I have amended three species’ scientific names here on the website. I have done this both in the species texts and in the downloadable species list that you can print out and use as a checklist if you wish while on holiday in Cuba.
The first is changing Hanno Blue Hemiargus hanno to Ceraunus Blue Hemiargus ceraunus. The identity of the Cuban species has changed over the years in the various publications that I have been able to check as follows:
1975, Riley – Hemiargus hanno filenus
1994, Smith, Miller & Miller - Hemiargus hanno filenus
1999, Alayo & Hernández - Hemiargus hanno filenus
2004, Hernández – Cyclargus ceraunus filenus
2011, Barro, Núñez  & Larramendi - Hemiargus hanno filenus
Current thinking is that Ceraunus Blue Hemiargus ceraunus is a N & C American species that extends south as far as Panama and through the Greater Antilles (including Cuba and the Isla de Juventud) as far as Hispaniola whilst Hanno Blue is a S American species (range uncertain) also found in the Lesser Antilles and extending as far as north as Puerto Rico. Whether this will be the end of the story who knows?

The other changes made are to two of the three Buckeye Junonia species on Cuba. This group has long been problematic due in no small part to a published paper where the scientific names were incorrectly transposed.  This confusion has led to many different books and websites having different scientific names for Tropical and Mangrove Buckeyes. For instance on the BAMONA website you can see photos of both species under Tropical Buckeye and the same situation under Mangrove Buckeye.
Melanie Lalonde (University of Manitoba) has however recently clarified the taxonomy of the Junonia species in North America in her MSc thesis (Lalonde, M. M. L.  2016) using molecular and morphological data. Tropical Buckeye has been reassigned as Junonia zonalis, and Mangrove Buckeye has been reassigned as Junonia neildi. Of course published books cannot be changed but websites can and so I have done so here. Hopefully the fact that the latest scientific names get away from the genoveva/evarete confusion of recent decades will lead to a period of stability in names. In the American Southwest, Common Buckeye Junonia coenia has now been split into J. coenia and J. grisea. Lalonde is continuing her research into Junonia and perhaps we can expect further revelations in the future.

What we know as the 'farm on the hill' is about 4km away as the crow flies on the SW side of the Cerro de Yaguajay. It provides us with some good exercise walking up the hill and we always find something interesting. On the way up we saw our only Miami Blue Cyclargus thomasi of the trip on exactly the same bush that we found them this time last year. Gray Cracker Hamadryas februa is common in the area but flies later in the year so we have seen only small numbers so far. There were lots of Tropical Buckeye Junonia zonalis flying and I also found a small larva of this species which I only noticed while photographing a pair of Cassius Blue Leptotes cassius.

Adult bee-flies of the Family Bombyliidae are mainly nectar feeders and mimic bees not only in appearance but also in their loud buzzing flight. This Batesian mimicry affords them some protection from predation. We do occasionally see bee-flies in Cuba but have never seen this one before. It was medium-sized and very loud as it moved from flower to flower on the Blue Porterweed Stachytarpheta. The larval stages (often host-specific) are predators or parasitoids of the eggs and larvae of other insects. The adult females usually deposit eggs in the vicinity of possible hosts, quite often in the burrows of beetles or wasps or solitary bees. Thank you to Julio A. Genaro who has kindly identified this as in the genus Heterostylum probably H. bicolor but he says the pale hairs on the posterior half of the abdomen is confusing as this is normally all dark brown. 

One of the commonest day-flying moths here is Spoladea recurvalis (Crambidae). On this trip we have seen it in quite large numbers in several places but when disturbed it invariably flies up and settles on the underside of another leaf making them difficult to photograph. Its larvae feed on many different plants including many that we humans use as food including spinach, beet, maize and soybean.

We saw a single Martial Scrub-Hairstreak Strymon martialis, the only one of the trip, but it flew as soon as I pointed the camera at it. On the bird front we saw several Cuban Emerald and Cuban Tody while we could hear Cuban Trogons calling further along the hillside.
Cuban Whiptail Pholidoscelis auberi was the commonest reptile here though we also saw a very large and fat Saw-scaled Curlytail Leiocephalus carinatus - I'm not sure if its a pregnant female or whether its just eaten a large meal. Many of these reptiles will eat smaller reptiles if they can catch them.

We saw small numbers of Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus every day but I still hadn't managed to get any better pictures of them and today wasn't any different though I did see a female laying on a grass leaf.

Both Northern and Louisiana Waterthrush are common winter residents and transients in Cuba. Northern Waterthrush prefer the mangrove swamps so are more coastal than Louisiana Waterthrush which prefers woodland streams and ponds. The differences in appearance can be subtle but Northern has a streaked throat, darker legs, finer bill and a supercilium that tapers behind the eye and is usually buffish (though it can be white). Louisiana Waterthrush has a white unstreaked throat, pink legs, stouter bill and a white supercilium that broadens behind the eye.

We went this morning for another explore on the outskirts of the village of Yaguajay where we had been a few days previously. There had been more rain in the meantime so the track was even wetter than before and there were once again groups of whites and yellows taking moisture on the mud. On the left a Statira Sulphur Phoebis statira settles amongst a group of Bush Sulphur Pyrisitia dina, and on the right the Statira Sulphur overflies Florida Whites Glutophrissa drusilla on the left and Great Southern Whites Ascia monuste on the right. On the right of the picture is a Boisduval's Yellow Eurema boisduvaliana which seems to be much scarcer than the others and we have only ever seen one or two at a time. A Lime Swallowtail Papilio demoleus also joined them for a while.

Once again there were also Caribbean Daggerwing Marpesia eleuchea, Impostor Duskywing Gesta gesta, Cuban Kite Swallowtail Eurytides celadon as well as Cuban White Ganyra menciae and Lyside Sulphur Kricogonia lyside.

Further along several dragonflies were flying around a large puddle that covered the width of the road. I watched for a while but there were no perching places so I collected a couple of twigs, stuck them in the mud at the edge and settled down to watch. There were males of Erithrodiplax umbrata and Orthemis ferruginea. They would tolerate each other and readily settle on the same twig.

We spent the afternoon relaxing at the hotel and checked out the lagoon in the evening where we saw a Peregrine fly over and managed a few shots of a Cuban Vireo which was feeding in the bushes. The light wasn't great and I had to set the camera to ISO 1000.

By December the lagoon will be full of egrets and herons but at this time in early October numbers are still very low with most birds still on their way from further north. This makes me think that this juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron was born here in the mangroves around the lagoon. It was unusually confiding as I slowly walked to wards it on the open bridge. They have a much stouter bill then Black-crowned Night Heron indicating a preference for crabs in their diet rather than fish and frogs.

Last year at the same hotel we met Bernd and Beate from Germany and this year they were back. Bernd had taken us to the top of the Cerro de Yaguajáy a few miles to the south and we wanted to go back with the object of getting better pictures of Spanish Flag Anole Anolis allogus. We left Beate on the beach and this time set off with Fidel in his horse and trap to save us some of the hard work. When we got to the base of the hills Fidel tied up the horse and the four of us set off on foot. We stopped to watch a Cuban Tody on the way, and there were several butterflies including our only Braco Skipper Burca braco of the trip as well as Cuban Kite Swallowtails Eurytides celadon, Cuban Snout Libytheana motya, Caribbean Daggerwing Marpesia eleuchea, Concolorous Skipper Burca concolor and Dorantes Longtail Urbanus dorantes.

As we got up towards the cliff there was a an orchid Oeceoclades maculata growing by the path and several centipedes and delicate fungi growing out of the detritus in the clefts of the limestone.

There are a series of ladders that you have to climb as you go up and I was pleased to see that they had been repaired since we were last here.

We then encountered the first of several Spanish Flag Anole Anolis allogus with their long laterally flattened tails.

In fact we saw eight reptile species in all - Anolis allogus, A. sagrei, A. jubar, A. homolechis, A. argenteolus, A. auberi, Leiocephalus macropus and L. carinatus. You can see pictures of of all these and more on the reptiles page. I would just love to come up here at night to look for reptiles and see what else creeps around in the dark but I don't think it would be too easy to arrange without walking the whole way in the dark.

In this area we also found the attractive pyralid moth Lypotigris reginalis. We have seen this once before at Gran Piedra in the SE of Cuba.

The path continues along the ridge running west until you come to a viewing area looking down towards the coast to the north. On the left you can see the Bahia de Naranjo with our hotel just to the right of the entrance to the bay.

On the way back down we spotted a Cuban Pigmy Owl in the trees above, and a Prairie Warbler as well as a new dragonfly, the Evening Skimmer Tholymis citrina so called because of its crepuscular habits - my thanks once again to Jurg Carl Demarmels for the ID.

There is a huge list of reptiles and amphibians, many of them endemic, that have been found on Cuba - and there are undoubtedly more to be discovered. I used to wonder why, although we see some species regularly, we don't often see new species. The reason of course is pretty obvious really, and that is that many of them are nocturnal. So unless you specifically go looking for them in the right habitat you are unlikely to see them. But going out at night with a torch in the right habitat greatly improves your chances. It's not something that we have done yet but our friends Felix and Sandy at Gibara have done so with good success and so we are definitely going to give this a go on one of our future trips.
There are for instance 22 species of the genus Sphaerodactylus in Cuba, and till now we had never had so much as a sniff of one. They are all quite brightly coloured, and small - about two or three inches long fully grown. Sphaerodactylus means 'round feet'. Carlos the bird guide had shown us a photo a few days ago on his camera of a 'lizard' with a dark body and bright orange head. He didn't have a name for it but said they were nocturnal and had seen them in a friend's garden not far away. So this morning we had a taxi arranged to take us there to see if we could find them. Carlos quickly found one under a small built-in table but getting pictures was impossible and it soon shot up the wall and under the tin roof. So we turned our attention to a couple of woodpiles in the garden.

There was a large tarantula spider underneath the pile which made things interesting but Lynn and I watched Carlos do the hard work and tried to get pictures. There was a surprising number of reptiles here of five or six species but they were quick and so getting pictures wasn't easy.

We had no idea what they were at the time but subsequent research has shown these to be Neotropical Clawed Gecko Gonatodes albogularis. These are males with orange-brown heads while the females are grey.

And then there was what appears to be two other Gecko species, one with a long narrow tail with about eight dark rings, and the other with a shorter tail with a broad base. The first of the has now been identified by Javier Torres Lopez as Tropical House Gecko Hemidactylus mabouia. Thank you Javier. And perhaps the other is in the genus Sphaerodactylus but I'm really not sure. I also need to invest in a decent 100mm macro lens as the pictures are not great.

There were also two or three individuals of our first Sphaerodactylus. These have the round toes without the claws of the geckos above and are Sphaerodactylus nigropunctatus Three-banded Sphaero - one of only two Sphaero species found in this area. How cute are they!!

What a brilliant way to spend a few hours and that was a real eye opener into a completely new world. We are just going to have to do this again. The mother of Ricardo, our taxi driver last week, lives only a short way away in Fray Benito and Ricardo assured us that she gets Bee Hummingbird in her garden so we thought we had better go and introduce ourselves. She was happy to let us walk around her garden and the neighboring plot where we saw 25 butterfly species but no Bee Hummingbirds though the flowering bush that they especially like to nectar on was there. Note the really long tongue of Monk Skipper Asbolis capucinus that likes to nectar on large trumpet flowers.

On the way back to the hotel our taxi gave an ominous clunk and David quickly pulled over. He soon had the wheel off and if I understood him correctly the drive shaft had broken. A quick phone call to Joel who lived not far away to come and rescue us and he turned up 10 minutes later. Seeing the wheel off on the other car made Joel remember that he had only finger tightened the wheel nuts on his own front wheel from when he had been working on it earlier. He borrowed David's wheel brace to tighten the nuts as he had left his at home - I'm glad he remembered, there is never a dull moment in Cuba. We were sorry to leave David by the roadside but he assured us he would soon have it fixed.

Back at the hotel a Leiocephalus carinatus Saw-scaled Curlytail posed nicely on a weather-worn tree stump.

Walking to the restaurant in the evening we stopped to watch the lantana at dusk as a noctuid moth Melipotis januaris spent a while nectaring on the flowers. The final excitement of the evening was watching lots of fruit bats coming to feed on the ripe fruits of a Sea grape tree Coccoloba uvifera just outside the Luna reception.

Our friend Bernd from Germany who we met here last year at the Luna y Mares hotel is staying here again. He and his wife have been coming here for about ten years and he was telling us the other day that when they first came they used to see hundreds of small frogs in the ornamental pool in the hotel near the travel reps desks. We noticed when we first arrived that there were tadpoles in this pool and were looking forward to seeing what they were. This evening when we walked past several young frogs had emerged from the water and I think they are Cuban Tree Frog Osteopilus septentrionalis. Bernd said that the calls they made years ago was wonderful to listen to but that he rarely heard even one these days. We had been out a few evenings ago with a torch after supper because he had heard one but it was in a pile of brush on the other side of a fence so although we were only a few feet away we couldn't actually see it.

As a postscript to this when we looked again in the ornamental pool in the hotel the next evening it had been largely drained and there was a strong chemical smell indicating that it had just been treated, and there were no tadpoles - very sad. The reason this is done (all over Cuba) is to reduce the mosquitoes that spread the viruses causing Dengue Fever and Zika Virus (there's no malaria here). There is no vaccine or anti-viral treatment currently available for either.
Dengue fever is widespread throughout the tropics and subtropics, occurring in > 100 countries. Nearly 100 million cases of dengue fever are thought to occur every year. Severe infection mainly affects infants and children living in the tropics and subtropics. Most Dengue Fever infections produce no symptoms or result in mild symptoms where 4-10 days after the mosquito bite there is usually a sudden onset of fever, headache, muscle and joint pains. A rash may develop. Within a few days the illness usually resolves and serious complications are uncommon. 
Zika Virus is mainly spread through mosquito bites though there is a low risk of sexual transmission. The mosquito responsible most commonly bites during daylight hours and is abundant in urban settings. The illness itself is usually mild but there is a link between infection during pregnancy and babies being born with birth defects so pregnant women really do not want to get this virus.
In many cities in Cuba there is regular aerial spraying of insecticide to kill the mosquitoes and so reduce the risk. I’m told that in some places this has been stopped due to protests by local people.
At the Luna y Mares hotel (I don’t know what happens at any others) there is a truck that goes around each evening as dusk approaches belching out insecticide to control the mosquitoes. I’m told that it is harmless to humans and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Do I want to take the risk – absolutely not! So when we hear the noisy truck coming we make sure we are either in our room with the window and door closed or make ourselves scarce or upwind. Would I take the risk of coming here without these controls – yes certainly, and we do in other Central American countries when we go there. Would I come here if I was a pregnant woman – I’d follow the travel advice given which is to postpone non-essential travel.

Dogs are smart, they like me were keeping out of the way. I think the nearest one sitting down is the smartest. I fear for the guys in the truck with no masks or respiratory protection doing this day after day.

I’m old enough to remember DDT and the effect that that had, and reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring when I was a teenager had a profound effect. That made me highly sceptical of the claims circulating thirty years ago and since that Roundup (glyphosate) was very safe – you could drink it and have no effect some said! It is being investigated by the EU as a possible carcinogen. The increasing use of Roundup weed-killer (and Dicamba on GM crops in the US) is ringing alarm bells and leading to calls for it to be banned completely on both sides of the pond.

All of us depend on the countless food crops that bees pollinate. Neonicotinoid insecticides (neonics) are designed to kill insects that feed on a plant that has been sprayed/seed-coated with it.  As it happens even the pollen and nectar of treated plants contain neonics. With bee colonies across the world collapsing, the pesticide lobby is still maintaining that bees are not harmed despite all the evidence to the contrary. When I was at school bees were insects and I’m not aware that that has changed since. Without bees and the many other insects that carry out pollination the food production system collapses. Without insects the ecosystem collapses, as they are the underlying component of nearly all life on the planet. The UK government has at last woken up (reversing its previous stance) and will now it says back the call to ban the insect-harming insecticides on fields in Europe. The sooner we all wake up to the fact that tipping more and more pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and molluscicides on the land is unsustainable, the better. And the fact that that these chemicals are having to become more potent all the time in order to be effective due to increasing resistance underlines that point. The EU put a temporary ban (with exceptions) on the use of three key neonicotinoids in 2013. France has already banned the use of neonics on all publicly-owned land and will ban them completely (with exceptions) in September 2018. The EU is doing great work here and is driving much of the change.

But the producers are smart and possibly/maybe/probably/definitely (you choose) in anticipation of neonics being banned tweaked the formula so that they can say ‘ah but this is not technically a neonic’. An environmental organisation has filed a lawsuit in France to ban it.

In October 2017 German researchers announced that the biomass of insects on many nature reserves in Germany has dropped by an average of 76% in the last 27 years. And this was on nature reserves. It is thought to be the effect of the use of insecticides on farmland. It is known that neonics are now widespread in hedgerow plants and shrubs in the wider countryside here in the UK where neonics have not been directly applied. Insects eating leaves, or taking pollen or nectar from such plants will be being affected by these toxins. It is known in the UK that farmland bird populations have declined by 56% since 1970. Things are not improving despite the vast amounts of money paid to farmers to do just that. Between 2010 and 2015 alone the decline was 9%. In some species the decline has been well over 90% during that period while others such as Goldfinch and Stock Dove have increased. It is quite likely I would suggest that the dramatic decline in the UK (50% in just 21 years) of another insectivorous bird, the Common Swift Apus apus, is due in part to this general decline in insects.

Aquatic insects are just as vulnerable to neonicotinoid insecticides as bees and flying insects, yet have not received the same attention because the UK Government has not responded to calls to introduce systematic monitoring. Recent analysis of new monitoring data reveals that British freshwaters are heavily contaminated with neonicotinoids. Half of the sites monitored in England exceed chronic pollution limits and two rivers are acutely polluted. 

We cannot go on the way we are, there has to be a better way. We have to immediately find ways to substantially reduce the amount of poisonous chemicals put on the land. We have to find new innovative less damaging and sustainable solutions to the problem of producing food for the human population. We have to get away from a system where large corporations control the seed market especially the GM seed market that locks farmers into using their products and more and more of their poisonous chemicals at the same time. It is a win win for the producers and a huge loss for the rest of us. The producers must be held financially responsible for the damage caused by use of their products, and the precautionary principle needs to be applied in all instances before licences are issued for use. GM is all about maintaining market share and locking in farmers to using their products. Traditional plant breeding techniques can produce disease and pest-resistant crops more quickly and more cheaply than GM but the big corporations have halted that by buying up the smaller seed companies that were doing it.

There are people in the world who say that we should just leave things entirely up to market forces. There are even people here in the UK government who are open proponents of doing away with all environmental legislation – what fools, what ignorant fools. Another Silent Spring is happening and you’d better wake up from your years of slumber and neglect of duty and do something about it. Over to you Michael Gove, UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. You sure as heck can't do any worse than your dreadful predecessors.

We explored a new area today near the village of Jaguajay a few miles to the south-east. We took a taxi there and he waited while we went off for a walk. On the muddy track there was a group of whites and yellows taking moisture on the ground but nothing unusual amongst them.

But a little further on we saw three Caribbean Daggerwing Marpesia eleuchea, a Many-banded Daggerwing Marpesia chiron and an Impostor Duskywing Gesta gesta and Tropical Checkered Skipper Burnsius oileus.

There were some interesting-looking caves near the top with Hooded Vultures entering so perhaps they nest on the cliff here. I'd love to explore this place at night as from what I know now about how nocturnal many of the Cuban reptiles are I think this could prove an interesting area. As we were leaving an ant lion flew across and landed on a twig. This is only the second time we have seen an ant lion in Cuba, the other was on 25 June 2015 at Guanahacabibes in the far west of Cuba and that was a different species.

On the way back we stopped for a while at the little harbour and creek on the eastern edge of Guardalavaca as there is always something of interest here. An Ovenbird and a Yellow Warbler were busy feeding at the edge of the mangroves. Yellow Warbler is a resident here though this is boosted in autumn by birds from N America on their way south to spend the winter.

A big male Cuban Blue Anole Anolis allisoni was climbing around in the twigs of a bare bush and made a nice photo opportunity though the number of twigs does detract from most of them. It needs photo-shopping to remove all the background clutter really. I watched it bring up a pellet which is not something I have seen an anole do before.