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.
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| Boats by the fishing camp |
I saw a lot of new water birds for the trip:
Brown pelicans
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| Brown pelicans stealing fish from a net |
Little egrets
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| Brown pelicans and Little egrets by the river |
Snowy egrets
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| Snowy egret |
Little blue heron
Cattle egrets
Great blue heron
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| Great blue heron |
Yellow crowned night heron
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| Yellow-crowned night heron |
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| Female or juv yellow crowned (assumed because they were a few feet from each other) |
Black crowned night heron
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Southern stingray |
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| Fish tagging a ride on the bottom of the stingray |
Some unknown fish...
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| Juvenile queen angelfish |
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| 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.
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| Sunset over the marsh |
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| Sketchy bridge we had to cross over |
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| Aurora and Hesran |
On our short walk I did find a Green Heron. If only the lighting wasn't fading.
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| Green Heron |
