If it’s too hot or rainy to hike up into the hills to photograph butterflies, just leave the porch light on after dark and you’re bound to get plenty of moths. Below are twenty or so different species that came to our veranda in the last month. Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to identify a few so far. They range in size from one centimeter in wingspan to five or six centimeters. If you recognize any of them, please let me know!
Here are a few shots taken on an overcast day last week. You may note:
I’ve been having quite a bit of difficulty getting good photos of birds, so I headed out to the salt pond near the Grand Case airport to get some practice. I’ve been using Nikon’s cheap 70-300mm zoom, and no matter what I try for aperture and shutter speed, I am still not getting very sharp images, particularly at 300mm, particularly if I need to crop afterwards, even using my monopod. To a certain degree, I suppose this is to be expected, although it is quite frustrating, especially when I can generally get nice photos easily when shooting macro. Darn birds!
In the sequel to a previous post about house guests, we have a variety of arthropods. Most had wandered into our living room or veranda. The hermit crab was an inadvertent capture in a shell I had found while snorkeling. Luckily, Madam J noticed him and I was able to repatriate him quickly.
It must be baby iguana season in Grand Case, because near the airport I’ve started seeing the little critters. Last week, between rain showers, I photographed a couple of them, including one that was licking droplets off leaves of grass. He let me get very close, perhaps he was feeling sluggish in the overcast weather. As you can see from the large subtympanic scale, these are green, or common, iguanas Iguana iguana. These two were quite small, for iguanas, probably about four inches long excluding tail. They retain bright green coloration until they are several times larger than this.
Here’s another interesting longhorn beetle. I think it’s prettier than the last one, and I particularly like the way the antennae basically come out of the compound eye. I guess it pays to leave the veranda light on. I also really need to get crackin’ on my Coleoptera identification skills.
I started early, in an attempt to avoid the worst heat of the day, and set out on the road behind Hope Estate. The road itself was gruelling – sunny and steep, but it took only about an hour to get from Hope Estate to the beginning of the ravine that runs up Mont France. Where the ravine meets the road, there is an interesting stone structure, roughly in the shape of a circle. Heading up the ravine it was much cooler in the dense forest. It must be the season of the black witch, because these large moths seemed to emerge from their hiding places every dozen yards or so. There were also many adorable little snails with round (rather than conical) shells. The only ominous omen was a gunshot I heard as I began to head up the ravine.
Towards the top of the mountain, more light was breaking through the trees and patches of meadow appeared. The ravine gradually disappeared and I followed the trail markings. At some point, I’m not sure when, I must have reached the northeast crest trail, because eventually I came out onto a road. A few yards down was a marking for Petit Fond, which was another trail that runs a circle from Colombier to Pic Paradis. There I made the mistake of entering an abandoned information kiosk where I was promptly stung in the sideburn by a wasp. A few hundred yards from there was the top of Pic Paradis, where I took a few photos, saw what appeared to be a polydamas swallowtail, and headed back home via the road.
Below are a few photos of some idle machinery that sits near Hope Estate. It may be part of the mining operation that has ravaged the mountainside behind the shopping area there.
Yesterday we (Madam J, Yann, Marie, Robin and myself) undertook a rather exciting expedition. Our first mission was to find La Grotte du Puits des Terres Basses, the largest known bat cave on the island. I had previously searched for it a bit, but had not found it, but we were determined.
First we drove to the general location in the lowland area of the French side of the island and consulted our map. Using coordinates I obtained from a scientific paper, we plotted the point as best we could. I counted paces between the two nearest landmarks, an intersection and the beginning of the nearest salt pond (750 paces) while the team determined the relative distance between the two. Once we located the best starting point from the road, we headed into the forest in search of the cave.
Yann, Marie and I were exploring the hillside when I heard a cry from Yann a hundred feet away. He had found the cave. Although the opening to the cave was quite large, it was difficult to see for more than a short distance due to the contours of the hill and the dense vegetation. In fact, Yann had actually heard the bats before he saw the cave.
The cave itself was as described in the scientific paper, an opening about seven meters wide at the base of a fifteen meter tall limestone outcrop, with visible evidence of past mining. There were two main chambers, and the air was ringing with squeaking bat noises. The stench was bearable, but unpleasant.
Inside the cave there were hundreds of bats. In the left chamber there were large groups near the tallest point of the ceiling in groups several feet wide of solid bat. In the many circular recesses in the ceiling, presumably from mining activity, there were clusters of dozens of bats. Others clung to the ceiling alone or in small groups and there were quite a few flying about the cave. The entire floor was covered in some sort of seeds. I would guess they were the pits of some type of fruit that the bats ate.
The right chamber had a smaller entrance and a couple large holes at the far end of the ceiling that let in light. Some long vines dropped from the holes to the bottom of the cave, and there was a large bird’s nest in a recess near the ceiling. The ceiling in that chamber was also full of bats. On the floor, there were large patches full of cockroaches, very Indiana Jones-style.
As we explored and took photos we noticed the bats reacting to our camera flash. The high-pitched buzz of the bats would turn into an even higher-pitched squeal just after the flash went off. It was surprising and a bit unnerving to hear hundreds of bats complaining about the flash. We were a bit worried about temporarily blinding them with the light, but then remembered that they use echolocation and weren’t as worried.
The air was thick with mosquitos and some members of the team had seen enough, so after taking some more photos we headed back down towards the car, exhilarated at our success and ready to continue on the next part of the day’s mission, but also already contemplating our next visit to this wondrous cave.
A couple weeks ago, I obtained a pair of house gecko eggs and was keeping them in a high tech incubator (empty spice bottle) in the closet of our guest bedroom. Over the last couple days, both babies hatched, and a few photos of them are below. After taking the photos, I released them on our balcony (where another young house gecko already resides) and their current whereabouts are unknown. I wasn’t able to capture it in the photos, but their bellies were translucent and you could see the vague shape of organs inside.
