I recently went back to Bell Valley, which is one of my favorite spots because it is both close and interesting. A cow tried to eat my backpack, but I was able to chase it away at the last minute. There were many beautiful things to see, like a lynx spider eating a honeybee, some small yellow wasps with bodybuilder legs, some wrinkly caterpillars and a swarm of cottonstainers.

After returning to St. Martin, I had to drop some documents off in Marigot for translation and took the opportunity to walk back to Grand Case via Pointe Arago and Friars’ Bay. Although it doesn’t seem too popular, it’s quite a nice walk.

Things started off well when I spotted an American kestrel at the small dump near Galisbay. Like the pelican, this is a bird I can rarely resist photographing. Having had a fair amount of rain, the grass and scrub was quite green and lively with small creatures of all sorts. One highlight was a sugar cane skipper laying eggs on blades of grass. I think I may have seen here before, but I hadn’t gotten a photo.

Back at Friars’ Bay, many of the small wading birds that had spent the summer where the salt pond meets the beach were gone. I would soon notice that the laughing gulls had left for the season as well.

The Sandy Cruz trail starts just above the town of Hell’s Gate and winds around the north side of the island. It is high enough to be in a damp, dense forest with luscious vegetation. We spent about two and a half hours on the trail. It could be done faster, but you wouldn’t have time to see much. If I had my choice, I would have poked along for four hours or more finding creatures and taking photos. Below are a few shots from our trip. They start with a few birds taken en route to the trailhead. Apparently the great egret turned up on the island after a tropical storm.

On the trail, we saw many of the usual subjects, such as the whistling frog, Saban anole, red-bellied racer and a rat. There were also, of course, many snails and other invertebrates.

On a day off diving, Yann, Marie and I went to the top of Mt. Scenery, the tallest point on Saba. As mentioned before, it’s mostly a long series of stairs leading up through various types of forest to the elfin cloud forest at the top. On the way up and back we saw many things.

Many of them were snails. I think most of them are from the family Helicinidae.

There were many other invertebrates as well, mostly insects. Although I found few insects on the way up, on the way back I began to notice more of the smaller insects, like leafhoppers and flies. On the trip down I ended up seeing a pretty good amount of diversity, though not large numbers.

I have some reptile photos from the following day, but the most notable vertebrate we found on this hike was a big-eared rat that was walking around with his eyes closed. Yann and Marie gave him some granola bar.

There was also plenty of great scenery, which I did not capture in all its glory. It was still great to see.

Below are some shots of critters that I found on an afternoon wandering around The Cottage Club. There are several photos of the endemic Saban anole (Anolis sabanus). Males of this species have a striking pattern of black spots, while females are mostly tan. In the forest, the young actually look a lot like the bearded anole (Anolis pogus) which is on St. Martin. There is also a photo of a green iguana, which I initially thought was the Lesser Antillean iguana (Iguana delicatissima). As it turns out, the green iguanas on Saba are a distinct population with unique coloring, although they haven’t been designated as a separate species or subspecies…yet!

Between our early afternoon arrival and a Sea and Learn talk about spiders by Leslie Bishop in the evening I had enough time to make it almost all the way up Mt. Scenery and back. I learned a couple days later that I was only about five minutes from the top when I turned back to get to the talk on time.

The Mt. Scenery trail is mostly made of steps, 1064 of them, which take you from the town of Windwardside to the cloud forest. The top of the mountain is 877 meters. From Windwardside, it’s about the same vertical climb as it is from Grand Case to the top of Pic Paradis, the highest point on St. Martin. The vegetation is astounding, and I saw two red-bellied racers, a snake that is only found on a couple islands. Given the lush surroundings, I was surprised that I didn’t see more insects. This would also be rectified somewhat on my next trip up there. They did have a lot of ferns of many varieties, including tree ferns.

Taking a step back for a moment, below are some photos from our arrival on Saba. We opted for the fourteen-minute plane flight, landing on the world’s smallest commercial runway, which looks more like a driveway. Included below are a few photos of our arrival, the view of nearby islands Statia, St. Kitts and Nevis and some shots of the landscape from the cab ride to The Cottage Club, where we were staying.

Below, with no particular thematic tie, are the last of my photos from September. You can probably tell by the fact that I already did eight posts today that I’m clearing house in order to prepare for future adventures.

Here are some magnificent frigatebirds seen from our veranda.

And here are a variety of shots from Marigot and Grand Case.

To round out our selection of Saint Martin frogs, we have a couple more sets.

The Cuban treefrog is quite huge compared to the others on the island. This one is a male. You can tell because it has little black pads on its thumbs which help it hold on to the female during sex.

And the smallest were these tiny coqui antillanos, also known as Johnstone’s whistling frog. They hatch from eggs directly into tiny froglets, so I would imagine that some of them are probably much, much smaller.

Yann and Marie were doing construction at a house in Cul de Sac, and the unused swimming pool there had ten inches of water and thousands of frogs. Last Monday I went to check it out, but unfortunately they had already drained the pool. Luckily, Yann and Marie saved some frogs and tadpoles. I was particularly fond of the deformed frog you can see below. I also stopped at the nursery to see the Cuban treefrogs hiding in bromeliads again.