Paul and I both like to identify birds, and there are a lot of birds on Bonaire. We have a small bird ID book that has sketches and descriptions of many of the birds.
Other than the birds, the most common animals are lizards. They tend to be fairly bold. The 1st picture is actually from 2004. The second picture is from this trip, while we were eating lunch.
On most of the island, they don't get too large because they are eaten. In Washington Slagbaai Park, though, you occasionally see a LARGE lizard. We didn't see any this year, but did a couple of years ago. The big guys tend to be a bit more wary, which is probably how they got to be big. And they are fast - much faster than they look.
In the south area you will also see many donkeys. There is even a "Donkey Sanctuary" to help them out.
Almost every yard in Bonaire has a fence around it. My theory is that the primary purpose of these fences are to keep the goats out. Goats will eat anything and everything.
Of course, in addition to land animals there are all the critters in the ocean. We did not rent an underwater camera, so we can't provide any pictures of them for you. Here is a picture of some shore crabs, though, to remind you of the water critters:
Bonaire is rightfully famous for it's flamingoes. As mentioned in the description of Bonaire on the "flora" pages, the island has sanctuary areas for the flamingoes. The birds are so much more beautiful than those plastic things you sometimes see on yards. Flamingoes are born white, and acquire their pink color from their food. In fact, even the mail boxes on Bonaire sometimes acquire a pink color.
Now back to those other birds that I mentioned at the top of this page. We only have pictures of a very small subset of them. Parakeets and parrots are among the colorful citizens of the island. The Caribbean Parakeet is seen fairly frequently. The Yellow-Shouldered Parrot is seen much less frequently, and is found only on Bonaire. Unfortunately, it is sometimes poached for cages. These pictures are of the Parakeet. (The last one is with our old camera, but I had fun using Photoshop with it.)
Sandpipers are very common on the island. They are small shorebirds, and are often seen together, and are generally referred to as "peeps". This particular one is called a Ruddy Turnstone.
An exciting viewing for us was the Carib Grackle. We had not seen one before, and it was not in our book so we had to wait until we got home to identify him. (I lightened the picture up slightly so you could see him better; he is very dark!)
Time for a new page ...
Updated July 2020