I got a great suggestion about yesterday’s mystery insect, that it is a thrips. Thrips are small insects from the order Thysanoptera, and the ones I see the most on St. Martin live on ficus leaves. In fact, if you see a ficus with leaves that are folded shut, open the leaf and you will usually find something resembling the […]

You win some and you lose some. I had some time to kill in Marigot yesterday, so I figured what better way to spend it than shooting photos of wildlife in the middle of Marigot. In most ways, it isn’t the ideal place to find wildlife, but on the other hand, I often find interesting insects when I am limited […]

Even after over three years of poking around the island looking for wildlife, I still find new animals all the time. This little guy was on a bush in the front yard of a house two doors down from my apartment. It’s very tiny, much smaller than a grain of rice. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if it was […]

… or is it the ugly duckling? I posted some photos of tortoise beetle larvae, pupae and adults a couple months ago. Right now, they’re back on the very same tree, although the adult I saw today was very different looking than the last one, although it may still be the same species. The most recent find is the sparkly […]

Ground lizards love being warm. They bask in the sun to absorb heat through their backs, and they also leave their bellies on the ground to absorb heat from below. There are many species from this genus in the Lesser Antilles, often one for every island or group of nearby islands. Our species is found on Anguilla, St. Barts and […]

Ants often tend and defend scale insects, which excrete sugar-right liquids that are derived from the plant juices that they drink. In some cases the ants will even move young scale insects, an interesting way for a relatively immobile animal to get around. In this case, the scale insects and ants are seen inside the seed pod of a plant.

Black-necked stilt chicks can run, but they prefer to hide. Although they are able to walk around within a day of hatching, their primary defense mechanism is camouflage. Here you can see a few chicks on the airport salt pond in Grand Case doing their best to avoid being noticed. I assume that the rock wall in the pond was […]

Least terns are also hanging out around the Grand Case airport. I’m not sure if they’re nesting there, but they may be. Looking in through the fence at the birds hanging out beside the runway, it occurred to me that the airport might not be such a bad place to nest. Sure, there are planes taking off and landing, but […]

The Willet is a shorebird that is normally considered to be a non-breeding, overwintering resident in the Caribbean. However, on St. Martin some pairs do stick around during the summer months to breed. At the airport pond in Grand Case, I encountered a pair of willets exhibiting the behavior of concerned parents, calling loudly to get my attention, and even […]

These photos are not so great because I was quite far away, but they do show how a whimbrel uses its long bill to catch crabs in their burrows. These crabs are the primary food for whimbrels when they are overwintering on St. Martin.