Meet Holga. She was found after she fell out of her nest right before I arrived here in Barbados. She's a green throated Carib hummingbird (thanks to Cameron Rutt for the ID), and she is the unofficial mascot for our team. Tropical birds are notoriously difficult to raise in captivity, and she's gone through a couple moments where she didn't look so great. I don't think she'll ever get to the point where she will be able to be released. She can't fly, and is a bit helpless when she falls of her perch. She does have an amazing tongue with which to get nectar and stuff.
We also had a strange visitor. This white and yellow pigeon-like bird started to come by the station. We had two people in doing research on malaria in birds in the Carri bean. Maria mentioned that the bird didn't look so great - it had parasites and seemed to be injured somehow. It was also hoarding all the bait in the traps. Two days later, we awoke to the bird lying on the walkway, ironically surrounded by flowers of the exact same colour. Down here, mother nature has her own way of disposing the deceased, so we let it take its' natural course. I was going to take a picture of it when it was alive, but I figured I'd do it another day.
Moral of the day: don't wait until tomorrow what you can do today!
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