The Purple Penguin

Today was a quiet day – just hung out at the centre. Up at our usual time (6am) and off to the veranda to see what was on the feeders and have a coffee before breakfast. Then back to the veranda for more wildlife pestering (Joe has been harassing them to get their photos). At 9 we joined the group that was here for a visit of the coffee processing room. The Centre grow the coffee that is served here – so grow, harvest, dry, roast, grind, and make. The processing room is a small room where they have a gas burner and a large pan that they roast the beans in. One person operation and interesting to get to see.

We mainly hung out on the veranda today looking at things. We did take a short walk after lunch. We can hear the bellbirds all the time so we headed out to look for them along Bellbird trail. Found out later you can’t see bellbirds on that trail and we didn’t. We did see white bearded manakins and that was all. However, over the past few days we have seen: Carib grackle, purple honeycreeper, blue-crowned mot mot, channel billed toucan, palm tanager, white-tail trogon, scarlet ibis, egret (little, great, snowy), golden-olive woodpecker, barred & great antshrike, piratic flycatcher, golden-headed manakin, tropical mockingbird, thrush (?), yellow oriole, blue-grey tanager, silver-beaked tanager, green honeycreeper, red-legged honeycreeper, violaceous euphonia, turquoise tanager, among others that I can’t remember. We have also seen lizards, toads, boas, caimans, agouti, among others that I can’t remember!

Tomorrow we are off to the oilbird caves to see oilbirds. Maybe we’ll also go along the Discovery trail and see some bellbirds! Then tomorrow afternoon/night we’re off to see if we can spot a leatherback turtle come in to lay her eggs.

Joe has been taking hummingbird photos all day. Poor hummingbirds. Though they do seem to be coming up and posing for him!