A lot of birds came to our deck – especially these lesser antillean bullfinches.

We gave them water to bathe in and fed them

bread

peanuts

On the left here you can see a little red bug, in fact these belong to the family Pyrrhocoridae (‘Red Bugs’) which is part of the order Hemiptera (also known as ‘true bugs’). This species, Dysdercus Suturellus, has the common name ‘Cotton Stainer’.

Grackles were also common (and noisy) visitors.

Another frequent visitor was a pair of gray kingbirds.

which stare at you wanting to be thrown food

Less frequent visitors included the St. Lucia Oriole

The crested hummingbird only seemed to visit this one kind of flower – of which there were two just outside the villa. It would chase off the Antillian mango hummingbird. Both kinds of hummingbirds also ate bugs off of the palm leaves.