Here’s a baby bush cricket, probably Carylla proalbifrons or a similar species. Everyone who read The Very Hungry Caterpillar when they were little knows that some insects, like butterflies, undergo a complete metamorphosis. Many other insects, including crickets, undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, from egg to nymph to adult. Nymphs are typically similar in form to adults, although they often don’t […]
Cuban tree frogs will lay their eggs in just about any fresh water, even temporary pools and manmade structures. It’s a necessity if your children are tadpoles and you live on a relatively dry island. A couple years ago, some friends found hundreds or even thousands, of tadpoles and young frogs in an unused swimming pool. Many of the frogs […]
If you hear a loud, rasping insect at night, it’s probably the broad-tipped conehead. It’s a type of katydid, and as you can see, they have a little cone at the top of their head. They’re quite common on St. Martin and can be either green or brown. Party conehead is also all excited because we hit our fundraising goal […]
This centridine bee is really taking off. These bees are specially adapted to harvest oils from flowers, instead of, or in addition to, pollen and nectar. This group also includes a species on St. Martin known as Abeille folle des plages, which is French for crazy beach bee. Our fundraising projects are also really taking off. As of this morning […]
Launching! Today I’m launching a couple fundraising projects. On Kickstarter, I have a project to raise funds for a printing of the all-new, totally-updated 2nd edition of the wildlife guide. Contributors receive rewards, so this is the perfect way to pre-order a copy of the new book. Even if you already have the first edition, you’ll want the new one, […]
The Lesser Antillean Bullfinch is found only in the Lesser Antilles, but is common on most of the islands in its range. They have a thick bill for eating seeds. Males are black with reddish-brown patches on the chin, near the tail and above the eyes. Females are basically plain brown. One source tells me the local name for this […]
The common gallinule can be found on all of our ponds. When the first edition of the guide was published, it was the common moorhen, but since then the old world and new world populations have been split into two species, and ours was renamed. It’s a member of the rail family and is locally known as the water chicken. […]
The tiny pond by the cemetery in Grand Case has been a very popular nesting site for egrets for the last few years. One mangrove tree, which had dozens of nests each year, has actually died, and only a small part of the dead tree is still standing. Even so, the egrets are nesting on what is left of the […]
If you hate cockroaches, you should love the ensign wasp. It has a strange, almost triangular abdomen that bobs up and down at the end of a long waist. It’s a specialized cockroach parasite, laying eggs in cockroach egg cases. The wasp larvae live inside the egg case and eat all the cockroach eggs. The species we have on St. […]
