Wildlife on Mauritius by Lydia

Mauritius is a nice island with lots of different interesting wildlife.  We have seen monkeys, parrots and lots of interesting birds. I am quite impressed with the different colours they have.

This bird is called a Fody.  

This bird is called a Black-winged Bishop.

Two weeks ago we went snorkelling and we saw a trumpet fish which has a nose in the shape of a trumpet. We also saw a sea slug, and lots of fish with black and white stripes.  When we got out of the water we saw a sea snake.  The boat had glass underneath so we could see all the coral.  We saw the coral was pink, blue and orange.  We also saw that the coral was white and dieing and was washed up on the beach.  This is because of something called pollution, which comes from all the petrol and oil in the boats. That made me feel sad.

This is a picture of me snorkelling with the stripey fish.

In our flat we had lots of mosquitos and ants which was horrible.  But we liked to see the  bright, colourful geckos and frogs that came along to eat them all!  This is called the food chain!  Probably owls and snakes eat geckos and frogs, but we didn't see any snakes.  

This is bright green gecko. Geckos are like lizards.  Lizards can climb up walls, but geckos can walk upside down on ceilings because of the pads of their feet which you can see in the photograph of the gecko in our lounge. 

I can tell you a funny true story about a monkey.  One day we were walking up a mountain and a monkey jumped out of the land of nowhere and my mum screamed and dropped the bread that she was holding. Then the monkey charged to the bread and picked it up and sat down to eat it.

 Here is the cheeky monkey with my lunch!

I loved seeing all these giant fruit bats hanging upside down in trees!  They have faces like little bears, and they have furry bodies, and big black wings.

I learnt about a bird called a "Do Do".  It is a funny looking bird which used to live on Mauritius.  But sadly, it is now extinct because when sailors first arrived on Mauritius they were so hungry that they killed the Do Do's to eat them until there was none left.  I feel sad about this, even though they were quite wierd birds.  Here is a picture I found on the internet.

This is what they think a Do Do looked like.

I learnt about other animals in the world that are almost extinct.  They are called "endangered" because there is danger that they will be extinct.  Here is a film of a mountain gorilla which is endangered in a country called Rwanda.