Fauna, Native and OthewiseI've been remiss in reporting on getting money in Barbados. If you have anything with a Visa logo and know the secret code number, it is dead easy. Most banks have a separate little chamber for their ATM. You stick your card in the slot to open the door, then proceed as usual. Recognized me immediately and called me by name (just a little Big Brother feeling). Then asked whether I wanted money from credit card, checking or savings account and coughed up my request with no further ado. The bank teller said that the BDS bank doesn't charge anything, but my bank probably will have a big fee. We'll see. The other thing that seems to be easy here is cell phones. You can rent them here, and I wish I had, I've spent $10 in 25-cent increments calling from the pay phone across the street, trying to coordinate things, get directions, schedule tours, etc. You can also take in your own cell phone and somehow have it set to roam here. It costs about $2.50 US a minute, I think, but for the odd emergency it might be worth it. Well, maybe not, I'm sure I would have called 3 or 4 people to moan when I got robbed. Anyway, on to the fauna. Although there is a full panoply of tropical plants here, including a wonderful white frangi-pani just off my balcony, the animal life seemed a little dull initially. The ubiquitous Caribbean (Caribe?) grackle is quite small and black all over--feet, beak, feathers, everything except the beady yellow eye. They don't seem as obnoxious as I've seen them other places, perhaps because they're not so dominant. The other common bird here is a pretty rosy-chested dove called the Zenaida Dove here and the mourning dove in other parts of the West Indies (it is actually not quite a mourning dove). They also have familiar-looking pigeons and then a little brown wren-like bird called a quit of some sort, a little brown hummingbird and some nice finches. And cattle egrets that need to be re-named fish market egrets. I'd heard there was a native parrot, but hadn't seen one. There's also a wild monkey, brought from Africa several hundred years ago, perhaps as a (well several, we presume) pet or perhaps as food on one of the slave ships. And then naturalized, I guess. I saw one of these in the trees over a restaurant just down from my guest house. Actually, I didn't see the whole monkey, just the behind and long, curling tail. But when I went to the Graeme Hall Sanctuary I saw three more, the full monkey, doing their monkey thing, swinging through the trees. According to one of my reference books, this Bajan green (or velvet) monkey is responsible for up to 70% of the world's production of polio vaccine. (The velvet monkey is immune to the virus that caused trouble with rhesus monkeys, the original primates used for the vaccine.) I don't know if the monkey has to die to make this contribution. I hope not. More about Graeme Hall later. On the more domestic front, there seem to be few feral dogs or cats. Although most of the dogs I've seen look pretty much alike, so someone's getting around. The bugs are pretty minimal, I have very few bugs in my room, even though I have open windows (well, with burglar bars) and no screens. There are mosquitoes, sand flies and no- see-ums, but if you dose up every morning, you'll be fine. They don't seem to bother the natives, of course, I never can figure this out; Adrian even told me there were NO obnoxious bugs on Barbados and he said he knew because he'd lived here since he was a child. Right. There are yards here and there with chickens or geese, but not more than one in a hundred or so. I've seen a few fields of goats in my travels and a few vacant lots with two or three cows. I presume that in the country there are some farms with pigs and cows, but maybe not. The cheese all seems to be imported from New Zealand and the pig tails, trotters and organ meats for sale in the market butcher shop could have started out as a frozen carcass. I just don't know. There are the tree lizards (anoles that Sam described) and yard toads. And, after I settled down and started to look and listen, a tiny little frog the size of your thumb, called locally a whistling frog (check this out, it's a you-tube recording) that makes a BIG noise, louder than a conversational level. The cook here the Groton Inn says it "... makes you all the time crazy" if you get one in your house and they are hard to catch. And I've discovered that just before sunset, if I sit quietly on my balcony, I will be treated to a grand bat show, swooping and wheeling and nearly crashing (but never actually touching) as they scoop insects out of the air. At least a dozen live in the building I'm in, so they burst out within 12 or 15 feet of me and it's lots of fun. Actually I read an article in the paper warning folks about bats living in their houses and how the dried guano is hard on the respiratory system, etc. This is apparently a real health concern here, where the houses are not at all sealed and may have no ceiling at all. But I have a fine ceiling, so I'm just enjoying it. So as it turns out, there are a few bats, snakes and lizards that are thought to be indigenous, and a spider and a parrot, a hummingbird and a finch, but everything else has been pushed out of its niche by introduced species. Or eaten out of its niche, such as the birds, snakes and rodents that the introduced mongoose thrives on. It's hard to comprehend how you approach ecology under such circumstances. Graeme Hall was an old sugar plantation itself and the current owner of the property, Peter Allard, is a philanthropist of the first order. We were lucky to meet one of the developers of the site, Stuart Heaslet, who spent quite a while talking to us, perhaps because he has a sister in Ashland, OR, who owns the Lithia Springs Veterinary Clinic. Walking along the paths, feeding the fish--large tarpon, small tilapia and a dozen others--or wandering along the edge of the swampiest area, watching the long-legged fishing birds is delightfully cool and soothing. The brochures and signage are excellent, dipping into biology, history and culture; for example, telling how the trees and their various parts were used for toys and games. There are two enclosed aviaries, one with a shore bird, the American avocet, that has the only upwardly-curved beak in the genre. And one full of parrots and macaws and a cassowary looking bird and many little quail. The signage here does not tell how these are important to Barbados. I hardly think the quail or the cassowary are visitors via the Eastern/Caribbean flyway. But they were fun to look at anyway. Sam spent a l-o-n-g time sitting quietly waiting for the land crabs to come out of their holes, so he could photograph them. He is apprently convinced if he watches them enough, he will begin to make sense of their claw-waving behaviour and find out what they're saying to each other. Mr. Heaslet says they're just saying "Look at me, I'm a crab," but Sam thinks otherwise. I learned a lot, but it would take so much more to comprehend the convoluted ecology of this island and how they appear to be edging it along to be more tourist-appealing. Will this eventually become some strange island nation, nearly completely "unnatural," but at least "historically accurate," whatever that might mean in these circumstances? And what nation can claim any different? It's a lot to thing about. So tomorrow I'm going shopping. Why not? it's what they want me to do. Oh, I forgot to tell you I "fixed" the camera by taking out the battery and the card and waving them around in the air and putting them back. So eventually we'll have some pictures, only lost a few and I'll go take some more. Your next installment will be about the submarine trip. I cannot do it justice. It was absolutely thrilling. But I'll try. *I deeply regret that I must inform you that the Graeme Hall Sanctuary was closed in late 2008. Local speculation is that Mr. Allard refused to grease all the required local palms and he is now focussing his ecological efforts in Canada. Very sad. |
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