Following up on the cellar spider, the spiderlings have hatched. The photos where the spiderlings have shorter legs are from the 29th, and since then they have molted and are starting to look more like mom. The photos post-molt, where the spiderlings have longer legs, were taken this morning.
I went to the Garden Groove party at Loterie Farm last night, but ended up spending much of the time walking up to Chewbacca Rock in the dark. It’s probably not actually allowed, but there’s something wonderful about the forest at night. The frogs and insects were making quite a bit of noise, staying up all night to get lucky. […]
Since the publication of the 2nd edition of the book, and particularly during the French-translation process a few errors have been found. So far, they are mostly small typos and such, but Amandine found a big one. Actually, comically huge, as it places about 10,000 species in the wrong taxon. In the millipedes section, it says that millipedes make up […]
The brown noddy is a member of the tern family. I’ve never seen it on St. Martin, but it can be seen from time to time. Historically, nesting colonies have been recorded in Lay Bay and Pointe Blanche. On Dog Island, the estimate I found online was for 191 breeding pairs, but when we visited there seemed to be thousands […]
While the boobies were still incubating eggs, most of the young frigatebirds had already taken to the skies. There were a few left hanging around their nesting grounds, though. There were also a few adult males in the area, and it was a good chance to see them inflating their throat pouches (also known as gular pouches). This is normally […]
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 […]