On an earlier blog Lynn talked about our visit last month to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and I have now loaded all the pictures from that visit onto the species pages. Amongst others they include some of the species pairs that can be tricky to identify such as:
Mimosa Yellow Pyrisitia nise / Confusing Yellow Pyrisitia larae. It's well-named that one!
Barred Yellow Eurema daira / Banded Yellow Eurema elathea
Lyside Sulphur Kricogonia lyside / Cuban Sulphur Kricogonia cabrerai
I have also improved the texts of the above and in the case of P. larae / P.nise I have also removed a couple of the pictures - dodgy identifications on my part!
These are all species that never settle with their wings open so the only chance of getting pictures of the uppersides is either by taking lots of flight shots and hoping that some will be in focus, or by photographing set specimens like these. For several of these getting a good view of the upperside is fundamental to making a correct identification.
Thank you again to Dr James Hogan at the Museum for arranging access.

Shortly after I had heard from Douglas about his recent trip I received a contact form through the website from one of the participants on the Boletas tour. It was Pete Smith's first time in Cuba and he has sent me a link to his superb pictures which include the best shot of a male Bee Hummingbird I think I've ever seen! This is the smallest bird in the world and, like those in the the next two pictures, is endemic to Cuba. The feathers on the head are iridescent and usually look black or green, but occasionally if the light catches it right, they show scarlet. Well done Pete. They saw it in the same tiny garden north of Zapata that we saw it when we were there. The local bird guides know where this is. Bee Hummingbird is considered rare and vulnerable and although it is widespread it is also missing from large areas of the island. There is one tree in this little garden on which the birds come to nectar and luckily the lady who owns the garden was persuaded not to cut down the tree, as she had wanted to do, in return for payment from the guides.

And here follow three more superb shots of endemics or near-endemics. The first is Cuban Bullfinch which is a widespread and fairly common resident though sadly it is often trapped and kept in small cages. Humans can be very cruel can't they.

Zapata Wren is a seriously rare bird. It is found only in the northern and central parts of Zapata Swamp and is found in dense saw-grass vegetation with scattered bushes that floods during the rainy season. The total population is thought to be between 600-1700 mature individuals and declining due to to habitat loss despite the protected status of the area (Birdlife International). I see this one is colour-ringed so it looks like someone is doing some work studying them and lets hope their chances improve.

The final picture is a great image of Thick-billed Vireo which is found only on the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Tortue Island off Hispaniola, two other small islands in the western Caribbean and on two of the northern cays of Cuba. It is found in coastal scrubby vegetation and the global population has not been quantified. Many thanks to Pete for sharing.

Earlier this week I received news from Douglas Fernández who was co-leading the recent Boletas birds and butterflies tour to Cuba. Douglas was the local butterfly expert and they had great success in seeing 76 species in ten days - that’s nearly 40% of the total butterfly fauna.

He was excited to find larvae of the Monarch Danaus plexippus at La Güira, Pinar del Río, and at Soplillar, Matanzas. This species has become uncommon so he says it was rewarding to come across with it again. On Cuba the Monarch is non-migratory and doesn’t need to make the long migration to Mexico that the eastern North American population does to avoid the harsh winter further north.

They also found Singularis Skipper Euphyes singularis at Santo Tomás, Zapata Swamp, Matanzas.  Alayo & Hernández (1987) report a specimen of this skipper collected in November 1964 at a location named Buenaventura, also in Zapata Swamp, but apparently it is more frequently seen in the east of the island, which is where we have seen it just twice at Guardalavaca.

Douglas has sent me some lovely pictures from the trip which he has agreed to let me share with you below. Thank you Doug.

I have now loaded the rest of the photos that I received from Peter Bruce-Jones, thank you Peter, and I have also received another five species, all as set specimens, from Rayner Núñez so thank you Rayner, and for your advice as always.

The additional species added are:
Kricogonia cabrerai          Cuban Sulphur
Papilio polyxenes             Black Swallowtail
Eunica heraclitus              Cuban Purplewing
Holguinia holguin             Holguin Skipper
Oarisma bruneri               Bruner's Skipperling

So... that leaves just six species to add:
Pyrisitia chamberlaini     Chamberlain's Yellow
Nesiostrymon celida)     Caribbean Hairstreak
Pseudochrysops bornoi                Antillean or Xeric Blue
[ Libytheana terena        Antillean Snout ]
Carystoides mexicana    Mexican Ruby-eye
Ephyriades zephodes     Zephodes Duskywing

I'm hopeful that we will encounter one or two of these on our next trip but we'll have to see. In the meantime if you have, or know anyone that has, photos of any of these last six then I would love to hear from you, preferably as live specimens but if not as set specimens. And of course I'm always on the look-out for better pictures of species that are already shown on these pages or of the different life stages  - there is always plenty that can be added or improved upon.

There are twenty species in the genus Hamadryas, also known as Crackers, and found mainly from Mexico through Central and South America and the Caribbean, though some species venture as far north as southern Texas.  They get their common name from the cracking noises that the males make in flight when interacting with others, probably other males,  of the same species.

In Cuba there is only one resident species - the Hamadryas februa Gray Cracker and Hernandez (2004) stated that "in Central and South America these butterflies make a cracking sound in flight, but in Cuba they are silent." In fact this is not correct as we have heard Hamadryas februa make a cracking sound in Cuba so perhaps it just depends on the hearing of the observer.
Nine species of Hamadryas are found in Costa Rica and when we were there earlier in the year we saw two species Guatemalan Cracker H. guatemalena and Brownish Cracker H. iphthime. Both were on the edge of the mangroves of the NW Pacific coast at La Ensenada Lodge on the mainland coast of the Gulf of Nicoya, we had seen no others during the first two weeks of the trip. One morning a Guatemalan Cracker H. guatemalena flew down from its typical face down perch on a mangrove trunk and chased off another that was flying close past us. There were several loud cracking sounds as it did so - so loud in fact that it made us jump!

Lynn had meant to add something about the swifts at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in the last blog, and I was reminded of this yesterday by a wonderful talk by Edward Mayer from Swift Conservation at the Hampshire Ornithological Society Open Day in Winchester.
The following piece on the Oxford Swift Research Project is taken from the OUMNH website:
“The colony of swifts which nest in the Museum has been the subject of a research study since May 1948. It is one of the longest continuous studies of a single bird species in the world, and has contributed much to our knowledge of the swift.
Swifts had been nesting inside the ventilator shafts of the Museum tower for many years when David Lack, the head of the Edward Grey Institute at the Department of Zoology, began the swift research project. Swifts use nesting sites which are inaccessible to predators to safeguard the eggs and chicks. The parents are also quite vulnerable when nesting. Swifts had proved a difficult species to study as they spend most of their lives in the air, but Lack realised that the swift colony in the Museum would be ideal for long term research.
The book Swifts in a Tower was first published in 1956 and details David and Elizabeth Lack's work on the colony of swifts in the Museum. It describes the setting up of the project and reviews other swift species.”
The ventilator shafts in question are those on the central tower of the roof in the photo below.