A Menagerie

This week has brought buckets of rain, as well as a few new creatures to our menagerie. It rained most of the day yesterday, sheets sweeping in from the sea. Interestingly, we had no wind. We measured 1 3/4 inches in our rain gauge, but we set it out after much of the rain had already past.  Before this, it had rained every night in the wee hours of the morning and nearly every afternoon for a week. All this rain has created a pond in a grassy hollow across the street, between the road and the beach. At night, the honking croak of banded frogs mixes with the crash of the waves to lull us to sleep.

During a short lull in the rain yesterday afternoon, we rain across the street to the beach to see the waves up close. Just as we were about to go, I heard a rustling in the garage. Peering around the bicycles and under shelves, I noticed a bright flicker of color. It was a bird! We all had a close look, and tried to remember the pattern of colors for looking it up when we returned from the beach. I had a guess already, but I wanted to look in the bird book first.

 Over supper we had a discussion and identified the bird as a Blue-winged Pitta. He (or she - they can't be easily distinguished) stayed in our garage all night. This afternoon we were trying to decide if we should help him. Maybe get some worms and soil in a tub and place it near him. I wanted to catch some photos, and while I was out there, he finally decided he'd been bothered by humans enough. He hopped onto a shelf and flew out directly over my head into freedom.

The other addition to our menagerie is tiny and swims instead of flies. He is not as colorful as the pitta but should prove as interesting. We explored the temporary pond as part of science class today. We traversed the perimeter, noting a multitude of wildlife. Swimming caterpillars and crickets caught our attention since we didn't know they could swim. We spied myriads of tadpoles and water skippers. Bright red dragon flies dipped overhead. Ants scurried to move their eggs as the rising water encroached on their home. A small water monitor lizard quickly glided away from us.

We waded into the edge of the pond and studied the tadpoles more carefully. They would rise from the bottom, pop to the surface, then quickly dive back down. We later read that they get food such as algae and other plant matter from the surface and draw it back down to the bottom. Meriel tried to use a clean peanut butter jar to catch one but was unsuccessful. Then Eris took a turn. After a couple of jarfuls of water without tadpoles, she managed to scoop one up.

The pond water which we brought home for the tadpole contains many other creatures. I wish we had a microscope to look more carefully at the little swimming black dots. We have an unidentified black worm which twists around to swim from side to side. One little creature appears to be a damselfly nymph, but we are not certain yet. We hope to be able to observe our little tadpole turn into a froglet and continue visit the pond across the street to see what happens to the other tadpoles.