Josh and I went back to our new favorite spot, the cedar swamp, with the kayaks this morning. We didn’t see any black-crowned night herons like the previous time…but saw tons of green herons.

We watched this great blue heron for a while in hopes of getting a picture of it with a fish…but no luck.

And how many people can get a picture of an osprey defecating in mid-air? My husband can…

Lastly, this pictures was taken back at our condo and is of a male gypsy moth. He’s a little dirty.

Someone contacted me this week through the website in order to get greenhead horse fly photos to publish in a magazine in Delaware. The ones I have on the website are not high enough resolution so I set out to the salt marsh last night and today in search of some new photos for this contact.

I forgot how alive the salt marsh makes me feel. Here are some photos from my time out there.

Some weevil love

A flower cerambycid (Strangalia spp.)

As far as the birds go, can’t go to the salt marsh without seeing the osprey. The babies are getting big though, don’t you think?

I’m not sure which bird this is, any ideas?

Now I am off to NY for several weeks for work…with camera in tow.

First of all, let me just say that I, hands down, heard the most annoying cell phone ring tone EVER while in Mexico. One of our drivers had a baby screaming, or crying, or maybe it was laughing (??) as his ring tone for his phone. Lets just say that man gets a lot of phone calls in a short period of time. One would hope that it is at least a recording of one of his own kids…

The ruins in Coba are set back in the jungle. The ruins date 600-900 AD and it is estimated to have had one of the largest populations of ancient Mayan cities (around 50,000 people). The grand pyramid (Nohoch Mul) at Coba is the only ruin that people are allowed to climb in the Yucatan and once at the top you get an amazing view over the jungle canopy. There are actually only a few ruins that have been excavated and uncovered at Coba, the rest (an estimated 6,000) are still buried under centuries of jungle overgrowth.

The tour guide mentioned Mel Gibson’s new movie, Acocalypto at one point. He claimed that the movie was actually fairly accurate to the Mayan Kingdom. He said that the only thing that was blatantly wrong was that at one point in the movie when the priest sacrifices one of the victims, the movie shows the priest being clean when in reality he would have been very bloody from the decapitation. Decapitation sacrifices were so central to the Mayan culture that there are skull carvings and sacrifice ritual carvings throughout the ruins.

I was actually surprised by the smell of the jungle. It wreaks. It smells like rotting…fruit, I guess. The amount of birds singing was overwhelming and equally frustrating because I could rarely spot them. I never realized how hard it would be to try to bird through thick jungle canopies. I probably only saw 10% of the different birds that I could hear singing in the canopy.

The picture below is of a weaver on his nest.

Equally disappointing was the lack of insect abundance that I could see. The only thing flying around was butterflies, which made the ruins seem somewhat magical. But other than that, I definitely missed the presence of flies (which are definitely abundant in North American forests during the day), beetles, parasitoids, and the like. I have a sneaking suspicion though that if I had returned to the jungle at night, it would be a completely different insect story being told. Most insects probably retreat during the day under the debris on the jungle floor avoiding the heat or are high up hiding in the canopy.

The lepidopteran below is mimicking a dead leaf as part of its natural defense against predation.

I’m not sure what species of caterpillars these are, but I have solicited the help of a friend who may know and will fill y’all in soon.

This last picture is of a termite nest up in the canopy.

Josh and I went horseback riding today…and the guides said it would be ‘though the jungles, mangroves, and out to the beach’. I don’t recall going through anything that jumped out as being a “jungle”, which made me come back to the hotel and look up the definition of a jungle. In my mind I picture thick vegetation and more rain forest-y type habitats. But according to Wikipedia, a jungle is “a dense forest in a hot climate”. Its also explained as such:

The word jungle originates from a Sanskrit word jangala, meaning “desert”. In many languages of the Indian subcontinent, including Indian English, it is generally used to refer to any wild, untended or uncultivated land, including forest, scrub, or desert landscapes.

A ‘desert’ is something I definitely felt on the ride. So that being the case, I definitely went through a hot climatic zone through some scrub forest. Once at the beach some people actually went swimming with their horses…not me though, gotta protect the camera.

Here are some selected photos from the day.

A tropical mockingbird

Some unidentified species of Ibis, the picture kind of sucks but give a girl some credit, I was trying to wrangle my horse with one hand while taking the photo with the other hand.

A close-up of a butterfly’s head.

I didn’t purposely put up a blurry photo of Japanese decor, there is a dragonfly in the right hand side of the photo.

Here is the same species of buprestid that I took a picture of the first day…this time in natural light.

A longhorn beetle

And finally, a leaf beetle (Chrysomelidae)…and as an added perk, it is demonstrating ‘reflex bleeding’ in its leg joints. The leaf beetle family uses this behavior as a defense mechanism.

Oh, and apparently the hotel staff do not have enough to do in a day because look at what they made us out of towels when they came to clean the room yesterday. Not gonna lie, it was kind of creepy.

Xcaret was an all day event but overall not too riveting. Josh and I may have been the only 2 people there who were not all that concerned with the staged sites and were more interested in seeing native insects and birds.

We saw several mariposas (which means butterflies in Spanish) and a longhorn beetle of some variety.

We also saw abejas nativas, which means native bees.

The bees are found in dried tree trunks throughout the jungles. These native bees cannot sting, which makes it a lot easier to collect honey than it is for us in the U.S. This bee was used by the Mayans as a basic ingredient in their meals and for indigenous medicine.

Another thing I noticed while out here is that the resort paints all their trees with this white sealant. I finally asked a staff member what that was all about and all they could tell me was that it was to protect the trees from a ‘bug’.

On to the birds…I think this first one is a golden-fronted woodpecker.

The next couple images are of a motmot.

An Orange Oriole.

A Great Kiskadee.

Xcaret has a sea turtle rearing facility…lots of babies and huge adults.

We also visited a Saint Francis of Assisi Chapel.

Xcaret also had a mushroon growing farm. I think the concept is a little bizzare…especially since I think mushrooms are gross. The mushrooms in the picture below are oyster mushrooms and are edible.

Lastly, here is a pretty waterfall we saw.

As it turns out, it is really hot and humid in Mexico. This being said, my hair is going to be in permanent frizz mode. My camera has been wigging out having to go from the air conditioned room to the hot/humid weather…it takes about 20min for the lenses to stop collecting condensation. And I just may be the only person you know that can go to Mexico white as a ghost and return from Mexico all the same.

Today the kind hotel staff booked several meetings with different people for us all day long in order to coordinate the activities for the rest of the week, so we haven’t been able to really leave the resort area. But we did manage to scope out the beach in front of our room.

But just within the resort area I did manage to find some friends.
Magnificent Frigatebird

Great-tailed Grackle

Osprey

Its definitely a little unique seeing Iguanas at the beach. And lastly, as we were walking back to our room after one of our meetings I found this buprestid beetle walking along the pathway.

Tomorrow we hit up Xcaret. I have a feeling it may be a little more touristy for my liking but I’ll let you know how it goes.