If being able to fly isn’t enough, many birds are also pretty incredible when it comes to balancing in precarious spots. This female Carib Grackle was hanging out on the bare branches of a tree near the cemetery pond in Grand Case. Like about half of bird species, the grackle is a passerine, a group which includes most of the […]

This white cockroach is not an albino, I just happened to find it shortly after molting. Because insects have a hard exoskeleton on the outside, they need to shed that exoskeleton to grow. The process is called molting, and when they emerge from their old exoskeleton they are soft until the new exoskeleton has time to expand and harden. (They […]

Although I spent most of my time attending presentations and participating in workshops, I did have the chance to see some wildlife in Grenada and take a few photos. As you might guess, there are some familiar faces down there: many of the same birds live in both Grenada and St. Martin, and a number of the same introduced species […]

The big, black bumblebee that lives on St. Martin (Xylocopa mordax) nests in wood, chewing a burrow where it raises its larvae. Today I spotted two nests in a ficus tree on the roadside in Cole Bay. Both were in branches that had been heavily trimmed and seemed to be dead, but still attached to the tree. I would guess […]

One of the frog eggs was deflated, like a raisin, and I gently rolled it in my palm with a little water and the outer membrane came off, revealing the tiny, newborn froglet. It was hard to get decent photos of it because it was so small, and the wet skin reflects the flash, but here it is.

Here are a few more photos of Eleutherodactylus eggs. The froglets inside are almost fully developed and ready to hatch.

Here are a few white-cheeked pintails resting in the shade at mid-day near the Great Salt Pond. On St. Martin, most duck species just spend the winter here, but the white-cheeked pintail is a year-round resident. It’s also known as the Bahama pintail, and the summer duck, perhaps because it is still around during the summer when many other ducks […]

As a follow-up to the frog eggs, here are some of the actual frogs, an adult and a young froglet. We have three species from the genus Eleutherodactylus on the island, but two of them look very similar, so the only reliable way of telling them apart is by the calls that the males make. Although it was daytime when […]

These are the eggs of a tree frog from the genus Eleutherodactylus. Based on the calls I heard in the area where I found them, I believe it is the Martinique Robber Frog. At any rate, this genus of frogs has been highly successful in colonizing the islands of the Caribbean (something that is generally difficult for frogs to do). […]

Yesterday evening, a little after dark, I noticed something small crossing the street in front of me. It turns out, it was a mole cricket, the second time I’ve seen one on St. Martin. These crickets are nocturnal, and spend most of their time underground, so it isn’t so surprising that I don’t see them often. This one is a […]