Saturday, July 25, 2009
Butterflies at Bedford Purlieus
Silver-washed Fritillary, female
Silver-washed Fritillary, male
Painted Ladies
Peacock
Brown Argus
Large Skipper
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Barbuda day trip, DSLR
Barbuda Warblers, endemic to this small island
Pearly-eyed Thrasher
American Kestrel
Caribbean Elaenia
Magnificent Frigatebirds at the colony
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Antigua Day 2, Digiscoping Part 2
The paparazzi move in on a Lesser Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Royal Tern
Black-necked Stilt
Another Royal Tern
The setting sun
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Potted Caribbean highlight snippets
Antigua
Eyeball to eyeball with baby egrets deep inside a mangrove heronry.
Surrounded by noisy Sooty Terns, a Red-billed Tropicbird flies by.
Snorkelling from Bird Island over soft corals and sea cucumbers, following cuttlefish back to the catamaran anchored offshore.
Barbuda
A million lagoon jellyfish turn upside-down to filter feed like hydroids, ignoring the Rasta at the dock.
A joyous damp boat trip powered by a bat-faced grump to cruise within laughing distance of full-grown baby Magnificent Frigatebirds.
Barbuda Warbler, mid-pish, pished to touching distance.
The horror of former slave caves; which now house an irascible, disheveled Pearly-eyed Thrasher.
Montserrat
Sleeping in George Martin's bed; replacing Green Heron and Iguana with a dive in his pool.
A male Montserrat Oriole forages oblivious to us and brings a cricket or a moth back to young from a previously unknown nest.
Turtles mating at the surface, near the edge of the Exclusion Zone.
Pure tragic emotion, seeing from the unbelievable blue sea, the hollow grey ruins of Plymouth, buried and reburied since 1997.
Brown Trembler (the Twitcher's friend) at the nest.
Dominica
Plumbeous Warbler at our fingertips in a channel through mangroves blocked at the sea by hurricane-driven rusty hulks.
Five-and-a-half hours of Quaker-driven silent vigil, awaiting the Imperial Parrot that never came, while everything else came to pay respects.
Blue-headed Hummingbird dancing around us, Queen of the forest flowers.
A powercut night under the Milky Way, new stars flashing on and off with every firefly.
Eyeball to eyeball with baby egrets deep inside a mangrove heronry.
Surrounded by noisy Sooty Terns, a Red-billed Tropicbird flies by.
Snorkelling from Bird Island over soft corals and sea cucumbers, following cuttlefish back to the catamaran anchored offshore.
Barbuda
A million lagoon jellyfish turn upside-down to filter feed like hydroids, ignoring the Rasta at the dock.
A joyous damp boat trip powered by a bat-faced grump to cruise within laughing distance of full-grown baby Magnificent Frigatebirds.
Barbuda Warbler, mid-pish, pished to touching distance.
The horror of former slave caves; which now house an irascible, disheveled Pearly-eyed Thrasher.
Montserrat
Sleeping in George Martin's bed; replacing Green Heron and Iguana with a dive in his pool.
A male Montserrat Oriole forages oblivious to us and brings a cricket or a moth back to young from a previously unknown nest.
Turtles mating at the surface, near the edge of the Exclusion Zone.
Pure tragic emotion, seeing from the unbelievable blue sea, the hollow grey ruins of Plymouth, buried and reburied since 1997.
Brown Trembler (the Twitcher's friend) at the nest.
Dominica
Plumbeous Warbler at our fingertips in a channel through mangroves blocked at the sea by hurricane-driven rusty hulks.
Five-and-a-half hours of Quaker-driven silent vigil, awaiting the Imperial Parrot that never came, while everything else came to pay respects.
Blue-headed Hummingbird dancing around us, Queen of the forest flowers.
A powercut night under the Milky Way, new stars flashing on and off with every firefly.
Antigua Day 2, Digiscoping Part 1
Laughing Gulls*
Views from colony on Bird Island*
We snorkelled out of this near bay to that catamaran moored in the distance. There were spiny lobsters, parrotfish, surgeonfish, holothurians and a little group of cuttlefish constantly changing colours as I followed them: close to my idea of paradise. The island to the left of the boat was covered in nesting Brown Noddies.
Preening Brown Pelican
White-crowned Pigeons
White-crowned Pigeon squab
Laughing Gull
Dickenson Bay*
*= not really digiscoped
Antigua Day 2, DSLR Part 1
Sooty Tern
On our second day in Antigua, we spent a brief time in the morning in the gardens of the Siboney Beach Club, before sildling down the white coral sand beach to pic up our catamaran outsie Sandals. Our destination was Bird Island, home to a large Sooty Tern colony, with smaller numbers of Brown Noddies and Laughing Gulls. It was simply fantastic to walk among the nesting terns, trying to disturb them as little as possible...
Female Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Male Lesser Antillean Bullfinch
Zenaida Dove
Gecko sp
Laughing Gull
Sooty Terns
Magnificent Frigatebird
Bridled Tern
Sooty Tern
Brown Noddies
Brown Boobies
Laughing Gull
Sooty Terns
Green-throated Carib trying to see off a blue Budgie from its nest site...
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