Staring into trees

When the birds in the trees see my camera and fly away, there's always still a tree to look at. In Mazatlan, the coconut and date palms, the banana trees, the mangos and mameys were old friends, but there were so many more, new to me, out in plain sight lining and sometimes invading the streets.

Coconut palm, with coconuts ready for the picking.

Green dates on a baby date palm, barely 6 feet tall.

Sidewalk tree.

Another coconut palm, in a vacant lot.

I stopped at many vacant lots, hoping to see birds, occasionally chasing a butterfly, but I had to limit myself to skirting around the streetside edges; usually the vegetation was too dense to penetrate. And usually towering overhead. This one was typical. The vine, I think, is a Monstera variety, and the tree at lower right is probably a banana tree.

Mimosa?

I have Googled and browsed for hours; I can't identify these long seed pods.

The trees I found that almost, but not quite, matched these had similar pods and different leaves and leaf growth patterns. Others had knobby or ridged pods; these were smooth on all the trees I examined. The leaves are individual, oval-shaped, opposite, at the end of a forked terminal branch.

Small citrus, probably kumquats.

I haven't been able to identify yesterday's tree, where the boat-billed flycatcher has her nest, either. Dense leaf cover, pale yellow, upright flowers.

Any help with identification of any of these is greatly appreciated.

In the green spaces, open grass and trees, not quite parks but more wide walkways between streets, fruit lies on the ground, split open, a fresh buffet for birds and small animals. I was surprised not to see many insects, apart from the butterflies. Maybe they're all nocturnal, or at least hiding from the heat of midday.

The mangos are still small and green in April; once they ripen and fall, they will add their perfume to the entire area.

On our tropical shores

Found on the beach in our "banana belt":

Another nice, ripe coconut

With a surprised monkey face. "Where am I?"

We only wear heavy jackets and gloves to prevent sunburn. (Or frostbite, possibly.)

And now it's snowing again.

Mud shrimp, crab and coconut

I'm getting 'way behind on what I want to blog about; I still have critters left over from our vacation, birds from Reifel Island, beetles and mites and a sad slug. I'm going to have to double up, or resign myself to be blogging the summer months while the snow falls in January. (If it does.)

And today, to top things off, I'm just going to tie up a couple of loose ends from previous posts, which doesn't get me any further ahead. Ah, well ...

1. Nebalia pugettensis, the "Blue-eyed beach critter". A couple of weeks ago, I posted two photos of the live nebalia, almost invisible in the water. This Sunday, I brought home a small handful of sea lettuce and eelgrass washed up with the tide, as a treat for the hermits and crabs in my aquarium. When I washed it, as I always do, a couple of almost transparent animals floated to the top, dead. I scooped them out, and left them in alcohol to preserve them. Yesterday, I dried them out and took their photos. They were no longer transparent:

Nebalia pugettensis, the Hooded mud shrimp.

These are the strangest of all the shrimpy, crabby animals on our shores, I think. They look like they're put together out of spare parts.

The "hood", or carapace, is not fused to the body like a crab's is, but loosely attached with a muscle. It has a long, sharp spine at the top back. And that thing is tough! I accidentally touched it with a finger, and it jabbed in like a cactus spine, and stuck. Another, shorter spine aims forward from the hinged cap between the eyes. This is not a beast to be tangled with; imagine being a fish who grabs for a nice mouthful and gets those spines, front and rear!

And the tail looks like it belongs to another animal altogether.

If the spines on the carapace are strong, the tail has to be different; it finishes off with a soft, feathery plume, extremely fragile.

And this one's eyes are neither red nor blue.

The other animal turned out to be a small helmet crab moult:

Both critters were about 9 mm. long (nebalia) or wide (crab).

2. The coconut. I washed it and dried it thoroughly. Tonight, we cracked it open. We got about a cup of clear coconut liquid; the meat was white and solid. But some sea water had seeped in between the shell and the meat; on the outside, it was covered with green slime that washed off easily.

The juice smells good, if slightly alcoholic. It reminds me of a tepachería in Coyoacán, Mexico, a place where they used to sell tepache and other mildly alcoholic fruit drinks; even across the plaza, the fruity, sweet, nutty aroma competed with the scent of flowers and fresh bread.

My kitchen, however, smells like a coconut-oil soap factory.

Laurie says the birds will like the meat. I know the squirrels will. I'm wondering about the juice. If I put it out for them, will they get drunk on it?