Species

More species that I've named here:

Goddamned carrion flies. Can't keep them off of any broken skin. Tiny little bastards resembling fruit flies. I don't think they do anything, but it looks really nasty. Flies clustering at your wounds. I'm almost fully healed up, but there's one particularly deep gouge that's hanging around. And bacteria breed brilliantly in the tropics. Love those antibiotics. Hippies are always warning you against them, saying they screw up your system. Possible, but on balance? How much harm do they really do?

Brown Fish Eagle: Looks just like a Bald Eagle, frequents the river delta between Ranong, Thailand and Kawthaung, Myanmar, cruising over the rubber-stamp visa charade offices in the river.

Waistcoat Heron: similar shape to a Black-Crowned Night Heron from home, but it's body is brown on the back and body, white everywhere else. Looks like they're wearing a tweed vest.

Black-winged Heron: looks just like a Snowy Egret or Cattle Egret in non-breeding plumage(all-white small heron), but it has all-black primaries on it's wings, making for a striking imprint.

Screamer Beetle: About an inch long, but you never see them. Just the casting from a molt, stuck to a treetrunk, as if they're so loud they jumped out of their skins. You hear them ringing through the forest, a high-pitched electronic sounding whine, much louder and higher than that of a Cicada.

I think I mentioned the Walking Myna and the Talking Myna last time I posted on this topic, way back when. The walkers fill the same niche as Robins, also being about the same time. The talkers are all-black with a yellow wattle, and you've prehaps seen these in pet stores.

White-fronted tern: these resemble Forster's Terns in that they have a white patch at the very front of their black cap, but they're a bit smaller. Close to the coast they follow your boat and relentlessly plunge into your wake. Odd thing about them is sometimes when they catch something, they streak away immediately, as if taking the food somewhere else, even though I don't think it's nesting season.

Coconut Ape: They don't behave like this in the wild I don't think, but you see these on the end of a long leash scurrying up a coconut palm to knock them down for their owner, or sometimes you see them perched in the basket of a motorbike as it cruises past you. That I like. Sometimes you see little fluffy house dogs in the same position.

Luminescent Scorpion: At a party, it is a really bizarre sight. Scorpions invisible in the dark, but fluorescent under blacklight.

Ghost Crab: about two inches across, completely sand-colored. Recognizable especially by their sharp turreted eyes which stick up about an inch above the body of the crab. They dig deep burrows in the sand and sometimes jsut stick their turrets up above the surface to keep an eye out.

Blackrock crabs: Only visible when they leap off of the rocks into the ocean at your approach. Very well camouflaged for algae-covered rocks.

Reticulated Boxfish: They're shaped like a wedge you'd use to split logs, with an almost completely squared-off head. Patterned in black and beige almost like a python. About nine inches long.

Blue Dart: a tiny minnow-sized fish, but such a shimmering bright shade of iridescent blue that they're quite visible even when the water's cloudy.

Cleaner Minnow: Maybe more than one species. They go for scabs and soft parts of your body, nibbling in a way that's sometimes quite cheeky.

Bearded Kingfisher: This one's lovely. They've got a russet beard that extends down their chest under their heavy spearfishing bill,and when they fly or show you their back you see the brilliant iridescent blue wings and back. Such a bright shiny blue.

Piebald Osprey: They're much like the ospreys we've got in the states, same behavior, crook-armed dihedral flight silhouette, ragged fingertips, but they're much patchier in their mix of brown and white, notably with a white spot at the base of their tail.