Ever wondered what lives in an urban backyard in a tropical country?  Wonder no more…I finally sat myself down last week and identified our backyard birds here.  We have a wide variety on any day but here are the most common visitors:

Guira Cuckoo

White woodpecker

Sayaca Tanager

Rufous Hornero

Saffron Finch (Male)

Smooth-billed Ani

Southern House Wren

One I’m missing on this list is a dove species that I haven’t identified yet, turns out there are a lot of very-similar dove species in South America.  We also have a ton of house sparrows and pigeons, but then who doesn’t?

On exciting days we have the occasional parrot visitor.  Here are some white-eyed parakeets that came by the Institute one morning

I have also seen Quaker parakeets in the Toborochi trees at the Kinder.

As far as non-avians we have superfluous geckos who run all over the walls eating bugs.  We also have ameiva lizards who run around in the gardens and grassy areas.  Unfortunately our cat population keeps the lizards down, meaning less bugs get eaten.  Here’s Guida vs. Ameiva.  I believe Guida won.

In the insect department we are back into millipede season now, they’re everywhere!  We also have superfluous centipedes, beetles, wasps and so many more things I could never name.  We also have the occasional scorpion or tarantula visitor.  The butterflies are just amazing here with common visitors being the blue morpho and this callicore sorana

We also have some HUGE moths.

Here’s a cool garden spider that had babies in our hedge:

And finally as far as plants, we have abundant fruit trees and palm trees.  The coconut tree right outside our house finally came through with some coconuts this year.  Here it is flowering and then later with coconuts.

Mango season is right around the corner and it looks like we’ll have a good crop this year.  Starfruit season has already passed, it was June-August.  But the trees are already flowering again, getting ready for the next crop!  They have a really pretty flower

and I got into quite a kick of making homemade starfruit juice this past year.

And that’s our backyard!  Thanks for visiting!