T & T Part 8: Leatherback Turtles!

One of the reasons we went to Trinidad at the time of year we did (in May) was because I hoped to see Leatherback Turtles laying eggs on the beach.   

I've always loved turtles... from the Painted Turtles that live in the swamp here at home, to the Green Sea Turtles we snorkeled with on St. John a number of years ago.  

So I was pretty excited when we went to Matura Beach.

Matura Beach was an hour or so drive from Asa Wright Nature Centre, and we did some birding along the way.  Birding is good in Trinidad... even from the car during a rainstorm!

Ringed Kingfisher

Once we arrived at the beach, Mukesh, our wonderful guide, proceeded to set up a fine picnic supper for us at the pavilion.  Some more rain showers passed thru the area, but we were comfortable under the roof.

My husband and I took a walk down to the beach while it was still light.  We met Frances, one of the Nature Seeker guides.  He told us quite a bit about Leatherback Turtles.  He may have noticed I was excited, because he teased me not to "jump around and make a lot of noise when a turtle came on the sand because I might scare her away".   I think maybe he was just as excited as I was though.  He said he has been doing this for 25 years but still loves it.  We could tell he does by the way he talked about the turtles.

Then we had to wait for it to get dark.  The female turtles wait for the protection of darkness before they come on shore.  (By the way, male turtles never return to land after they hatch).  The sky had cleared and we enjoyed the stars of the southern hemisphere while we waited.  Many people had arrived - cars and even a couple of buses full of Trinidadians, and a few other tourists such as ourselves.  

Lucky for us, Frances was to be the guide for our group.   He told us to wait there while he went to the beach to watch for a turtle.  Once she started digging, he would come get our group and we would quietly walk down to where she was.  It wasn't too long before he came back to lead us to where a turtle was beginning to dig.  We were allowed to use a red light, but only if really needed... mostly we walked in the growing darkness.  

There are some things that have to be seen to really know what they are like.  The Sequoias,  the Grand Canyon, and the Rocky Mountains come to mind.  Now that I've seen them, Leatherback Turtles are also in that category.  

I was not prepared for the size of our lady Leatherback, nor do my photos really show it.  And, watching this huge creature use her back flippers to dig a perfect hole to lay her eggs in was amazing - something you need to see in person to truly understand the magnificence of it.

Until she started laying eggs, we only had the light of Frances' red flashlight to see by and were not allowed to take flash photos.  Once a turtle begins laying eggs she goes into a trance-like state and Frances said flash from cameras would not bother her.  So, all of my photos were taken during that time.

Leatherback turtles lay on average 110 tennis ball-sized eggs.  They typically only breed every 2 to 3 years (although they can breed annually).  One female can lay up to 9 clutches in one season, as often as 9 days apart.

As I said, while they are laying eggs nothing bothers them, so Frances encouraged us to touch her.  

Their skin is leathery, and they have a layer of fat under their skin to insulate them from the cold northern waters they migrate to while searching for food.  Jellyfish are their main diet, and they can eat their own weight of it in a day!  The turtles can weigh from 550 to 1540 pounds according to one source I found; and up to 2000 pounds in another.  However much they weigh... they are LARGE!  From front to back they can be 6 to 7 feet.  

That's about the same as the height of a man, so the photo above doesn't really show how big she truly was.  This next chart will give you a better idea.

She was pretty amazing to see in real life.  (I did manage to restrain myself from yelling or jumping around in my excitement!).

It was not an easy event to photograph-- all these photos were taken with flash in an almost completely dark setting.  My photos also don't show the ocean ebbing and flowing in the background with the star-lit sky overhead.  Other Leatherback Turtles were coming out of the water nearby as well.  We could just pick out their dark forms against the lighter colored sand.  It was magical.

Our lady was almost done laying her eggs.  I took a few more photos of her while I still could.

Then she started to cover up her eggs, which we could watch using Frances' red light again.  Frances is an amazing person... as I said, you could tell he loved the turtles and he also knew a lot about them.  He is part of a group called the Nature Seekers, which was founded in 1990 to protect the turtles on Trinidad and Tobago.  Here's a link to an article about them and info about their tours here, if you'd like to read more about it.

While the main purpose of our trip to Trinidad and Tobago was to see birds; watching the turtles that night at Matura Beach was one I will long remember and be thankful I was able to experience. 

T & T Part 7: The Nests!

In places like Trinidad and Tobago where there are many birds, of course there are also large quantities of nests.  Because we had lots of ground to cover during our time there, we didn't watch the activity at any one nest for long, but I still very much enjoyed seeing them.  When I look thru my photos of nests from the trip, the thing that stands out to me is the variety!

 

The first nest isn't much of a nest at all.  It's a 'scrape' on the ground made by a White-tailed Nightjar.

This nest was along the side of a road on Tobago.  While it's basically out in the open, it was still quite protected, at least when the Nightjar was sitting on it-- as her camouflage coloration hides her well.

The next nest is also on the ground.  Laughing Gulls had nests all over the place on Little Tobago Island.

Even though they were all gull nests, there was still some variety.  Brown leaves were preferred by some mothers, green leaves by others.

While we walked by, some of the mothers were quite concerned and made noise to try to distract us from their nests.  I think the Laughing Gull in the next photo looks more sad than happy, don't you?  (Their name comes from the sound they make, not their expression).

We saw two other ground-nesting birds, but these two don't just nest on the top of the ground-- they build burrows.

Those holes on a bank belong to either Rufous-tailed Jacamars or Motmots.

The Trinidad Motmot on this steep bank in Tobago may have been looking for a good spot for a new nest.  Motmots have good bills for digging.

Rufous-tailed Jacamars have long, strong bills.  Their tunnel nests can be up to 20" (50 cm) long.  Their bills are about 1-3/4" (4.5 cm) long.

Jacamars are found in pairs during the whole year and are rather social birds.  We often saw two or more together.

Some other birds of Trinidad and Tobago are very social and nest in colonies.  Here's a huge tree filled with the hanging nests of Yellow-rumped Caciques.

What good weavers they are!

Their babies would seem to be quite well protected in those nests, and with so many parents around to keep an eye out for danger.

The same is true for another colony nester--  Crested Oropendolas.

This tree was on the grounds at the Asa Wright Nature Center.  I'm not sure what the growth in the middle was... a mass of limbs the tree produced for some reason.  It was so high up, we couldn't get a good look at it.  To give you an idea of the scale, here's a photo in which you can see a building below the tree.

I think that those nests are quite an accomplishment from a bird with a bill like this:

In case you are wondering,  the male Crested Oropendolas do have a crest, which is long and dark and usually not noticeable.  

The entrance to their nest is near the top and the babies reside in the bottom. 

Wonder if they like it when their nursery sways in the wind?

Another hanging nest we saw in Trinidad belonged to a Yellow Oriole.

They are very similar in looks and nesting styles to our Baltimore Orioles.

Other birds which have comparable nests to ones we have in Pennsylvania are the woodpeckers.

This Golden-olive Woodpecker may look different than our woodpeckers, but she makes her babies' nursery the same way, in the cavity of a dead tree.

Other cavity nests we saw were very different from here at home, because we don't (luckily!) have termite nests!

Not sure what bird hollowed that nest out of an old termite nest, because we didn't see a bird.  It could have been a Parrot or a Trogon... or maybe something else.

We did see Trogons working on a cavity in another location though.

We saw this beautiful male Collared Trogon... and then a female in the same area--

... so we watched for awhile and saw the male excavating a hole in a dead stump.

Little pieces of wood came flying out of the hole as he pecked at it and there was a pile of them on the ground below.

That was really cool to watch!

While it was perfect timing to see the Trogons, we were a few days late to see the baby hummingbirds in the nest in the next photo.

Do you see the nest?  This is what you are looking for:

A hummingbird raised her babies successfully right outside the Asa Wright Nature Centre main building.  They fledged just before we arrived, but it was really neat to see the nest anyway!

Now can you find it?

We saw other hummingbird nests, too.

A female was sitting on eggs in this one (you can see her tail hanging out the back), which was hanging fairly low over the road.  We saw another one along the same road, but it was higher up.

At first, we thought this was the female Tufted Coquette sitting on eggs, but from a different angle we could see there were actually two birds in the nest... probably not long til fledge-time for those youngsters!

At our motel on Tobago (the Cuffie River Nature Retreat) we could see a Green Heron on a nest of sticks right from our balcony.

An even closer nest was being built while we were there, in the upstairs open-air lounge that was next to our room.

My husband saw the birds going in and out of that spot, so we briefly removed a pillow from the couch so we could see the nest.  In the next photo you can see one of the Palm Tanagers from the pair who were building it.  The other arrow points to where the nest is located!

That's quite a variety of nests, I think, but there's one more I want to tell you about.  However, that's a story for another post.  Here's a hint!

Oh the Orioles!

I've decided to take a little break from sharing our Trinidad and Tobago trip to report on our Baltimore Orioles here at home.  

Long-term readers may remember my posts about the Jelly Feeder Parade and Fun At The Jelly Feeder, as well as the day I braved extreme cold January temperatures to make a photographic record of as many oriole nests that I could see within an easy walk from our house.  That post was called Swinging Cradles.  In it, I counted 8 nests, but after that I even found a couple more!  Obviously we have a LOT of Orioles!

We also have at least 2 Grey Catbirds coming regularly, several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and a few Red-winged Blackbirds.

They all eat jelly, and some also eat the chopped grapes, pieces of banana and watermelon I put out.

But, most of them seem to like the grape jelly best.  Sometimes they get into fights over it.

Though I've never seen anyone actually get hurt, and usually they just take turns.

You would think I would have noticed before now, but recently when looking at my photos, I realized you can tell the male orioles apart.  See if you can tell how in the next few photos.

Did you notice that the black markings at their throats are each a little bit different?  I honestly don't know how I have not realized this before!  Now, I've been having fun trying to capture a photo of as many different ones as I can, but it's not easy.  For instance, sometimes you only see them like this:

And then there are the 1st year males and the females...

I don't know if the next guy is just still young or if he has some leucistic feathers on his head.

 I've only shown you a few... we really have oodles of Orioles!  

And this year's 'crop' is just getting started.  Yesterday morning, I could tell the ones in the nest in our yard had fledged because I could hear them peeping loudly from a couple places nearby.   

First, here's the nest.

Here's one fledgling fairly high up in a tree.  It was peeping like crazy, asking to be fed.

And, then, one that apparently wasn't really quite ready to fledge and wound up in the grass.

I picked it up in the 'bird bander's hold' so I could put it up on a limb where it would be safer.  (Gizmo the pup was quite interested in 'playing' with it when it was in the grass -- good thing I was watching!).

It wasn't too happy about this, but I wasn't hurting it!

I carefully got it to hold on tight to a maple limb (on the second try... on the first try it didn't want to hold on and fluttered to the ground again!).

The mother was close-by, scolding me the whole time, so I know she watched where I put him.  A few hours later, it was gone so hopefully it went off to a safe place.

This morning, both Mama and Papa Orioles are busy carrying food away from the feeders in various directions... so I'm sure there are lots of babies being fed.

They scold me if I go out on the deck, even to replenish their food (which I have to do several times a day), but they don't mind Ruby at all!

I thought you might like to see Ruby, too, since it's been awhile since she's been on the blog.  Next, I still have more photos I want to show you from Trinidad and Tobago!