Nariva Swamp and some crazy creatures.

Hi everyone! Its time for a new update here from Trinidad. Its been another exciting week here in the jungle and this week we have even experienced an earthquake, it was a small one but you still got the feeling of how powerful a big one could be. One of the cool things we did this week was a trip down to the south east of the island to Nariva Swamp National Park and the coconut groves. Nariva Swamp is a mangrove freshwater wetland and it's home to more than 200 species of bird and animal, the most famous being the manatee (or sea cow), red howler monkeys swinging in the massive silk cotton trees, lots of colourful parrots and butterflies.

In the middle of the swamp lies a big island called Bush Bush island and that's were we went for a hike. We saw so many cool animals.

One we all had close encounters with was the mosquito..they were everywhere in the swamp and if you stopped walking for just a second they would attack you in swarms! We all got bitten a LOT!

Sunday we went to the beach to look for toads and to have a swim and today everyone is back on their project working away so this week we have decided to make a picture blog showing you all the amazing, creepy, colourful, scary-looking and DANGEROUS animals we have come across so far..SO if you don't like to see big scary insects and snakes ...dont read any further..

A pretty pink dragonfly at the side of one of the ponds next to our research station. As pretty as this fellow is, they are fierce and efficient predators that use their large compound eyes to home in on their fast moving prey, which they are able to catch mid-flight!

A cool beetle that looks like metal that was sitting on the bug-net outside the research-station.

Another beetle that we find on our net at night, both these guys are more than an inch long.

An enormous "white-witch" moth, look at the match sitting next to it to get an idea how big it is!

This little caterpillar was near another of our ponds at the research station, I'd like to find out what kind of butterfly he'll turn into.

This beautiful glass-winged butterfly had lost its way, and ended up on one of the bedroom doors in the research station. Even the coloured parts of its wings let light pass through, and cast their colour onto the white paint on the door like stained-glass.

Hylocrepitans, a species of tree-frog, which changes its skin-colour to a ghostly white during the day to camouflage into its surroundings.

This bright green little guy is a monkey frog.

A tired little monkey frog chilling out on a leaf to shelter from the heat of the day. These frogs can alter their shade of green to hide against the plants they rest on.

A 5-feet long tree-boa that staff from Asa wright had found in one of the properties owned by the centre and were taking to be released elsewhere. The video below shows that although these snakes are not poisonous, they're definitely to be respected.

A little high woods coral snake that we found hunting for tadpoles under a monkey-frog nest in one of our ponds. These colourful little snakes are not venomous either, so it was safe for us to hold him.

A mantis on our bug-net. Although Dan is studying a species of mantid here, this guy is much bigger than the ones we keep in the house - it was about 5 inches long!

This mantis was really hard to spot. It's adapted to look just like a dried-up leaf so that it's food doesn't see it until it's too late!

This scorpion was found crawling along the floor in Prof. Downie's bedroom! We all check our beds and shoes regularly now...

This mean-looking character is a tail-less whip scorpion, which is related to spiders and scorpions, but isn't poisonous.

Some of these hairy tarantulas have taken up residence in metal poles in the ground near our house. We also found some other tarantulas living in the bat-cave at Tamana hill, which is where we found the tail-less whip-scorpion we showed you earlier.

That cave was filled with so many creepy-crawlies, including predators like these spiders and whip-scorpions because a whole food-web of bugs and things exists in there based on bugs that eat the bats' poo!

These are definitely the scariest and fiercest animals you can find in the area around the research station!

I hope you liked our photo-collection of some of the weird and wonderful animals we've seen since we've been here.

I'll speak to you again soon to let you know what else we've been up to and what we find.

Take care.