Puerto Rico - Tuesday 13th September

Each year I attend a number of conferences in the UK and the USA. Every now and then one of the conferences is somewhere I've not been to before, so, where possible I try and schedule some extra time. The last conference was just one of these and held in fact in Puerto Rico. Planning ahead, Helen and I decided she should fly out to join me at the end of the conference and we'd take a long weekend together on Puerto Rico. I did the usual research into birding locations, bought a field guide, etc., and so was rather excited when I set off.

I arrived late on the Monday evening, picked-up the hire car, drove to the hotel in the rain, and got straight to bed having completed the 22 hour day.

Tuesday morning dawned slowly as the sky was blanketed in thick cloud and it was raining heavily. Throughout Tuesday when working in my hotel room or at the conference hotel it kept raining, though it did lighten from time to time.

I did manage to spot a number of birds from my hotel room balcony though, including the Zenaida Dove:





A bedraggled Red-legged Thrush:



And a Pearly-eyed Thrasher:

The tropical trees were laden with fruit:

At one point, during my once-a-day call with Helen, a Magnificent Frigatebird flew into view, I don't think Helen minded the pause in conversation while I scrambled to take a few pictures:

It flew really quite close to the hotel:

At the conference hotel a Green Heron was looking to dine on the small Koi carp in the ponds:

The conference hotel (Hilton Caribe) has a number of captive birds to try and create a 'natural' feel. As well as the (Indian) Peacocks, below, they also had (Eurasian) Mute and (Australian) Black Swans and (Chinese) Swan Geese captives:

In a brief respite from the rain I took a couple of snaps of an old fort with modern San Juan in the background:

Having set-up the stand it was time for an early night ahead of the main conference sessions over the following days.