They were the only things not making a racket behind the beach today, because the she-oaks, ti-trees and a few other things are in full flower and the circus has come to town.
It sits amid eleven hectares of tropical gardens on Mai Khao Beach, a 17-km skein of sand and she-oaks.
Our campsite is a scalloped bay whose beach, shaded by she-oaks, is so narrow at high tide that I can roll straight out of my tent and into the lagoon.
On hillocks trailing she-oaks, olives, myrtle and prickly pear, circular ruins rise up, like razed windmills.
The road becomes a strip of bitumen flanked at first by banana trees, then by an array of she-oaks.