Natural Selection

I walked up the beach to Rabil Lagoon in the morning. The Greenshank flock appeared to have increased to 20 birds. But when I scanned them in flight there appeared to be a Lesser Yellowlegs. Soon after they flew back down the lagoon in the opposite direction and there appeared to be a rather surprising five yellowlegs among the throng. When I picked them up on the deck this was confirmed, I’ve never seen so many anywhere so a good start to the day. They are in the picture above, second bird from the left is a Greenshank so hopefully even in this poor image the size difference should be clear.

On the Facebook group for the hotel a couple of videos of baby Hammerhead Sharks had been posted in recent weeks. It was still something of a shock when one was swimming in the surf a few feet away from me on the way back. I could probably have used my phone, but as my camera was out I used that and did get a result where you can just see the hammerhead shape at the right.

In the evening we went to look for turtles in the south of the island on an organised excursion. When I say evening, we left the hotel at 7 and were back some time just before one in the morning. A large chunk of this time was spent off roading out to the beach where the Loggerhead Turtles come ashore and lay their eggs.

When we arrived at the camp we were informed no turtles had been seen coming ashore, and as it was late in the season there were no guaranatees. Our luck was in though as whilst we waited a female did come ashore. Our group was carefully escorted along the beach to the area where the female had dug the nest cavity and was beginning to lay eggs into it. She is right of centre in the phone image below, flash photography is not allowed to avoid disturbing the animals.

And here are a couple of wayward youngsters who had been going in the wrong direction, shown to our group before being pointed back towards the sea.

A once in a lifetime experience.