A First Visit

Tracy

We have had a great week, despite the big earthquake at least two smaller quakes and many aftershocks, up to 300 of them, I've read. Thankfully, we haven't felt most of those, but some of them have been strong enough to detect. Here on the island, life is back to normal for most of us. Dave and Tracy arrived the morning of the big quake and it's been non-stop fun ever since - too much fun to allow time to blog. So I'll try to catch you up on the happenings of the week and share some of the photos I took of our adventures.

The baby hummingbirds have both left the nest this week. Dave and Tracy (who is a scientist) were thrilled to be able to watch them learn to fly. Dave is an avid photographer and took many, many photos of the hummers. Thanks to my pal, Debi, Dave learned a few tricks about photographing hummers and took some outstanding shots. I think he'll share those with us when he returns home. We were hoping the babies would return to the nest a few times before flying off on their own, but they have not. The first born, Chrissy, flew solo early Tuesday morning, and we haven't seen her since. She looked very strong and confident. The second one, Caribbean, was definitely weaker and needed lots of coaxing and poking by her mom before she finally made that first flight late Wednesday afternoon. She flew up onto our roof and mom had to come encourage her several times before she was brave enough to soar away. We haven't seen her again either. Debi gave me a hummingbird feeder and said the babies might very well return with this enticement, so I've hung it up. The mama, Esmerelda, has been back to check the nest several times a day, so perhaps she expected them to return as well.

I took several short videos of the babies stretching and testing their wings, but so far have not had any luck uploading any to my blog. If any of you have suggestions, I'm all ears.

We also celebrated our 37th anniversary this week and Dave and Tracy's 11th. More on that later. We took the kids to the airport this morning and sadly said goodbye, reluctant to see them go. Now we're really empty nesters again.

Ok, Tracy and Dave looked relaxed....but Don....?

Dave is getting it - siesta time.

A visit to the east end of the island. Tracy liked this a lot.

A visit to the Garifuna cultural center in Punta Gorda. I took some fun video of the dancers reinacting some of their history.

We traveled to Paya Bay near the east end of the island. Beautiful spot, nice lunch, many photos shot.

It was cooler and clearer on the east end. We've been hot and hazy for days. Dave did not get any good sunset photos this week. But Paya Bay and other excursions made up for that, I think.