The brown booby can be seen regularly in St. Martin, often fishing in the near shore waters of our bays. The masked booby, however, is almost unknown on the island. Recorded sightings are relatively rare, and the species itself is much less common than the brown booby. Although the total population is unknown, it may be less than 1/20th of […]

Dog Island, a satellite of Anguilla is an Important Bird Area, hosting many species of seabird. In some species, the number of breeding pairs on Dog Island represents a significant portion of the entire Caribbean population. It looks like the brown booby is listed at about 1,200 pairs on the island. That’s not a huge number, but because they nest […]

How many kinds of ladybug are there on St. Martin? I’ve found eight so far. I guess that’s a pretty good example of why the guide is, by necessity, incomplete. To include all the ladybugs I know, plus photos of at least one larva an pupa would take a couple of pages. Pretty soon, the book would be an encyclopedia. […]

Last week I posted an image of a cellar spider with her eggs. She’s still there, and here is a photo from today. If you compare today’s image with the one from last week, you can see the eggs look very different (last week’s photo, for reference: http://www.sxmwildlife.com/cellar-spider/). The difference is that the outer layer of the egg, the chorion, […]

If you are interested in birds, I recommend liking the page for the SCSCB, the Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds. You’ll get bird conservation news and plenty of great photos and information about birds that live in our region. I learn something new there most days. For example, I just learned that this is a 2nd-year […]

I just started doing a column about birds in the Weekender section of The Daily Herald. The first one is in today’s paper. If you don’t normally get the Herald, I guess you’d better start getting the Saturday edition at least.

She’s a cute redhead, but she’s dangerous. The Cuban Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) is native to Cuba and The Bahamas, but has been very successful in colonizing other places around the world. It has been introduced in Texas, Hawaii, Taiwan, Singapore, and numerous islands in the Caribbean, including St. Vincent and Grand Cayman. In Florida, it has spread quickly and […]

Check out this little guy. He is a spiny-backed orbweaver. Typically the females of this species are much more noticeable. On St. Martin, they are some combination red, black, white and yellow and have four spines coming out of their abdomen (in North America, this species has six spines). They build large webs, with extra silk used to create a […]

Do you have an old camera you don’t use anymore? During the September program with with youth from the I Can and Ujima Homes, one of the sessions will be learning wildlife photography. The plan is to teach them wildlife photography techniques while also studying the animals living in scrub habitats. Many kids have a camera on their phone or […]

Our wetlands are getting busier as we speak with fall migrants and overwintering birds coming to join our year-round resident species. Here are a few photos I took yesterday at Salines d’Orient near Le Galion. This salt pond, with its large areas of mudflat, provides plenty of food for shorebirds, including fiddler crabs and snails. This set of photos includes […]