waiting for the kettle to boil . . .

I glance out the kitchen window – there’s the lilac blue crab below the orange tree, tottering at an off-road angle part in and out of his burrow. For once he doesn’t bolt when he sees me. Close by a very successful female flycatcher – not sure what type – swoops from her perch scooping up flies who are glad of the sun. Were glad of the sun. A short tailed hermit hummingbird feeds from those red salvia like flowers I can’t find in the books. Below him two red and black butterflies flit between scrubby growth. There’s a movement in the cannonball tree: it’s the lone male howler monkey noisily crossing the little stream on his way to the big river trees. All around is the song of birds and the constant hum, throb, twitter of insects. Kettle’s boiled.

orange spider with her babies

caterpillar on bean leaf

morning gift

Last weekend working in the garden I happened upon a thin nest about 8 feet up in the pejabaye palms. It was a family of variable seedeaters – one of my favourite birds in the garden. These small finches have such a pretty song and are happy to come close. The male is all black except for a white dot on each wing near the shoulder, the females are a greenish brown. There were two babies in the nest, big ones. In fact when I checked the nest later in the day they had left. But today, Friday, I saw the family in a cherry tree, the babies close and still calling their parents for food. They are the colour of the mother. I’m glad the family has decided to stay close.
I thought to go check the hummingbird nest. I disturbed an iguana in the hibiscus as I approached and he slipped into the river and swam below the surface with strong strokes for about 15 yards before raising his head and swimming periscope style further downstream. The water is a milky coffee brown just now after all the rain and has quite a current to it. The sand bank on the beach must have burst. One of the hummers was making a terrible racket and I thought it must be my presence, I couldn’t see any movement in the nest. I was wondering why she was not trying to distract me away from the nest when suddenly my eyes adjusted and I saw a good sized male basilisk sitting on the branch about 2 feet from her babies. She was darting at him and screaming furiously but he was paying no attention, though his crest was raised. I began to throw some pieces of dry stick at him but he ignored those too. Then I made a lucky throw and a piece hit him on the back – it wouldn’t have hurt, but it was enough to make him jump from the branch into the water and swim upstream. The hummer continued to buzz the area where he had been and it took a few moments for her to assure herself the threat was gone. I felt good, superhero style, but he knows where the nest is, I wonder if he’ll come back? She fed her young, a leaf was in the way so I couldn’t see how big they are, but last week they seemed to be a fair size, I hope they make it.

bronze tailed plumeteers - the hummingbird parents with the river nest

heliconia madness

Heliconia madness
The east garden is almost purely ornamental, mostly bromeliads and heliconias, a delightful pond with lilies and lotus, two big trees draped with epiphytes, bromeliads and orchids. The weather in the last 10 days has wrecked havoc on the land – a week of hot sun with no rain then a night and day of heavy rain with wind. Half the heliconias are bent over under the weight of flowers and leaves, beaten down with rain. I spent 6 hours working through the beds with my clippers removing leaves, cutting stalks, trying to decide which flowers to leave for the hummingbirds. The flowers last for weeks and weeks gradually turning into mini ecosystems of their own as each flower fills with water and old vegetation and becomes home to mosquito larvae and tadpoles. Further down, or up, the stalk the younger flowers still provide nectar for hummers and bees. I hate to cut a flower which is still active and productive. And yet they were in a sorry state. Each stalk produces a flower, once the flower finishes the stalk dies – when one cuts the flower one should cut the stalk. The flower lies below three or four leaves and oftentimes we cut the leaves above – both to alleviate the weight on the stalk and to see the flower. Usually there is only one leaf below the flower. In my cutting yesterday I removed so many leaves to reduce the weight on the stalks that in some places they no longer look like plants but a storage area for Chinese lanterns. From a distance it’s spectacular, but up close looks shorn and sad. I will have to pay more attention to the beds here. It’s interesting, I enjoy the beauty and the openness of this garden but I haven’t really connected with the plants here. I spend most of my work time raking and weeding and presuming the flowers will take care of themselves, but yesterday showed me otherwise.
I was rewarded in my work with three beautiful encounters. There’s a hummingbird nest in a young guabo tree on a limb which reaches out over the river. One day I’ll have a camera that can take good pictures from a distance. The nest is immaculate, 2/3rds the size of my fist and very round. It’s so well put together it looks like a growth on the tree as though a limb had fallen off and lichen and moss had covered the stump. It’s a patchwork of liverwort and bright moss. So pretty. I watched as a parent (I think a Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer) fed two young. The little ones were ½ the size of my thumb and had orange beaks. It’s quite something to maneuver those long beaks in a small nest.
The second experience was with a lizard in the smallest cherry tree. I saw his tail from the corner of my eye and thought it was a snake, so long, perhaps 3 times as long as his body. I’ve never seen his kind before – he had eye sockets like a chameleon, but the eyes were smaller and heavily lidded. He had no back crest or ridge, but a frill between his jaw and chest. He was striped like an iguana, but subtly in lichen and green. He had 5 regular lizard toes, long and thin. When I first saw him his body was long and sleek but when I approached him he seemed to swell up, become shorter and extended his crest. I say he though I have no proof, I could see no sex, just a flap below his tail, but he did have a nice frill, so I think he was male. He moved like a mantis – slowly back and forth mimicking the movement of wind amongst leaves. Oftentimes he did not use his back legs but allowed them to hang there while he pulled himself forwards with the front. I couldn’t see any muscles moving as he went with those two skinny forearms pulling all his weight. His tail was grey unlike the green of his body. Looking in the book later I think he was a canopy lizard, but can’t say for sure, the book isn’t so very thorough.
The third was in the bed behind the pond and I almost cut him in two seeing him just at the last minute before I closed my clippers. He was a tree frog but not the spectacularly coloured varieties of the postcards. He was like a dead leaf, his body so flat yet textured with ridges and crinkles. His feet were camouflaged so well that I could barely tell what was him and what was heliconia stem. He had bumps and points on his head and the most startling eyes, big cream and marbled with dark brown. The slits were vertical. He was fairly broad but very flat, almost rectangular shaped and so still – the only movement was a very rapid and visible heartbeat below his ample jaw. He wasn’t in the book, no matter he was wonderful.