Babies Growing Rapidly; Garden Scenes

Gumbo's babies are now packed side-by-side in the bottom half of the nest. She's still feeding and sitting on them. However, I took no pictures of the nest, so instead I'm showing some garden scenes. Except for the above one (with red oleander and yellow elder), all were taken at the "Rockery", which is a small but steep limestone hill in the back garden (i.e. behind Calypso Pond). Because we have had good rain even though it's the dry season, there are masses of flowers everywhere in our 10 acre garden, of which the Rockery is a small part.

Yellow oleander, pink and red bougainvillea.

In addition here you see red peregrine.

Here one is looking down from halfway up the hill. The rockery is protected from salt winds by massive casuarina stands.

Here you see Aechmea blanchetiana (an orange-leaved bromeliad), as well as cape honeysuckle and yellow hibiscus.

Finally, from the top, there's a fine distant view of Diamond Cay. Today there was a north wind and waves are breaking over the island. The coconut palms are at Halcyon Bay (see blog post for jan 7), our favorite beach on the Island, a ten minute beach walk from Calypso beach.