Richard Bramble is a wildlife artist and ceramics designer whose name will be familiar to anyone who has visited the Delphi Club (look, there’s his signed bonefish plate by the main door of the Great Room; and look, more of his work in the gallery ‘Mall’…). Richard will also be well-known to the many who have bought, been given, or simply admired his elegant china pieces or his table-mats. His repertoire of designs is huge – there are fish, birds, animals plants, shells and a lot else besides
In the interests of research on your behalf, I recently met Richard in his rural Studio near Sherborne, Dorset (starting to sound uncomfortably like a Sunday Times article here…) He signed a large bonefish plate I had recently been given, showed me round, and regrettably completely failed to discourage me from investing in some of the desirable items so immediately to hand. Richard has been working on a number of designs based on his stay at Delphi and various trips he took from there. Gareth was apparently the source for some of his fish ‘models’ – pre-cooking, obviously. Without more ado, here are some images. Can I make it clear that not only am I not being paid for this flagrant puffery, but I also paid top dollar at Richard’s Studio. There’s no dodgy dealing in this blog, thank you very much…
…but I do quite see that it would look odd if I didn’t include Richard’s website: http://www.richardbramble.co.uk/
You will need: One truck with plenty of fuel (for the return journey); courage, patience and determination; picnic; bird book – borrow the HALLETT (KS copy) from Club library; camera / binoculars; willingness to cope with and explore derelict buildings; good shoes if you want to walk from the lighthouse; life insurance if you want to climb the uninvitingly hazardous lighthouse stairs
Map credit as elsewhere
Like marriage, this expedition is not by any to be undertaken lightly or ill- advisedly… Driving to the lighthouse at Hole-in-the-Wall involves a 15-mile (each way) return journey on a track south from the Highway. It starts promisingly but gradually turns nasty as the track degenerates. Rental cars are banned; Sandy will have strong views about using the Club car… Realistically, it can only be done in a truck. We took a truck… I don’t want to be unduly off-putting but we were still considering turning back at mile 14. Especially at mile 14. The view is as shown below for most of the way, the trees thinning out as one nears the coast.
An optimistically good stretch of track
During the journey, you pass through the heart of the National Park, breeding ground for the Abaco Parrots. Uniquely for this species, they nest on the ground in limestone holes, making them vulnerable to predators. Logging roads cross the track at regular intervals, and are a good place to pull in and look for the birds of the pine forest –from large red-tailed hawks through gray catbirds, loggerhead kingbirds and hairy woodpeckers down to small warblers. If you take a picnic with you, you’ll have an excellent opportunity to bird watch.
Loggerhead Kingbird in the National Park
This is what you will find when (if?) you reach the end of the road…
Park here. Mind the rocks. Far from advisable to continue further…
Hole-in-the-wall Lighthouse and outbuildings
The Entrance
No sign of renovation in Spring 2010
Land’s End – the southern tip of Great Abaco, and a good place for whale-watching
The internal staircase – access is easy, the door isn’t even kept shut let alone locked
THE UNEXPECTED REWARD for our endurance was to find, beside the path back to the car, a small group of Bahama Woodstars. This is the endemic species of hummingbird, and they are rare where there are the Cuban Emerald imports (at Delphi, for example). The ones we saw were all female – the males are iridescent green with a purple front. They were amazingly unafraid of us, flying back and forth around us, and quite happy to perch almost within arms’ reach and watch us watching them. They were completely enchanting, and cheered us up for the forthcoming journey back – fortunately it gets easier – and a picnic by a logging road once the track-terror had subsided.
STOP PRESS: Courtesy of batfa242 / Panoramio who braved the dodgy-looking spiral staircase in the lighthouse, here is a fantastic shot of ‘Land’s End’ taken across the lamp and through the glass. Many thanks for permission to use this – it makes me regret not having had the spirit of adventure to make the climb… Double-click for a very detailed view, including the in-built fresnel lens… (and see HOPE TOWN LIGHTHOUSE post)
POST SCRIPT: I am very grateful to Marinas.com for permission to download this wonderful aerial image of Hole-in-the-Wall lighthouse and its outbuildings, looking towards the southern tip of Abaco. They have generously enabled a completely cost and watermark-free download. I have added the © detail. Thanks, guys. 
Ricky is a well-known, infectiously enthusiastic, and compendiously knowledgeable Abaco nature guide (this guy gets way too much free publicity in this blog…). In this video he focusses his binoculars on piping plovers, a threatened species of tiny plover which annually makes a long migration to the Bahamas, including Abaco – and then heads all the way north again.
If this video doesn’t make you smile at some stage, I suspect a SOH bypass and / or your ‘anti-cute’ setting is jammed on. You’ll also see the differences between the piping plover and the more familiar Wilson’s plover.
PS Missed an obvious tongue-twister component out of the original title – now amended to tip a hat to Mine (and Thine) Host
RJ’s eco-tour is not just about parrots and other avians. He is also an expert in the plant and tree life, and a great deal else. Here are some of the flower / tree images from the day, to which I will (may?) put names in due course. But frankly the pictures are far more satisfying than the knowledge that something is or is not a variant of a Cuban Popcata Petal Tree. Or whatever. If you feel like it, fast forward to the end of this post for a blue hole, a butterfly and a team photo…
TIGER’S CLAW or INDIAN CORAL or SAMOAN SUNSHINE TREE
THATCH PALM Thrinax radiata
CORAL HIBISCUS Hibiscus schizopetalus
BOUGAINVILLEA Bougainvillea Spectabilis
SAPODILLA Manilkara zapota
Three images of a STAGHORN FERN Platycerium bifucatum, an epiphyte or ‘air plant’: one that grows upon another plant non-parasitically
Having left the parrots and the very lovely private garden we were shown round (where most of the plant shots were taken), Ricky took us to a blue hole nearby. The choice of 3 was narrowed down by the forest fires raging in the area (see FOREST FIRE post. The 2 largest were in a part of the pine forest that was busily engulfed in flame and dark smoke. So we went to the smallest.
However, what we could see was merely the entrance to a large and deep cave system in the limestone rock, the extent of which is still being explored (though not by me, thank heavens). The rock to the left was actually covered by 6 inches of water so clear that you could not see it – as one of our group discovered when he stepped onto the rock…
It was here that we saw ATALA HAIRSTREAK butterflies. This one is a different one from the one in the main BUTTERFLY post… but even their mothers can’t tell
ATALA HAIRSTREAK
And so to the final photo of the day, taken as we sustained ourselves… before having to leave rather sharpish when the wind changed direction and the smoke and fire decided we might be worth incinerating. Possibly Ricky, in the background on his cellphone, is calling for help…
NEW bits and pieces / site improvements (?) etc in mid-May Continue reading
During our parrot observations, we had plenty of opportunity to see other birdlife. We were especially fortunate to be able to visit a large and very beautiful private garden on the shoreline at Bahama Palm Shores which Ricky showed us round; and to meet the benevolent owner who permits this intrusion. We saw between us a wide variety of birds in or near the garden, of which these are a small sample – starting with my favourite bird of all
Western Spindalis / Stripe-headed Tanager
Western Spindalis / Stripe-headed Tanager
POINTING AND SHOOTING THE TEAM PHOTO
Black-faced Grassquit
Black-faced Grassquit (?juvenile)
Red-legged Thrush
West Indian Woodpecker
I’ve no idea. Small. Dark. Finchy. Grassquit? Hard to see. Any ideas? Sorry
Team Leader Ricky
Ricky ushers us into his spacious, comfortable truck: 6 denizens of Delphi eager for adventure. Most have already been on a morning trip to see the Abaco Barbs (wild horses) of which more in a separate post. rollingharbour suffers from an unfortunate but mild form of equine indifference disorder, so gave it a miss.
We set off north on the highway, checking cameras, binoculars and other essential expeditionary impedimenta. Meanwhile, Ricky reveals his knowledge, experience and huge enthusiasm… this extends way, way beyond mere birds to the trees and plants, to poisons and herbal remedies, to geology and speleology, to geography and history. Soon we reach our destination, confident in Ricky’s renowned ability to know where the parrots (and many more birds besides) are to be found. We don’t have to wait very long – about two minutes after we turn off the highway, in fact… The parrots favour the Gumbo Limbo Tree (Bursera simaruba) as pictured, which invariably and most conveniently grows next to the Poisonwood tree (Metopium Toxiferum) and is its antidote. That’s the first place to look.
ABACO PARROTS (Amazona leucocephala bahamensis) Here is a selection of our photos of these fantastic birds. I hadn’t expected to see so many, for so long, and at such close quarters. Their colouring was extraordinarily vivid, with a slash of blue on the wings. This was especially dramatic in flight. One parrot, shown below, had red frontal markings that extended almost to its tail. Ricky hadn’t seen one like it before.
CLICK on the images to enlarge them significantly [Mrs rollingharbour reports that this is as yet a theory and may not work in practice]
CAPTION COMPETITION (NON-COMPETITIVE): 3rd image down – what did parrot (a) say to parrot (b)?
To be continued… (I’m going to do this post piecemeal – other birds, flowers etc to follow)
I have returned from “The Other Delphi” to find that Peter Wesley Brown has provided 3 excellent images, now uploaded to the CONTRIBUTIONS / PHOTOGRAPHS page. Two are excellent pictures of a Gold Rim / Polydamas Swallowtail, dramatically… no, badly photographed by me for the BUTTERFLIES post and later identified by PM; the third shows that THE RELUCTANT WOODPECKER has finally made herself / himself at home in the nesting box…
Well, make that both ‘bad’ and ‘lucky’ (see previous post DOWNTIME). Against all reasonable expectations (mine, and everyone else’s I suspect), a rather handsome fresh hatchery salmon just light of 10lbs managed somehow to take a Willie Gunn at the lower end of the Turn Pool (for those that know the river) and make landfall about 15 minutes later. Continue reading
The hectic pace of this new enterprise will slow a bit for a week or so while I spend some time at The Other Delphi (no, not the one in Greece) where the annual release of 50,000 hatchery smolts into Finlough has just taken place. Continue reading
You will need: binoculars; camera; picnic lunch OR willingness to eat ‘local’ (see below); swimming kit – and a car, of course, e.g. the club Toyota
Map extract courtesy of ‘Abaco Life’ (the best, indeed the only, road map of the Island I have come across…)
SANDY POINT is a small settlement about 30 miles / 1/2 hr drive south west of Delphi. There’s only one choice of route: turn left at the end of the drive, and keep right on to the end of the road. Having commandeered the club car from Sandy, you drive due south until you get to a long right-hand bend. There is an important junction here: if you drive straight on, you enter the National Park nature reserve proper – breeding ground for the Abaco parrots – and are on the track to Hole in the Wall and its lighthouse…
Do not be tempted to try this – it is 15 miles each way on a deteriorating track, and the club car will soon be a wreck. Rental cars are forbidden. I will post separately about this adventure, which we have done in a truck. We may not repeat the experience.
Bird Alert 1 During the journey, look out for birds on the telegraph posts / wires. You may see American kestrels, turkey vultures and Bahama swallows.
Small birds will flick across the road, and you may find yourself readily placing them in the ‘unidentifiable’ category. If in doubt, best settle for ‘warbler’ and there’s a fair chance you will be right. Alongside the road, look out for groups of smooth-billed Anis aka cemetery birds. These largish black birds are noisy and sociable, nest communally and look after each other’s nestlings. Continue reading
ROLLING HARBOUR ABACO 
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