friar’s Bay, I took Rue Batterie to the shore and walked down a rocky beach that was littered with many things, including large bones that I guessed to be cow bones. The trail around Pointe Arago began just past the beach and headed up a hillside above some rocky cliffs and around towards Galisbay. Near the trail, I found a near-entire cow skeleton. Although the flesh was entirely gone, the contents of the cow’s stomach remained as a large mass of grass fibers surrounded by the bones.

While in this area I found a large number of house geckos (Hemidactylus mabouia) hiding beneath stones and logs, including some hatched and unhatched eggs. They were very quick to run when their hiding places were overturned, and it was interesting to note that I almost always found them in pairs.

We have had a few interesting house guests over the past couple days. First, I woke up to find a pair of zenaida doves (Zenaida macroura) in the living room. Apparently they came in from the window in the kitchen, where Madam J had seen doves on a previous occasion. It took quite a bit of encouragement to get them to leave, even after opening the balcony door. They simply don’t seem to understand the concept of a window.

Next, Madam J found a very small juvenile house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia) in the guest bedroom. I captured it under a scuba mask case and brought it into the living room, where I transferred it into a large plastic container for photography. Upon release, it took a gigantic leap of the table and ran away.

After our trip to Molly Smith Point, Madam J and I headed out into the bay for a relaxing snorkel. After cruising around for a while and even stopping by Aure’s boat to say hello, we had a couple interesting sightings. The first was a turtle, which was something I had not seen in the bay before. The second was a shortnose batfish (Ogcocephalus nasutus), something neither of us had seen before anywhere. While Madam J kept an eye on our little friend, I went back to get the camera. This curious fish walks around on leg-like fins and camouflages itself with a layer of sand. An exciting find!

Madam J and I took a little walk out to Molly Smith Point and saw lots of interesting rocks. Before we headed out, we took a look at Cemetery Pond, where dozens of egrets were nesting. Next, we headed through the cemetery and hopped the fence to head up the first peak, noted as Smith on my best map. At the top is a large rock formation with many crevices and overhangs, but no cave structures as far as I could see. We then headed down to the point, which is a very pretty grassy area with rocky beaches. At the very tip of the point are some large rocks, the most prominent of which was the home of a common iguana (Iguana iguana).

For our return, we headed down the rocky beach, which eventually turned into sandstone cliffs. Although there were a couple tricky parts, we were able to return to the beach via that route, which was a lot less work than climbing back up and down the hills. Next time, rather than returning to Grand Case Bay, I will probably try heading the opposite direction to Happy Bay.

On April 5th, I took a trip past Hope Estate in an attempt to climb up Mont O’Reilly. From the bottom, it looked like the North face would be a pretty easy hike, with a grassy slope going three-quarters of the way up the mountain. As it turns out, though, the grass wasn’t the ankle-high scrub of the goat and cow grazed areas, but thick, chest-high grass that concealed an uneven terrain covered with large rocks.

After getting up a couple hundred meters – close to the tree line – I headed east to see if the terrain was any different. I eventually came to a dry gully that cut a canyon 30 feet deep in the side of the mountain. Looking out towards Mont Careta, I also spied what looked like a cave in a rock formation. With a new goal, I headed down Mont O’Reilly and up Mont Careta, using the photos I took from Mont O’Reilly to navigate to the cave, which I couldn’t see above me through the thick forest.

Unfortunately, the “cave” was just a hole created by a pile of large boulders, as you can see below. For my return, I traversed the dry gully, largely hopping from boulder to boulder. This was considerably easier than both the tall grass and the forest. I ended up back at Hope Estate, near the base of the mining operations. Overall, the excursion may have been more trouble than it was worth. Next time I’m in the area, I will probably take the dirt road around Mont Careta, which is also marked as a hiking trail.

It had been a while since I took a long walk, so yesterday I headed out to Bell Point to look around. I started by taking the road behind the orange houses across form the Grand Case airport, which leads up the hill and into the valley between Bell Point and Anse Marcel. An early detour off the road led me down a long gully of boulders which rejoined the road at the bottom of the valley. Back on the dirt road, I encountered the worst smell of the trip so far, coming from what I initially thought was a dead dog. Upon reviewing my photos, the ringed tail and dark eye-mask indicate it was probably a raccoon or similar creature. According to a biological inventory of Saint Martin:

The raccoon (Procyon spec.) is shrouded in mistery (Husson, 1960). This animal was supposedly observed once in 1957. Recently too it was reportedly observed, especially on the French side (Wilson, pers. comm., 1996). It is unknown where this animal comes from, but Husson (1960) counts it among the wild mammals imported by humans. It can also be found in several other Antillean islands.

The road led to a path, which led to the small beach at the end of the valley. Near the beach, I found an abandoned well and saw a mongoose run for cover in some brush. The beach had a Nature Reserve sign and I was surprised to find a marked trail leading all the way around the edge to the Grand Case side of Bell Point. The views in this undeveloped area are quite lovely. Along the rocky coast is a blowhole which periodically spouts water which is pushed up from a cave underneath.

As the trail made a brief pass through a more wooded area, I spotted several Anolis pogus and was reminded of their uncanny ability to jump away at the exact moment I press the shutter on my camera. Back on the grassy area near the end of Bell Point the trail ended, essentially in the middle of nowhere.

Heading back towards Grand Case, I found the remains of a goat, including the ID tag that was once attached to its ear. Unfortunately, I also found the shell of a sea turtle nearby, presumably butchered in the woods.

Yesterday we were back at Pinel Island, and I was back to photographing two of my favorite creatures there: vinegaroons and dwarf geckos. Vinegaroons, sometimes called whip scorpions, are Arachnids (like spiders) and they have no venom. If disturbed, however, they can spray acetic acid at you, which is how they got their name. I also found a few of the dwarf gecko Sphaerodactylus sputator. The largest one I have seen yet, pictured below on a plastic plate, was also pregnant. You can see the bulge of the single egg on the left side of her body. I also took a couple close ups of sea skeletons, a chiton and an urchin.

Beautiful skies are quite common on Saint Martin, but photographs of them tend to disappoint. Below are a few attempts to capture some of the magic, like the sun coming up over Goat Mountain and setting across the bay. Plus some boats!

Last week at Pinel I was able to test my new super special macro flash rig. The setup consists of two strobes mounted on the end of my macro lens, which are triggered by the built-in flash. I used the setup with my 85mm macro lens and used diffusers on both the flashes. On Amazon, most of the reviews are by dentists who use this setup to take photos of teeth.

Overall, I found it works quite well. Reflective surfaces still have a bit of glare, but overall the lighting is softer and more even, while still allowing me to have greater depth of field and sharper focus. I was also delighted to find a couple dwarf gecko eggs, one hatched, one unhatched. I believe these geckos typically lay a single egg, which is quite large compared to the size of the lizard. I also saw the smallest gecko yet, probably less than half-an-inch long including tail.

Jenn and I hopped on the boat to Creole Rock and Roche Marcel to do some super slow diving. At Creole Rock, we did a 65-minute dive where we only went about 100 meters away from the boat and had a maximum depth of 6 meters. For photography, this is probably the ideal type of dive, especially with the 85mm macro lens. As we crept along the sea grass, sandy areas and shallow reef, we found loads of interesting fish, crustaceans and other creatures.

Next, we headed around Bell Point to Roche Marcel where we did a shorter dive at a slightly quicker pace and more tiny creatures. Thanks to Stuart’s directions, we also found the almost-cave that is a large hole in the rock covered with colorful encrusting sponges.