Lucky to glimpse this beautiful Seychelles Blue Pigeon through a small opening high-up in the palm canopy. Found only on the larger granitic islands of the Seychelles, their numbers have greatly increased since the practice of shooting for food and by farmers as an alleged pest stopped around the late 1970s.

A Seychelles (Small) Day Gecko is spotted high up in the canopy level of the Coco de Mer palm tree (that can reach up to 130 ft tall). The gecko is gripping onto the male inflorescence attracted by the honey-like aroma they produce. Shortly after, the gecko started to climb up foraging on the brightly colored male flowers that contain pollen. It’s not known how important this helps with pollination compared to the better known vectors of visiting flying insects and wind – but a greater understanding in pollination biology and cultivation, together with continued protection and monitoring, will help further future conservation of the Coco de Mer that still remains an ‘endangered’ species! An odd looking spiny creature that scampers among the dead palm fronds is the Tenrec (locally known as ‘tang’) and is the first known tropical mammal to hibernate for long stretches without arousal periods (sometimes up to nine months at a time).

Tenrecs have been introduced to the Seychelles from Madagascar probably as a food item. Technically, they are an ‘invasive alien species’ in an ecologically sensitive area with concerns that the Tenrec are upsetting the population dynamics of native amphibians and reptiles on which they feed – a project is now in progress in an attempt to eradicate it and protect the forest.

Late in the day, all falls quiet and you a feel a sense of loneliness where everything beneath the palm canopy takes on a greater mystical appearance to a time long ago of how the primeval forests of ‘Gondwanaland’ (the ancient supercontinent of about 180 million years ago) would have looked. You could now see how myths are propagated that the “Garden of Eden” is located in the Coco de Mer valley and with all the peculiar plants and animals that live there, it is truly a relic from the past.