If you want to see a wide variety of birds on St. Martin, a trip to Le Galion and the nearby Salines d’Orient may be your best choice. It may not be more diverse than other wetland areas on the island, but it has many areas where you can approach the pond and get clear views of the birds that are foraging there. On my most recent visit, I had gone to survey for sea turtle nests and only spent a few minutes near the pond, but still saw more than a dozen birds, including a couple species that I hadn’t photographed before.

As a side note, I’ll be uploading some of my sightings to the Saint Martin page at Observado.org. Observado is a site where you can post any sightings of animals (and even plants and fungi) and upload photos if you have them. It is mostly used by birders, and it’s a great resource to see what birds are on the island, where they are found and what time of year they are seen. It even allows users to specify things like whether the birds are mature, immature, in breeding plumage, etc. Even if you’re not certain what you’ve seen, you can upload a sighting and have it identified by a local expert. Definitely check it out and add some sightings. The more data that is available there, the better picture we have of the local wildlife.

How often do you see a stick insect on St. Martin? As far as I can tell, it’s pretty easy to go months or even years on the island without ever seeing one. It may be surprising to know that they’re actually quite common, as far as I can tell. For starters, you need to go out at night with a flashlight and look in trees and bushes. You also need to be patient and look really carefully. They’re so well camouflaged, it can be hard to spot them even when you’re looking right at one. Once you find one, though, it gets a lot easier to spot them and there are often several on the same tree.

On St. Martin, they seem to be a species from the Clonistria genus, and they are sexually dimorphic. In this case, the males are brown and the females are green. The size varies a lot depending on their age, and I’ve seen them anywhere from one inch to four or five inches long.

While you’re out looking for walking sticks, be careful. Prowling spiders (Miturgidae) are out prowling those same tree branches at night, as are giant centipedes. Last night I was a little surprised to see a giant centipede eating a snail. Why have such powerful venom if you’re just going to eat a snail? I suppose I was on the French side, though.

Other sightings included plenty of sleeping lizards, a couple brown widow spiders and millipedes mating. If you aren’t spooked about wandering in the dark, it’s really a great chance to get to know some of the island residents that you might not be familiar with.

If you want to see a brown widow spider, head straight to the green fence that surrounds the Grand Case airport runway at the end near Hope Estate. For whatever reason, it’s extremely popular with this relative of the infamous black widow spider. Each metal fence post will have at least a few of these spiders, and often a half-dozen or more. Elsewhere on the island it isn’t hard to find, but I have yet to encounter a spot where it’s anywhere near as common.

Also featured below are a variety of insects, spiders, snails and lizards, mostly found around Grand Case.

Last week I took a little wander, starting in Grand Case. At the Cemetery pond, I found that there were still some egrets nesting in the mangroves, although fewer than before. From there I took the back road to Friar’s Bay, veering off to poke through the mangroves at Étang Guichard. With the dense undergrowth and muddy ground, the going was a little tough and it was hard to get any good views of the pond. There was a ton of trash, though. Even though St. Martin is full of litter, I’m often surprised at how much garbage accumulates in places that I don’t think people would normally even visit.

Moving on, I stopped to check out the birds at the end of Étang Guichard near the beach where they often congregate. There were a few, but nothing special. Carrying on, I headed across to the main road out of Friar’s Bay. I’d always wondered about the patches of scrubby forest on the east side of that road just a little bit in from the bay, so I popped in for a look. Although they seem impenetrable, there are some little trails criss-crossing through, perhaps made by goats. It’s kind of an interesting spot because it’s a lowland forest on an island where most forests are in the hills, and because the trees are mostly quite small, I would guess it was probably a cleared pasture not too long ago.

Carrying on, I headed up a track going up the hill, roughly towards St. Louis. The hillside was a mix of cow pasture and forest and there were quite a few checkered swallowtails congregating in the shadier parts as it became evening. My plan was to head up until I hit the main road in St. Louis. Of course, these plans don’t always work out. After searching for passage and being blocked by dense scrub or other obstacles, I finally hopped a small stone wall and headed for the road.

Alas, I was not quite free. I was actually in a compound with walls over ten feet high. I decided the most reasonable course of action was to go to the house and ask the owner to let me out, which I did. Generally, this works pretty well. Even if people are mad that you’re in their yard, they still want you to leave. This case was no different. After asking how the heck I got into his yard and noting his surprise that I hadn’t been eaten by his dogs, I was released.

Since returning to St. Martin, I’ve been out twice surveying the beaches at Grandes Cayes and Petites Cayes for sea turtle tracks and nests. We still haven’t seen any at these beaches, but another volunteer did see a hawksbill turtle on a local beach, so our luck may change soon.

I did get a few bird photos, mostly from the area near Eastern Point. This area is popular with the American kestrel, probably because the low vegetation allows it to hover above and see prey easily. Laughing gulls and magnificent frigatebirds are also often there as well, frequenting the nearby shallows and intertidal area. I believe the frigatebird in the photos may be a young male in the process of changing into its adult plumage. The juvenile has a white head and neck, while the adult male is a very dark brown or black.

There are three ponds in Grand Case, but on most maps they are not given names. However, I was able to find a set of maps that names them. The large pond that surrounds the airport is apparently Salines de l’aéroport. The small pond by the cemetery is, not surprisingly, Étang Cimitière. The third pond is relatively hidden, to the right side of the road when approaching Grand Case from Marigot, and is called Étang de Grand Case.

Étang de Grand Case is actually quite interesting. While it has some mangroves, much of the shoreline is flat and grassy, allowing the pond to expand and contract quite a bit depending on the water level. There are many birds on the pond, including pretty large numbers of coot, white-cheeked pintail and common moorhen. The common iguana is very common in many parts of the shoreline as well. It’s a bit of a hidden treasure that’s easy to get to and well worth visiting.

I have a variety of photos from a couple micro-excursions where I didn’t really leave Grand Case. The first bunch are some photos I did to see if a circular polarizer helped reduce flash glare on shiny insects. It doesn’t really, although apparently if you have polarizing film on your flashes and a polarizing filter on the lens, you can markedly reduce glare by doing cross-polarization. Maybe something to try in the future.

I also made a little trip up the hill to the cashew tree (known as a cherry bush in the Caribbean). It wasn’t cashew time, but there were a few interesting things to see anyway. It’s also a great place to get a nice view of Grand Case.

After leaving Drake Bay, we gradually made our way back home, first to Sierpe and then to Puerto Jimenez where we rejoined the other team members, did some Extreme Shallow Snorkeling and photographed a few butterflies.

After that, it was back to Pavones for a last night with the team, on to Golfito and overnight in Alajuela before flying back to St. Martin. At our hotel in Alajuela, Orquideas Inn, we opted to explore the on-site gardens where there were quite a few interesting critters including some orchard spiders, heliconid butterflies and some intriguing beetles. Although it was a bit sad, we left Costa Rica with plenty of other adventures left to bring us back.

We took a day trip by boat to the San Pedrillo Ranger Station, one of four access points to Corcovado Park. It was considerably less difficult than the 8-hour hike each way that our team members were making to access the park. Our guided trip through the jungle featured many monkey sightings, including the large howler monkeys, a great currasow and many other creatures. We also went up to a beautiful waterfall on a small river where we were able to do some Extreme Shallow Snorkeling just a short bit downstream from a crocodile. Near the ranger station we even got a quick glance at a coati.

It would be impossible to truly decide, but The Night Tour in Drake Bay may have been the most memorable experience of the expedition. I have certainly seen plenty of nocturnal critters, but the combination of the biodiversity of the Osa Peninsula and the knowledge of Tracie and Gian made it a revelatory experience.

In a nutshell, Tracie covered the invertebrates (largely spiders, but there were some fascinating insects as well) while Gian covered the vertebrates (many frogs, but also a snake and two kinds of sloth). They were very knowledgable about the local wildlife and explained plenty of other eccentricities of the natural world, like wasps controlling the minds of spiders biochemically. There was also plenty of danger, including the constant possibility that we would encounter the deadly fer-de-lance viper or get bitten by a wandering spider.

There were many highlights. Amongst the insects, the leaf-mimic katydid and enormous walking stick were standouts. The most interesting spiders were the trap door spider and burrowing tarantula. Here Tracie’s skill and knowledge was very valuable as it is almost impossible to find a trap door spider unless you already know where its door is. We also saw the smoky jungle frog (which I kept trying to call the misty mountain frog) and the red-eyed tree frog, which is probably the most photographed frog of all time, but deserves the honor.

It was a little bit sad when we had to give back the headlamps.