Yesterday I was invited to join the Sister Regina School on an excursion to Pinel. After arriving by ferry, we took a hike around the island and discussed a number of interesting things, like why mongooses don’t live on Pinel, what hermit crabs eat, how vegetation grows back after a brushfire, what a natural reserve is and why it is […]

I’m headed to Pinel today with a class from Sister Regina Primary School. Below is a photo of the first tropical house gecko ever documented on Pinel. The data about which reptiles are living on the various smaller islands and offshore rocks in the Caribbean is still incomplete. I have personally found a few species on various rocks and islets […]

Here is a photo of some baby chicks from a nest that was inadvertently moved from a light fixture with them inside it. Because the parents did not return, one of the friends of this page is trying to raise them. They are probably Bananaquit or Lesser Antillean Bullfinch chicks. So far, we’ve gotten some good advice from local experts […]

Some of the generous backers who helped finance the printing of the new edition of the book have posted photos after receiving their rewards. With their permission, I am posting them here. If you are a backer and would like to have your photo featured, send one in!

The mangrove cuckoo is one of my favorite birds on the island. S.J. Kruythoff referred to it as the Cat Bird in his 1938 book, and I’m not sure why. There are various birds known as catbirds, but they don’t seem similar to this cuckoo. If anyone has an idea, let me know. In other news, I am heading to […]

Here are a pair of Wilson’s plovers who were hanging out at Salines d’Orient a couple weeks ago. I saw them on a couple visits in a row, near the same spot. They also exhibited behaviors that made me think they were nesting, although I never saw the nest. Like many shorebirds, these plovers nest on the ground, and the […]

The rusty millipede is originally from Southeast Asia, but has been introduced to many parts of the world, including St. Martin. Millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment, because each body segment is basically to segments fused into one. They mostly eat decaying organic matter, and the descendants of the millipedes were probably one of the first animals […]

Today I mailed out almost 100 copies of the new edition to about 75 different locations, mostly to folks from the US who backed the Kickstarter campaign to finance the printing of the book. It took some doing – many hours of doing – but it was pretty exciting, too. If you are a Kickstarter backer from the US who […]

Some grasshoppers and katydids on St. Martin have different color forms within the same species. Often, there is a green form and a brown form, as with this grasshopper. Studies of some species have found that the green form is more common in the spring, when vegetation is green, and the brown form is more common in the late summer, […]

During the Wildlife Beats workshop at the Book Fair, we were discussing fires as a periodic event that impacts wildlife. One of the attendees brought up the fact that traditionally portions of fields have been burned by livestock owners in order to control tick populations. I’m not sure how often that happens today, but apparently ticks are currently a serious […]