Jamaica- Day 4

This morning as he promised Hesran showed me a back way to get into the marsh (Royal Palm Reserve). Further into town by the river we walked through a small fishing camp upriver down a small path. This path along the banks would have been flooded had it been spring. The wet spring might have been a better time for herps but dry winter is when all of the northern species visit the tropics. 

Boats by the fishing camp

I saw a lot of new water birds for the trip:

Brown pelicans

Brown pelicans stealing fish from a net

 Little egrets

Brown pelicans and Little egrets by the river

Snowy egrets

Snowy egret

Little blue heron
Cattle egrets
Great blue heron

Great blue heron

 Yellow crowned night heron

Yellow-crowned night heron

 

Female or juv yellow crowned (assumed because they were a few feet from each other)

 Black crowned night heron

Black-crowned night heron

 
Black and white warbler
Little blue heron

In the afternoon Aurora and I go to Margaritaville again. I go snorkeling in hopes of finding stingrays or other interesting things.

Margaritaville, Negril

At first there were only a few scattered small silver fish then I found a school of larger silver fish. I notice the barren sand is actually home to many worms, anemones and other inverts.

The border of the seagrass is edged with the occasional starfish and I find a small ray here as well.

Lesser electric ray

Exploring further brings me to a single chunk of coral standing alone in a bed of seagrass. This single piece of coral held more life than I had seen yet that day. There were multiple types of coral, a lionfish and many small fish.

Small fish and Lion fish on lone piece of coral

 I wish I had a spear gun for this beautiful (invasive) creature.They are known to be predators of young native fish.

Lionfish

Pushing on allowed me to find more scattered chunks of reef. There were some familiar reef creatures:

Blue wrasse
Yellow-headed wrasse
Sergent major
French grunt
Brittlestar
Pufferfish

Pufferfish

and then.... out of the corner of my eye... 'Wait is that...? YES YES it is!' My first larger ray and exactly what I was looking for today. This gorgeous creature literally didn't move for about 15 minutes as I snapped tons of pictures of it and got quite close.  It was tempting to touch but I didn't want to disturb it too much.

Southern stingray

Fish tagging a ride on the bottom of the stingray

Some unknown fish...

Juvenile queen angelfish

Vinca in Hesrans garden

In the evening we drove into a different section of Royal Palm Reserve.Driving in the 'road' had many potholes and eventually was covered in grass and bushes. We walk in at the point our car can no longer drive and cross a very old bridge. The reserve is on the other side of the bridge and we find out the road we took has been long closed down and abandoned. We ended up getting there later than we had intended and didn't have much light left.The sunset was gorgeous and you could see a few birds and hear some too but it wasn't great for pictures.

Sunset over the marsh

Sketchy bridge we had to cross over

Aurora and Hesran

 On our short walk I did find a Green Heron. If only the lighting wasn't fading.

Green Heron