11:00 This morning I did some more
reading after breakfast, took the weather, saw a cool butterfly I won't be able
to identify as I have no photo and on the way back from the beach I saw a tonne
of Harlequin Crabs close up. On the
beach I expected some interesting things due to the big storm only to find the
lone 'fish-trap' bottle I had lost previously, and that the beach looked
different as the underlying rock formations were now visible. Near the path entrance between the beach and
yard area I manage to catch an orange-yellow butterfly. Before this interesting return from the lab I
was watching as Social Flycatchers kept landing on the windowsill of the lab
whilst squawking at each other, and I also saw and filmed a Ctenosaur eating a
crab (See Video 110). I decided to do some more reading
and start making a butterfly identification guide seeming as they were all
starting to come out a lot more with the rains - a good shower is also on the
agenda.
.JPG) |
| Beach Butterfly (D.Philpot) |
.JPG) |
| Harlequin Crab Burrows (D.Philpot) |
The park guard spent his whole time
either smoking or laying in a hammock so he lost some appeal as an
inspirational character to me.
20:30 From returning from the lab once
again I saw one, what I guess was a "White Hawk," followed shortly by
another, again by the felled Pochote Tree.
I looped back to the lab to try get an ID from the bird book but no luck
exactly though I at least had the photo stored on my camera. This bird was of hawk size, it was all white
with one black stripe across its tail feathers, and had a grey eye-bar as well
as some grey on the tips of its wings when closed.
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| Stalking This Bird Of Prey (D.Philpot) |
At around ~17:00 I went for a late
snorkel in my wetsuit where I saw many Azure Parrotfish, Mullets, and then 3
blue and 1 yellow Guineafowl Puffers which I saw all by one another near a red
tide 'cloud' in the water column. I
observed many fish close to the surface but the red tide was bad, so much so
that I was a little nervous when I couldn’t see one foot ahead or below me in
the middle of the lagoon whilst being the only human in a good few miles. There were also huge black storm clouds
behind me and certainly would not like to be out in the lagoon during a storm
like that of last night. I managed to
get a shot of "Sharktooth Rock" in the sunset skies, but I still have
not seen the nurse sharks again :-(
Here are my best sunset snorkel photos:
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| Blue-Phase Guineafowl Puffer (D.Philpot) |
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| Sharktooth Rock (D.Philpot) |
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| Sunset Over Sharktooth - View Above (D.Philpot) |
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| Sunset Over Sharktooth - View Down (D.Philpot) |
Here are links to videos of the sunset snorkel:
Video 111 - Big Dog Snapper
Video 112 - Cortez Angelfish (Juv)
Video 113 - Azure Parrotfish
Video 114 - Sunset Without Fish?
Video 115 - Giant Damselfish... Apparently, sorry for the poor video quality!
Same dinner again, but after there were
(what I presumed were) male and female Cane Toads (Later I was told they are
two types).
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| What's That Cane Toad (D.Philpot) |
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| A Yellow Cane Toad (D.Philpot) |
There was another electric
storm last night with the lightning bouncing multiple directions in the sky,
maybe normal to some but ridiculous to me!