Saturday, June 14, 2008
Oranje
This is an orange cup coral (tubastrea sp. I believe). in the day time you often see kind of reddish/orange blobs on the reef. at night they open up like this to reveal dozens of hungry polyps. Tubastrea is a truly predatory coral; in aquaria it is often direct fed with small shrimp. They tend to close when lit up with torches so photos are hard to expose but I'm reasonably happy with this clump.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
More snake stuff
So I got the ID wrong yesterday. This is yesterday's snake which is actually Arrhyton exiguum, the Antillean Ground Snake.
Whereas this is Alsophis portoricensis, the Antillean racer:As you can see both are small, slender, brown snakes with stripes down the side. They are both quite variable colourwise too. The racer seems to have a yellow chin and have various spots and things one can use for ID. As far as I can tell the easiest way to tell the two apart is that the ground snake is friendly and relaxed whereas the racers rear up like a cobra, hiss and strike at you if you get too close. They lead pretty similar lives although the racers get a little bigger and are a little more easy to find. Both are mildly venomous in a way that is not at all threatening to humans (as far as I know, think bee sting, Ok as long as you're not the unlucky person who's allergic).
They're both pretty speedy too - you can see that in a video I shot of the Ground Snake in the hand and upon release the next morning (once we were sure he was definately OK and not catmolested).
Is the video working? if not go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deep-blue/2569350960/
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Cutie
Since I'd grabbed this guy I took the opportunity to introduce him to my girlfriend who deemed him cute enough to be held.
After which he decided to accessorise the bracelet of my watch for a while.
and generally hang out amidst my fingers. Aww.
Edited 10/06/08 to correct the id - more tomorrow on the id error and this species.
It will be mine....oh yes it will be mine......
I must have it. I mean look at the size of them. Now typically in this situation I'd google a supplier, converse with mes parents, we'd agree on a spot in the mini-arboretum and said tree/shrub would join our little family collection (which is far to big for the space already).
Except this plant wasn't labelled and I don't have a clue which species it is (I'm thinking its probably an american one but am stuck). If it was just the flowers I could probably forget it but look at these awesome leaves. I must have it!
Anyone able to help me out?
P.S. I kinda think it might be M. macrophylla - anyone agree?
P.P.S. In addition (hopefully) to the answer to the above query a very cool post is coming soon. Watch this space.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Poolside surprise
If they were they seemed pretty at peace with it.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Sightings
Other interesting sightings were:
a sphaero gcko running out of my luggage upon returning home - no idea which species or where it went; an excellent lesson in how geckos colonised the world; and
a red tailed hawk getting severely abused by a number of kingbirds overhead.
Things have been a little quiet of late but I'm building up to a couple of really interesting little expeditions.