Three cacti species, which can grow up to 10 m, dominate the arid landscape of the ABC islands. More information. Their fruits and flowers provide critical food resources for a variety of the islands’ bats, birds and reptile, like these whiptail lizards.
Category Archives: Bonaire Wildlife
Mangrove Swamp Kayaking
Kayaking in one of the largest protected mangrove swamps in the south of Bonaire and snorkelling through channels. We saw upside down Jellyfish (Quallen), attached to the bottom, and a lot of fish. Mangroves are breeding places for fish, that are well protected from predators (Verfolgern) here.
Parakeets (Papageien)
Green birds with yellow masks on their head fly with loud screams from one tree to another. The Caribbean brown throated parakeet is searching for fruit. It is a own subspecies of Bonaire.
Fresh Water Well
As Bonaire is very dry, the very few fresh water wells had been very important for inhabitands in former time. The people in Bonaire now produce desalinated water, but the Bronswinkel’s Fresh Water Well is still important nowadays for a lot of animals, including birds, iguanas, lizards and goats.
Flamingos
The grey feathers of flamingos turn pink in the wild because of a natural pink dye they obtain when feeding on shrimp and blue-green algae. The wetlands and lagoons in Bonaire provide a rich amount of food for these animals.
In the bird rehab in the South of Bonaire we saw the younger flamingos kept there to have grey feathers. The Mangrove Info Center opened the Wild Bird Rehab as a bird sanctuatry to provide a home for the island’s sick or injured birds.