Abi's Deep Dive

The marine life is so varied here, and I love all of the different things I get to see underwater, but this is an appreciation post for the variety of things I see on land and in the sky on a day to day basis.

There are variations of the birds we have in the UK like a Yucatan Jay which look like they are black but then the light catches them and the most beautiful blue feathers gleam, the plentiful yucatan woodpecker with its little red cap who make homes within holes they bash out of palm trees. Then of course there are the birds we don’t have at home like hummingbirds, a favorite of mine catching my eye as it flits so quickly from flower to flower looking like a tiny busy little fairy (photograph below was not taken by me!), and vultures who commonly sit on posts watching the world go by or soar high in the sky as buzzards do back in Devon, and the huge frigate birds who dive down to snatch turtle hatchlings as they make a dash to the sea. I hadn’t realised just how big they are until they dive-bombed me as I tried to protect a flooded nest we found last year. Despite me waving my arms, then a big stick, they kept coming, and their wing span was easily as big as my arm span.

There are all kinds of little anole and gecko, and probably others with different names but who to my uneducated brain are in the same group, so many different colours and sizes, forming a constant back drop of movement in leaves on the floor and on shrubs and trees, and of course the big iguanas who sunbathe while keeping a watchful eye on who is around. They all have a common head bob which is apparently a way of communicating a variety of things including dominance in a territory, or interest to a female.

At the moment there are 1000’s of butterflies around. We are on a migratory path here and there is a constant stream of them flying around, even when we go out on the boat they are fluttering around us on the sea. It reminds me of the bit in Mary Poppins where the cartoon and real life merge. Bright yellow, white and orange butterflies are around us, carrying on with their journey while we admire their color and the distances they can travel despite their apparent fragility. 

Colour is something I love here. there are flowers all year round, yellow, red, pink and a hundred colors in between. Everything from the animals to the plant life seems so vivid. In every direction there’s something to catch your eye either because it looks so striking, or because you’ve never seen anything like it before!