Category Archives: From the Kids!

Frigate Bird Santuary – Barbuda

Identifying whether a frigate bird is baby, juvenile or adult is reasonably easy. A baby is white and fluffy, a juvenile is black with a white head, a male adult is black with a red chest and a female adult is black with a white chest. The wing span of an adult frigate is usually six to seven feet.
Attracting Females
To attract females, the males will puff up their red throats (they are called gular) with air by clicking their throats. They throw back their heads while doing it. It is extraordinary to watch them. I have noticed that they never fly with their chests fully inflated, the most they fly with is about a quarter of the full and it still looks like a struggle for them.
Growing up
Once hatched, it takes about five to six months for the babies to learn to fly and by then they will have developed a partially black body. Once two years old the frigate bird is an adult and they have now developed a red (or white) chest and full jet black body.
Migratory circle
Frigate birds from this sanctuary have flown as far north as Florida with tagged ones, and have gone as far south as Venezuela. These amazing birds have flown so far it is almost unbelievable.

 

And more from Eleanor

We have finally settled in on the boat and the weather is having a “cold spell”. A cold day in Florida is about 75⁰F or 23⁰C.

Our bed is the size of a small double bed but the bed covers most of the room and there isn’t any room to play on the floor, you have to play on the bed. There is a shop called Target and we got a lovely quilt from there, also we got some horse stickers ( they’re in one of the photos).

Outside Ft Lauderdale Stars Gym in full Florida gear - leotards and roller blades
Outside Ft Lauderdale Stars Gym in full Florida gear – leotards and roller blades

We have been to a gymnastics class called Fort Lauderdale Stars and you get to go in a bouncy castle at the end of class! It’s really fun. The toilets here are called restrooms, whenever Hannah says “Mummy, I need the loo”, everyone stares at her in a funny way.

We had an absolutely great time in Disneyworld and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  Some of our pictures are below to show what fun we had:

Hannah Has Her Say

The boat

It’s awesome on the boat because you see lizard’s everywhere. You can see a picture of my lizard box that I made out of a mummy’s shoe box.

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You can see the lizard H has drawn inside – it also has a big love heart with a speech bubble saying ‘I love lizards’. The lizards’ front door can be also be seen. My crazy Hannah!

Also you can see lots of things in the river. We have seen coconuts, small and big fish which we have been trying to catch and this morning we saw a big dead lizard floating around us. It’s tail and it’s arm had been chewed off. It was still more than 30cm long!

The pink lemonade here is amazing! It is really tasty. Daddy says we won’t be able to get much of this once we are in the Caribbean islands. Not fair!

We have been rowing around in the dinghy. I’m not very good yet so Daddy ties me onto the boat so I don’t float away.

It is really noisy here because they are working on the road and building a bigger bridge right beside where we live. There are two huge cranes and dropping big bits of metal on the building site. And we have not go any internet you have to go to the mall it’s dreadful!