Flamingos

The salt ponds near the entrance of Washington Park have all dried up. Many of the flamingos seem to have moved to the salt ponds by Slagbaai.


Look closely at the birds' necks. Some of them can twist themselves into pretzel shapes.


There were a lot of birds here so I snapped a pictures as quickly as I could as I panned across the scene, and assembled a wide screen view of the flamingo flock. It is on my club photo site. It is about 4300 x 680 pixels in size, so if you set your web browser to not resize the images, you can pan left to right across a full screen image. (assuming you have your screen set to 1024x768)

Dog Days

The puppy got neutered this morning. He bounced back great and was full of vim and vigor by the time I got home from work in the afternoon.

This seven and a half month old chow hound weighed in at 60.8 pounds at the vet this morning. As you can see in the photo, it's all muscle.

This pup makes no bones about the fact that mealtime is his favorite time, and he usually gets three squares a day. He was extra hungry tonight. He hadn't had anything to eat since 6 pm yesterday, 'cause of the surgery this am.

More Dog Days

We're not sure who catches the iguanas, but this guy always ends up with them. We call it his "teddy iguana" because he carries it around with him all day. Iguanas are very good at playing "possum" and run away when they get a chance.

Iggy here regained his freedom after being carted around for a few hours, when the puppy got too close and the big dog took off after him to teach him an Iguana etiquette lesson.

Bonaire Weather

The sky is pretty clear this morning, but there is no wind. I would have taken advantage of that fact to do a super fast bike ride this morning, except that my legs are still recovering from my bike ride after work yesterday.

If you want to see what the weather is like here on Bonaire, you can just take a look at the webcams. If you want to see what the weather will be like over the next couple days, you can watch the Tropical Update on the Weather Channel. It is on 10 minutes before the hour and we watch it faithfully this time of the year. You can see the bad weather marching towards us from Africa and get an idea of what to expect here.

We can also check the satellite images weather dot com. Here is one that shows Bonaire and the weather to the east that will be here in the next 24 hours.

This map shows all the way to Africa and gives us a long term view of what to expect. I really appreciate this, 'cause in my early years on Bonaire, the weather just happened and we didn't really know why.

Moon and Venus take 2

Since the sky has been cloudy, I've had to do my stargazing on my computer.

This is the same picture that I posted on Monday, showing the Moon and Venus. I adjusted it in Photoshop to bring out the sunrise colors and make Venus a little easier to see. You may still need to click on it to be able to spot Venus a little to the upper right of the cloud.

The actual sky looked more like the Monday picture, but I won't tell if you don't. :)

Morning Planets Update

Well, the sky was completely clouded over Tuesday morning, so I didn't get to see the moon and planets show that I had mentioned on Monday. So I had to be content with looking at a simulation on my computer of what I would have seen if the sky had been clear.

I've come to appreciate that the stars and planets appear different here in the Tropics than they do in N. America or Europe. Actually I'm so accustomed to the Bonaire sky that I was quite thrown last year when we a enjoyed a clear, dark night camping on friend's property in the Catskills. I could see a zillion stars, but I had quite a time figuring out how they all fit together.

Here is another example. When I looked online to see what I could expect to see Tuesday morning, the picture showed the planets lined up in a row and tilted over at an angle from left to right. Here on Bonaire, they are also in a nice line, but the line is almost vertical. It's a noticeable difference.

That's why computer sky simulations are so handy for someone like me, who doesn't live at the mid northern latitude that most published sky charts are created for.

Check out the two computer generated images posted here. The New York sky is on the left and the Bonaire sky is on the right. The planets and the Celestial Equator (the green dashed line at the lower right) look pretty vertical on Bonaire and tilted over quite a bit as seen in New York. The New York image is like the one I saw online.

You can click on the images to see them bigger if you need to. They should load quickly.

Moon and Venus

Here is what the Moon and Venus looked like just before 6 am. this morning, here on Bonaire.

The moon is pretty easy to see towards the top middle of the picture. You may need to click on the picture and make it bigger to be able to see Venus towards the lower right corner.

Tomorrow, the Moon should be lower.... more to the left of Venus.

Supposedly Mercury and Saturn can be seen to the lower left of Venus, but I didn't spot them with my naked eye this am. I'll check some of my other pictures and see if I can see anything.

Bonaire Buggies

As some of you may know, during our early years on Bonaire, we had a Meyers Manx dune buggy. It was a lot of fun and a good "explore the island" vehicle. Here is a picture of Richard helping maintain it back in the early 80's.

As we drove by the Napa store yesterday, we noticed that they were having a big street fair. What really caught my eye was the bright red drag buggy on display.

They also had a couple other race cars and fired them up around noon. Yes, they were loud. The one with the big block motor had the lumpiest idle I've ever heard and you could really smell the unburned fuel. There was a 69/70 bodied Camaro too, with a small block motor that sounded really crisp and eager to rev.

The drag buggy was great. It is powered by a Mazda 13B rotary (Wankel) engine, with a humongus Weber carb and it looked like nitrous injection too. It has run a 10.69 quarter mile. That has got to be a wild ride sitting in an open buggy with your various parts flapping in the breeze.

I've got pictures on my winkflash site. You can check them out if you are a buggy enthusiast. You'll have to scroll down the page past the Rincon photos and the aerial photos to see the car photos.

You can tell from the close ups that it is not a show car, but has lots of innovative tweaks to make it fast and safe on the track. We had a nice chat with the owner, Ronald Neslo, as well.

New Construction

A new road has been put in to the east of Kaya Gob. N. Debrot, the "Hotel Row" road, that runs from the traffic circle by TWR all the way to the WEB power plant. There are some evidences of development along that road, even though it hasn't been paved as of yet. It is a great dog walking road right now, actually.

There is also a new structure starting to appear across the street from the TWR parking lot, where the Arty's World sign used to be. Rumor has it that a McDonalds is going to appear on Bonaire soon, but I don't know if that is what is being built here or not.

The whole corner has been stripped bare of vegetation. Here is a view looking east towards the TWR activities building from the west side of the traffic circle. The new building is going up just to the left of what you can see here, which puts it more or less across the street from the Sand Dollar Grocery.

I've created a panorama from three images I took in the TWR parking lot. You can see it on my club photo site by following this link, I hope. There will be a link in the club photo page to let you see the full 1747x700 pixel panorama. If you have set your browser to NOT resize images, you'll be able to scroll across the image and see lots of detail.

Blast from the Past

Here is a picture of Sandra and me vacationing on Cape Cod 42 years ago.

Little did we know.......

Silver Anniversary

I'm still having problems posting pictures to the blog. So I'll just post the text and add pictures when I can.

Sandra and I celebrated our silver wedding anniversary on Tuesday. Here is a shot of our big day, 25 years ago.

Diggers

Sandra celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, on Tuesday, by hanging out with the dogs inside our house with the windows closed. This super gigundo jackhammer machine was directly in front of our house, and boy was it loud. We could feel the impact of the hammer through the floors too, even in the back room.

Most of the main roads are dug up right now. The word is that Telbo is preparing to lay fiber optic cable for a super broad-band service - internet, digital TV and the like. I don't know if we would spring for something like that at the house, but a fiber optic super fast connection would revolutionize downloading all our radio programs at the TWR office.

I celebrated by going to the dentist. whoo whoo! The pictures of that are too gruesome to post, heh-heh.

More Aerial Photos

Last week, I posted a couple pictures on my blog, of Sorobon as seen from the air.

Now I've put a whole bunch of photos of Bonaire landmarks on my club photo site.

When you follow the link to my club photo site, scroll past the Rincon Day pix to get to the new aerial photos. It was a pretty hazy day, but I still enjoy looking at familiar places from a new perspective. Ernie Franke (the pilot) and I are already dreaming about doing another flight around Bonaire on a really clear day, some day.

If you know Bonaire well, you can have some fun figuring out what is shown in each photo, based on the cryptic file names. I might eventually put real descriptions with each photo, but we'll see....

There are a few photos labeled "house" that are hi-resolution images, so you can see lots of detail if you tell your browser not to automatically resize the pictures to fit your screen. Most of the rest of the pictures are around 920x680 pixels. The pictures labeled "house", also show the Golden Reef Inn, since it abuts our back yard.

Birds of a Feather

I've been seeing the usual number of Bonarian Parakeets on my bike rides, but lately I've seen some Loras (the large parrots) too.

A couple of Loras have occasionally been hanging out in one of our trees at home in the late afternoon, but never when I've had a camera handy, grrrr.

I was in the back yard thursday evening shooting dog pix, and there were a couple Parakeets hanging around. So here is a Parakeet picture, while we wait for a Lora picture.

View from the Office update

Back on May 11, I noted that the rubble across the street from the TWR studios and offices, where the Bonaire Beach Hotel used to be, was being cleared away.

Work has continued steadily since then, and it is starting to look downright nice over there now.

Here is the view from our parking lot this morning.

Puppy Update

I had posted some dog pix back on May 25. You can click on "May 2006" in the archives list at the right side of this page to see the May stuff.

The puppy continues to eat like a pig and grow like a weed. Here is a current picture of our roaming home security team receiving their marching orders from Sandra.

Sorobon from the Air

Here are a couple pictures of where everyone windsurfs, on the Sorobon side of Lac Bay. We flew just outside of the reef and were looking back towards Bonaire.

The light green water is waist deep and is the area that beginning and intermediate windsurfers sail in. More advanced sailors can venture into the blue (deeper) water extending off the lower right corner of the picture, and sail all the way over to the Cai side, if they want to.


We have flown a bit more south now and you can see the south part of the reef that extends from Sorobon to Cai and creates Lac Bay.
This view shows how just close to sea level much of the southern part of Bonaire is.

You can just see some fingerlike formations of coral inside the reef towards the bottom right edge of the picture. This is an awesome snorkeling area if there aren't too many waves.


This view is just outside the south end of the reef. The fingerlike coral formations and more can be seen right in the middle of the picture, just to the right of the waves breaking on the main reef.
At the lower left of the picture is is an oblong formation under the water that we used to call "the trench", but is more commonly known these days at "white hole." It is a sink hole of sorts in the ocean floor, and has a sandy bottom, so it looks light in color with a dark rim around it. We often see tarpon and sometimes see a nurse shark in the trench, and always see turtles and rays out past the trench as the bottom slopes away to deeper water.


I was really pleased that we could see the trench from the air. Then I had the bright idea of seeing if I could find it on the Google Earth picture of Bonaire. See my post below about Google Earth. Sure enough, you can easily see the trench on Google Earth. Just search on
12.094129N 68.228076W

The windsurfing centers can be seen at 12.093088N 68.236209W

The beach, conch piles, and buildings at Cai are at: 12.103612N 68.222346W

Bonaire on Google Earth

Do you have Google Earth on your computer? I highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun to visit your favorite places online. A friend of mine recently mentioned that the Google Earth Map of Bonaire was upgraded.

I finally got around to looking at it today and yes indeedy, it is wonderful!

You can Google Earth search by latitude and longitude, among other things. (like zip code for people in the States)

Copy and paste these coordinates into Google Earth to see the TWR studio/office complex by the traffic circle. 12.167077N 68.284967W

Here is the location of the TWR transmitter site. You can see the transmitter hall and the shadows of the four towers that make up our MW antenna array.
12.106333N 68.284228W

Email me and I'll give you the coordinates of our house. Just don't want to publish that one on the big bad internet.

Hmmm.... there are some geocaches located on Bonaire. Plugging those coordinates into Google Earth would make finding them pretty easy I'd say. One still might need a GPS receiver to nail down the last few meters, but who knows.......

Hmmmm.... #2, I'll probably start carrying a GPS receiver on my bike rides again, so I can plot the track on the Google Earth maps.

More Wedding Photos posted

Richard and Nancy are back in New Jersey, following a fun honeymoon at Negril, Jamaica.

Sandra and I had great flights back to Bonaire a week ago. One of the flight attendants on the flight from Miami to Curacao grew up in the jungles of southern Venezuela. He and his family depended on the broadcasts of TWR - Bonaire for a taste of home, and he was quite excited to meet someone from the station.

We took the Divi Divi from Curacao to Bonaire. Divi Dive air is a small time operation, but they are very good at what they do. The plane seats 10, including the pilot, and it was packed full. We all had carry on stuff on our laps and under our feet and could hardly move. We flew along the east coast of Curacao before heading over to Bonaire. As we flew along, we had a great view of the south end of Curacao and also of the coast of Venezuela on the western horizon. I could see Venezuela out the right window, and the mountains of Washington park on Bonaire out the left window.

I've posted some more pictures from Rich and Nan's wedding rehearsal and wedding in my Club Photo albums. They may mostly be of interest to Richard and Nancy's family and friends, but you are welcome to check them out if you want to.

Richard and Nancy are Wed

Richard and Nancy's big day was yesterday. The wedding and reception were wonderful, and we think Richard and Nancy are wonderful too.

I have posted a few pictures of the wedding and reception in my Club Photo photo albums. I'll be posting more pictures over the next days and weeks, as I have time. We travel from NJ to PA tomorrow and return to Bonaire on Thursday.

Wedding Rehersal

We had Richard and Nancy's wedding rehersal Friday evening at 6 pm and then dinner at Pal's Cabin at 8.

I've posted some pictures on the Club Photo site. The pictures that follow Freddy Flamingo are of Richard and Nancy.

The first 15 pictures on the club photo page are from Jamie and Andrew's wedding a couple weeks ago. By the way, they honeymooned on Bonaire at the Golden Reef Inn (right on the other side of the wall from our backyard!) and had a super wonderful time.

Wedding Tomorrow

Richard and Nancy are getting married tomorrow, whoo whoo.

Here is a picture of them taken on July 2, in Ocean Grove, NJ, where they were attending cousin Jamie Gillan's wedding.


We had a mini bachlor party with Richard thursday night. We all went to a great Thai restaurant in Montclair. Pictured from left to right are me, Jim Ruskowski, best man Ben Sykora, Nancy's brother Steve, Richard, and Nancy's father, Pastor Ed Banghart.

A Life Unshackled

Trans World Radio has a sizable radio audience as far north as Cuba and the Bahamas, and in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia, to the south. But our programs have an impact right here in our own "backyard" as well. We have some faithful listeners in prison on Aruba for example.

This past Friday, a man stopped by looking for one of our local workers, who happened to be away on vacation at the time. He shared an interesting testimony with us. This guy, who grew up on Curacao, had a pretty serious problem with alcohol abuse as a young man. It turns out that each night as he lay in his room in a more or less drunken stupor, he would listen to TWR on his radio, especially the radio drama Unshackled, produced by the Pacific Garden Mission, in Chicago.

He told us that after a couple years of listening nightly to the accounts of radically transformed lives, it dawned on him that God could probably do the same thing for him as well. He placed his trust in Jesus Christ as his savior and Lord. Well, its years later and I'm happy to report that he too, has been released from his bondage to alcohol, and the downward spiral of his life had been dramatically reversed.

I guess it is only fitting that the Bible verse that we've all been memorizing each week during our Sunday church services this month is 2 Corinthians 5:17,
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come."

Comings and Goings

We've had a lot of TWR related airport activity lately here on Bonaire. Our director, Joe Barker just returned from a business trip on Saturday.

On Sunday evening, we greated some new members of our Bonaire team. Greta Craggs, pictured on the left is a retired hospital administrator from Canada, who has come to Bonaire quite a number of times to volunteer her services to TWR. On this trip, she'll be filling in for us while we are in the States for our son, Richard's, wedding.

Ernie and Marie Franke, pictured in the center and on the right, have come as long term additions to our staff here. The Frankes served with Trans World Radio in Sri Lanka many years ago, and more recently with HCJB in Equador and Australia.

Christophe Lusse and family are here visiting Udo and Berni for the summer. It looks like they are having a great time.

We saw Bob Flaming Jr. yesterday too. He is on the island for a week and a half to help with the APEM (CEF) summer kid's camp program that will be starting next week.

Milky Way Madness

We were blessed with clear, dark skies this past Friday night and especially Saturday night. I went to a spot just west of Kunuku Rooi Lamunchi in Friday and a spot just north west of Sorobon on Saturday night and took a bunch of pictures. I also just leaned back and soaked up the naked eye beauty of the southern Milky Way. Saturday was as good as it gets here on Bonaire, which is still pretty good.

Next month, I'm planning to shoot some wide angle views of the Milky Way with a 28mm lens, assuming we get any clear dark nights. This month I shot more "zoomed in" views with a 100mm lens.

I also took some pictures of objects that weren't near the Milky Way. I'll have to post one of them soon, so you can see how relatively few stars there are away from the Milky Way, even using the same exposure and settings.

The picture below (which you can click on) is a view a little north of the Sagitarius teapot asterism. A little above the middle of the picture, the two pinkish blobs are M16 towards the left and M17 to the right. There are lots of other named star clusters visible here too. The big whitish star cloud towards the top right in this picture will be towards the lower left part of the next picture, which is looking a little more south and west than this one.


In the picture below, at the lower left you can still see M17, the Omega Nebula, and the whitish star cloud from the previous picture. Plus, a little right of center, you can see two more pinkish blobs. M6, the Trifid nebula, is on the left. and M7. the Lagoon nebula on the right. I also shot a closeup of these two objects, but it is a little blurry. I'll try again next month. At the lower right of this picture, you can see part of the Sagitarius star clouds, the brightest section of the Milky Way. The next picture is somewhat east or up from the right part of this picture.


At the lower left corner of the picture below is part of the Sagitarius star clouds seen in the previous picture. Also, halfway up left edge of this picture you can still see the Lagoon Nebula, I think. I took this picture to show that big dark nebula. It was quite noticeable with the naked eye last night. (as was the coal sack by the Southern Cross)
At the middle of the bottom edge of this picture, I think you can see part of the open cluster M6. I have a nice picture of M6 and M7 that I'll post later. (which means that it will eventually be found higher up on my blog page than this posting - confusing I know)

Southern Cross II

The sky was pretty clear Wednesday evening so I zoomed out to the Sorobon road to try out a new star gazing spot. I got all set up and as my first five minute exposure was ending, the clouds came rolling in. I hung around for a good while, to no avail.

There will be a few more evenings of dark skies before the moon makes its monthly appearance, so I'm ever hopeful. I happened to look out the window at 5:30 this morning and saw nice pink accents in the still dark sky, and a thin crescent moon and Venus shining brightly. I thought of waking up Sandra to see it and then thought better of that. :)

I've posted my Wednesday night picture of the Southern Cross. I didn't process it as much as the picture I posted the other day, so it looks more realistic to me. The dark area to the lower left of the cross is called the Coal Sack dark nebula. It consists of interstellar dust type stuff that hides the stars behind it.

Southern Cross

I went out to a dark part of Bonaire Friday evening to get a better picture of the beehive cluster with Saturn and Mars. I'll probably do my next beehive post soon. We got clouded out last nigh, when Saturn and Mars were closest together. arrrrrrg!

I also shot a few images of the Southern Cross on Friday. The one posted here is a combination of three exposures at ranging from 1'49" to 2'49", with a 100mm lens at f2.8 and ISO 400. I know I've seen darker, clearer nights here on Bonaire, and I'm still learning about the camera, so I'll revisit the Southern Cross when I get chance.

I'm also eagerly anticipating seeing what sort of images I can get of the summer milky way through Scorpius, Sagitarius, and Scutum in a month or two.

Click on the picture to see a larger but hopefully not too large version

Astronomy Time

Well, the full moon has come and gone, so the next two weeks or so will be great for enjoying the starry skies of Bonaire. You don't even need a telescope or binoculars to see some really great stuff this month. The Southern Cross is high in the south as soon as it is dark, AND Mercury, Saturn, and Mars are putting on a great show in the west.

You won't be able to see the Southern Cross if you live up north, of course, but you can see the Mercury, Mars and Saturn show pretty much anywhere that has an unobstructed view of the western horizon.

Mercury and the stars Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins, make a bright triangle low in the west northwest as soon as it gets dark. They were very easy to see here on Bonaire, even though it has been pretty hazy lately.

Saturn and Mars are to the upper left of this Mercury, Castor and Pollux triangle. Saturn has been dancing around the Beehive Cluster since last year. (see my posts of Dec. 28 and March 15) Now Mars has joined in the fun. These two planets will be very close together this Saturday evening, June 17. You can watch their positions change each night between now and then, and even into next week.


The first picture below is a 15 second exposure I shot last night. If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you'll see that the stars "moved" during the short time that the shutter was open. That's why a telescope needs a motor drive to be able to track the stars as the earth rotates.

Saturn is the bright "star" near the top left corner of the "square". Mars is located just to the right of the middle of the square. Because the Beehive is in the west now, it looks upside down and backwards, compared to the pictures I posted back on March 15, when it was in the east.


Here is a computer simulation of what I saw Wed. evening. It shows where the planets are in relation to each other.


Here is what it will look like on Saturday evening. Notice how Saturn and Mars have moved closer together. You can click on these pictures to see them better. They aren't too big, so they should load pretty quickly for you.

Coral Rocks of Bonaire

Back on June 3, I posted some pictures of the cool rocks we have found on our hill climbing expeditions here on Bonaire. Those rocks are special because most of the rest of Bonaire is made up of fossilized coral reefs.

The weathered grey hills and eroded ground here on Bonaire look like lava rock to me (having never seen real lava, of course) but it's calcium, as you can see when you break off a piece and see its white underbelly.

Here is a shot of Boka Kokalishi, in Washington Park, showing lots of grey rock, both in the foreground and in the background.


Here is a closer look at one of the rock outcrops in the first photo, showing that it is really a chunk of coral reef.


A close up shot, showing some of the cool detail you can see in the coral rocks of Bonaire.

Big Bird

I've been climbing the various tall hills in Washington Park on Saturday mornings. The erosion and breakup of the different types of rock makes them very interesting to observe and somewhat treacherous to climb. Many of the hills have bare rock pillars projecting from their tops.

I often see evidence that hawk type birds hang out on these natural perches. Occasionally I have seen birds up there too. This past week I encountered a self confident one that let me take his picture.

I've carried a 100mm lens the last few weeks, because it is pretty compact, but I'm going to go back to taking a big heavy zoom lens. The 100mm is proving to be too long for panoramas, yet too short to get great bird shots when the occasion presents itself.

This photo is a full scale crop of the original frame. This bird looks similar to the Warawara in my bird book, but not exactly the same, so I'm not sure what it is.

Kibrahacha Trees, take 3

We had a little rain last week. It was enough to fill up our septic tank again... aren't you glad I shared that?

It was also enough to induce the Kibrahacha trees around Rincon to pop. This is the third batch of Kibrahacha trees to do their thing this year. Some years they all do it at once, but I like it better this way.

A bunch of trees in Washington Park were also flowering. I think this is the first time I've ever seen the Kibrahacha trees in the park. I took a panoramic picture from the top of Seru Largu, the hill I climbed this week. I've been riding in the park and climbing one hill each Saturday, but haven't been posting pictures because it is too hazy this time of year. There are a couple hills I'll revisit some day when we have super clear skies.

I put the Washington Park Kibrahacha trees on my club photo site with a photo I called, "kibrahachapano." The thumbnail is at the lower right corner of the web page, at least until I post more pictures. The cool hills to the west of Yuwa pass are at the right side of the picture. You can see the roller coaster cement hill section of the main park road, towards the middle left of the picture, and Rincon off in the haze towards the top of the picture.

Bill Early Back on the Air

Long time listeners to Trans World Radio - Bonaire still ask us about some of the people that they used to hear on the air. Radio is a form of mass media from our transmitting side, but when seen from the receiving side, individual listeners form very strong bonds with the radio hosts that they listen to night after night.

After an absence of many years, Bill Early is back on the air, seven nights a week, hosting our evening English language programming from 10pm to Midnight. A number of listeners have already contacted us telling us how glad they are to hear Bill again.

Although our listeners assume that Bill is living on Bonaire again, he's actually still in Pennsylvania, representing TWR regionally, and also doing creative scriptwriting work for our worldwide ministry.

Here's how it works. I make notes about each program, when I listen to it a week or more before it is scheduled to be on the air. Those notes get emailed to Bill, he records his chatty voice bits about the programs, I download them from TWR's ftp site, and our handy dandy automation system puts it all together on the air. Well, that's the gist of it anyway.

Bill, together with Joanna Bernhart, who also used to live here on Bonaire, is also corresponding with and counseling our listeners as they email us or write to us in response to our programs. So international radio can be a pretty personal means of communication in some cases.

Real Rocks of Bonaire

We have a spineless cactus in our planter by the driveway. It has these nice flowers from time to time.


If I ever get tired of climbing the various hills on Bonaire to check out the view and to take pictures, I'll still want to do it to see the cool rocks that are out there. Most of Bonaire is coral, but these hills are often made up of "real" rock.


Some of the rocks show banding like this one. They often split along these layers. I have a bunch more pictures of cool rocks from Bonaire on my club photo site, if you would like to check them out.

Loras

I've seen a bunch of Loras on my bike rides during the last couple days. There have been some around the house too. Loras are much bigger than the Prikichis that we usually see. They are more colorful too.


I'll be on the lookout and try to capture one showing its cool colors. I'll probably put the big zoom lens back on the camera too. This one was aware of my presence, but let me get pretty close with an 100mm prime, and then I cropped the image like crazy. I wish flamingos were this trusting!