Guadeloupe - brief summary

I may well come back to this topic, I took so many shots whilst there that I couldn't possibly post them on a single or even multiple blogs, so I'll summarise the trip and add a few of the photos.
From the moment we stepped out of the airport I could see this was going to be a sort of birding heaven for me, there were humming birds flitting from bush to bush as we walked to the hire car office. The shots below were taken much later on in the trip, when I'd got the hang of things a bit more.

Above and below - Antillean crested hummingbird

By waiting with the camera pointing at the flower it was possible to catch the birds coming in to feed, but there were nearly as many frames with no bird in as there were with the bird.

Green throated carib

When the sun caught the throat of the bird above there would be an iridescent flash of green, difficult to catch but I did mange on a few shots.

There were plenty of opportunities to find and photograph new species, I think I photographed about 70 species in Guadeloupe, a few of those were record shots and although I practically never went out without my camera it was after all a family holiday so I took my opportunities when I could. If you went on a dedicated birding trip you could see a whole lot more.

One of the more common species around the hotels and beaches were the Zanaida dove, a very elegant bird with a pinkish purple iridescent patch on its neck. With this and nearly all the birds I photographed, I took an awful lot of shots to get a few decent ones, but that after all is the beauty of digital photography, it gives you the freedom to do that at no extra expense.

Zanaida dove

One thing that I wasn't expecting was the variety of waders that I saw, there were a couple of shallow ponds - former salt pans I think - on the island of Desirade, another in the Guadeloupe group. These ponds were amazing in the range of birds I saw there, I was drawn back like a magnet at every opportunity, and each time revealed something different, I won't list them all but to give an idea - Lesser and Greater yellowlegs, Stilt sandpiper, Wilsons snipe, Least sandpiper, Killdeer, Willet, Pectoral sandpiper, Sora, Black-necked stilt, Long/short billed dowitcher and belted kingfisher to name some. I made a lot of mistakes at these ponds, so many poor shots, but thankfully, because of the number of shots I took I got reasonable photos of most of the species I saw. I'd love to go back again knowing what I do now having had over a year with the camera.

Least sandpiper - as its name suggests, it is a tiny little wader and this one was very confiding.

Brown trembler - again, as its name suggests, it is brown and it trembles !

We had a month in Guadeloupe, booking travel, accommodation and hire car through the internet. The cost of the flights didn't change much however long you stayed and we got a good deal on the self catering apartment and hire car, so the cost of staying 1 month compared to two weeks was a long way off double. Gwada, as it is often called, is a French Department, uses the Euro, they speak French and Creole. The supermarkets were full of produce you'd recognise if you've ever shopped in France and on Thursday November 20th they'd even got supplies of Beaujolais Nouveau! I would go again at the drop of a hat.