Morning Chorus...and DIVING

Today marks our first full day of adventure in Tobago. We did much more than sit on planes! We sat on boats! So my dear brother and I crashed pretty early yesterday because we were whipped from all the travel. I woke up somewhere around 5:30 am and was able to hear the dawn chorus starting. This is a birding term for all the birds getting up in the morning and making a shitton of noise.

5:58 AM, totally worth it

Being the curious lad I am, I got up to investigate who was around. Our main culprit was the bananaquit. No I did not make up that word. They're a tiny honey/fruit eating bird with no shame or fear of humans. They are colorful and very loud

What are you doing Bananaquit? That's a humming bird feeder! You're not even using it correctly!

So I saw plenty of those and much fun was had by me while wandering around. I wont list all the birds I found because most of you are relatively sane and don't want to hear about them. I also found a mammal (other than stray cats and dogs) an agouti! it's a nut/fruit eating South American rodent. I was excited about it ok. Jeeze, stop being so judgmental  Eventually I got my brother wake up (14 minutes before we needed to get to the dive shop), and we went to the dive shop. Then we went diving. Jonah nearly hit me I so was vocally excited. He found me tiresome...

Diving is the best. it is so much fun. we saw tons of fish. damselfish, angelfish, parrotfish, wrasse, triggerfish, a scorpionfish, and that was the first, weaker dive. The second one was even more exciting. We also had company in the form of four very new divers...they were not great with the not crashing into people thing, but one found a green moray so i forgive him. We persevered nonetheless and it was a great dive. We also saw giant spiny lobsters, a massive turtle with exactly 13 inner plates (if you didn't read the Australia blog, i mentioned all turtles and tortoises have 13 inner plates). I also thought I saw an octopus...but realized that either it was an amputated and aware tentacle, or it was a worm. It was a bearded fireworm. For those wondering, it looks like an octopus tentacle. Later on we actually did see an octopus. It was amazingly camouflaged, but once you saw it, it became clear. Still it attempted to maintain the facade of being invisible. It kept opening an eye to check on us. I imagined it's inner monologue going something like "they can't see me, no they cannont. now piss off....are they still there...yes. DAMN close eye fast...but they can't see me..." for about two minutes. Great start to the day, and got right back into diving, not too rusty. the afternoon adventures forthcoming with more pictures and maybe a video