This morning at breakfast there was a thunder storm with wind and heavy rain but, not long after, the sun had returned and we set out for the day. We walked locally along the road running west from the hotel past the airfield as we had done yesterday with Leandro following in the van. There were plenty of butterflies and other things to photograph. These wasps are quite common in Cuba and they do sting so a little care needs to be taken when they are around especially near the nest.

Several Anoles caught my eye and I managed at last to get reasonable pictures of Pholidoscelis auberi Cuban Whiptail. These are quite common ground anoles never venturing off the ground but can be difficult to photograph as they are wary and usually scuttle away into cover when approached. The Cuban Green Anole Anolis porcatus on the other hand rarely ventures down onto the ground and this one was shedding its skin. The dark anole bottom right I think is another colour form of A. porcatus but I might be completely wrong.

There were quite a few butterflies nectaring on the flowers and several skippers were amongst them including this female Mesogramma Skipper Atalopedes mesogramma, the males have a yellow band across the hindwing. We found more skipper larvae too including Zarucco Skipper Erynnis zarucco, Impostor Duskywing Gesta gesta, Hammock Skipper Polygonus leo.

At the end of the road about 2km past the airport runway we came to a black sand beach at the river mouth where Antonio Maceo, Flor Crombet and others landed in 1895 to start the Second War of Independence. There's a memorial monument here and lovely views across the river to El Yunque. We did find a pair of Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanillae in cop here and a larva of Statira Sulphur Phoebis statira.

After lunch we went back to the El Yunque road and on the way called into Finca Daube coffee and chocolate farm. Douglas recalled on a previous visit finding larvae of Cuban Rhinthon Rhinthon cubana here and we spent some time searching the ornamental Canna without success. Rather frustrating as this would be a new species for us but you can't win them all.

Part of the road to El Yunque looked a bit dodgy after the rain this morning, there was a steep muddy part so we stopped and watched butterflies in the woodland by the beautiful river.
Lynn recalls one of the many conversations with Douglas about good photographs and how people are generally quick to assume a good photo comes from an expensive camera. This led Douglas to quote from the story of The Little Prince and also refer to the thoughts of the Cuban photographer Alberto Korda famed for his photos of Che Guevara. Interesting I found a wonderful synopsis of this on the web site http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/photography/Alberto-Korda.html ......
'Korda's advice to aspiring young photographers: "Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget all of that. With any four-dollar camera, you can capture the best picture." He believed in the passion behind the photographer, not the camera that the photographer had. He was also quite fond of the French writer Antoine de Saint Exupery, and often paraphrased a quote of his from The Little Prince: “You can only see with your heart. That which is essential is invisible to the eye.” '
 
During our 15 day trip around Cuba we were well practiced at viewing the butterflies and other wildlife with our hearts and hope the resulting photos will reach your hearts too.

We checked out of the Rio Miel hotel, Baracoa this morning and headed just to the east of the town in search of an area that Rayner Núñez had asked us to visit. He said that there was a potentially new and undescribed species of Skipper here that he wanted us to look for! We turned off north on unmade roads and stopped and asked the locals for directions on the way. Today was Father's Day and this is a big thing in Cuba. Both Leandro and Douglas had been receiving calls on their mobiles from family and friends since breakfast this morning. Many people were carrying cakes, all decorated with blue and white icing, for the festivities.

Rayner had been a little vague on how to find the place although he had sent a photo of the habitat and the name of the site. It soon became clear why when the road became more and more uneven and eventually impassable in our vehicle. We reluctantly gave up on the attempt and decided to park up and explore the lanes on which we had been traveling – what a good move! We didn’t find the skipper but there were a host of other butterflies including the endemic Orange-washed Sulphur Phoebis avellaneda and various larvae that kept us occupied for several hours, and two anoles including Cuban Brown Anole Anolis sagrei displaying which was the first time in all visits that we had seen one displaying by extending its dewlap.

The lanes and paths were great habitat and we had our only sighting of the trip here of another endemic, the Cuban Peacock Anartia chrysopelea. Douglas has a good knowledge of Cuban plants especially butterfly larval foodplants and one of his first great finds here was a larva of Red-striped Leafwing Siderone galanthis. feeding on Casearia sp. They have a peculiar and distinctive forward and backward rocking motion when moving. Doug then proceeded to tell me that he had seen the the pictures on the website of an adult I had photographed at Soroa and that in fact it was a female laying on Casearia! I had been so focused on trying to get pictures at the time that I hadn't realised this - what an opportunity missed.

Lots more larvae followed including Impostor Duskywing Gesta gesta, Three-spotted Skipper Cymaenes tripunctus, Lime and Bahaman Swallowtail Heraclides andraemon and Hammock Skipper Polygonus leo.

It was getting quite hot by now and Leandro spotted some locals eating ice lollies. He went to investigate and reappeared shortly afterwards with ice lollies for all of us - just what we needed. Later Doug called me over to see another great find - larvae of the Mosaic Colobura dirce on a small Cecropia tree. The eggs are laid on the upperside of the leaves, unlike Stinky Leafwing Historis odius that lays on the underside, and the small larvae feed at first on leaf sections between the veins leaving the veins uneaten and on which they rest openly. Later they chew through the bases of the main ribs of the large leaves causing the leaflets to hang down forming a shelter under which the larvae live gregariously. We have only ever seen one adult so far on all our trips and these were the first larvae, but now we know what to look for...

We had a nice Dusky Swallowtail Heraclides ponceana fly close past us  - I've never yet seen one land or even take nectar but they are said to do so.
Cubans have a great sense of fun and this graffiti carved on some gourds growing on a tree caused us some amusement too. We saw Monk Skipper Asbolis capucinus and Great Southern White Ascia monuste larvae - surprisingly hard to find considering how common the adults can be. Doug also found two Proteides skipper larvae but wasn't sure which of the two species they were as he didn't recognise the foodplant and hadn't seen it before. Because of this we didn't keep them to rear them through to find out as without the right foodplant they wouldn't survive and we would be on our way further east in a couple of days.

We drove back through Baracoa seeing the statue of Christopher Columbus (I wonder if it survived Hurricane Matthew?) as we went and then checked into the Porto Santo Hotel on the western edge of town. This was a great move as it has a lovely pool, great views, nice gardens, and good food and rooms - definitely recommended.

Later we took a walk out along the airport road to the west and found several Hammock Skipper Polygonus leo and eggs and larvae. Like most species the larvae change considerably in appearance in the later instars. The fourth instar larva (bottom right) exuded a brown liquid as a deterrent when I opened the leaf shelter in which it was hiding and this has marked its head.

We saw 41 species of butterfly today and brought the total to 80 species in five days. We would only have found a small percentage of the eggs and larvae without Doug, and this was to be the the case throughout the trip so we are very grateful to him.
And the sting in the tale? There isn't one apart from that on this rather splendid 50mm scorpion found hiding behind a rock. I don't know if it would hurt as I didn't pick it up to find out.

One important sighting from Tuesday 16 June that I had omitted on the earlier blog for that day was that of a Mexican Sailor Dynamine postverta (mylitta) that we saw in the Alejandro de Humboldt NP. Important because this is the furthest east in Cuba that it has ever been seen by quite a large distance. It has been reported from Pinar del Rio in the far west for at least 140 years occasionally dispersing east into Habana province and then apparently receding and even dying out but reappearing sporadically, at times in abundance, on the Guanahacabibes peninsula (Smith, Miller & Miller). In recent years there has been just one more easterly record, one from Sierra Cubitas, Camagüey province (D. Fernández). On 16 June we were fortunate in that when a Dynamine sp. landed briefly on a tree some way ahead I got binoculars on it long enough to clearly see the extensive blue colouration of a male D. postverta. Coincidentally I had only been refreshing my memory on the differences between the two species and the sexes only the night before so I was immediately confident of the identification although it quickly flew and couldn’t be relocated. In later blogs I’ll talk about further sightings of this species in September/October 2016. The question in my mind is – has it already made its way to Hispaniola?

But back to today, this morning Leandro drove us to the start of the track leading to El Yunque which is a 575 metre high mountain located 7 km west of Baracoa. It has a table mountain shape that resembles an anvil, hence its name. 

We stopped for some pictures and found a pair of Mesogramma Skippers Atalopedes mesogramma in cop. A female Zarucco Skipper Erynnis zarucco was taking moisture on the ground and we also saw Orange-barred Sulphur Phoebis philea, Orange-washed Sulphur Phoebis avellaneda, Androgeus, Lime and Cuban Kite Swallowtails. We also saw several Miami Blue Cyclargus thomasi, in fact they seemed very common on the north coast as we saw them nearly every day until we crossed over the hills to the south coast where we saw none - perhaps it is a little too arid for them there.

The walk up El Yunque is reckoned to be a half-day hike there and back but we had not started out very early and there is a river to cross which took us a while as we had to go barefoot over the stones (ouch!) and the water was up to a metre deep. Next time I'm going to take a pair of plastic shoes with me. Our progress is always fairly slow anyway as there are always things to find and photograph. Once across the river Douglas reckoned he saw a Cuban Hairstreak Allosmaitia coelebs flying around a flowering bush but it wouldn't settle and the disappeared - shame as this was a new species for us. He pointed out the distinctive feeding damage of Red-striped Leafwing Siderone galanthis on Casearia sp but despite searching we couldn't find the larva. The damage is distinctive because it leaves small fragments of leaf still attached to the foodplant.

It was interesting to see Cuban Sicklewing Eantis papinianus egg and larva. The egg was on Citrus and the larva was on Zanthoxylum in a shelter of two leaves spun together.

We did also see Cornelius Skipper Euphyes cornelius and a female Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus came and laid on a grass in front of us on the path.

We progressed up the trail for a while but saw few butterflies apart from a Cuban Mercurial Skipper Proteides mercurius that settled high in a tree. I had expected to see natural vegetation here but was surprised that this had been cut down and planted with fruit trees. It would have been nice to go to the top and see what butterflies were hill-topping there but the lack of natural vegetation near the trail meant that we headed back down. We'll save the hike to the top for another day.

We were booked in to the Rio Miel Hotel in Baracoa but on arrival we decided it wasn't really our cup of tea. The downstairs area was a smoky bar with the TV on showing football. It was on the seafront with a view over the sea but had no swimming pool and after a bit of investigation we decided to transfer, for only the slight difference in cost, to the Porto Santo Hotel on the edge of town but that wouldn't be till tomorrow so we had just one night's stay here.

It is very sad to think that less than a month after writing that last blog about Villa Maguana the hotel has been largely destroyed on the night of Tuesday 4 October by Hurricane Matthew. The timber construction, although robustly built, could not withstand the 130mph maintained wind speeds that the hurricane brought.

That eastern corner of the island suffered terribly that night and many of the places that we visited in June this year were badly affected including Baracoa, Guantanamo and Siboney. About 1 million people in Cuba were evacuated we are told but the destruction to homes and property will be life changing for many. Haiti just to the east was even worse affected and there over 1,000 people lost their lives. Our hearts go out to them. During the hurricane we were in the Luna y Mares hotel just west of Guardalavaca. On 30 September the hurricane was forecast to be heading straight for us but over the following days its course shifted slightly to the east. Many at the hotel were evacuated to Cayo Coco much further to the west but we stayed put along with about 200 others and sat it out. As it happened there was no damage to speak of at the hotel from the strong winds and rain and the imposed curfew was lifted by mid-morning the next day. Just 100 miles to the east the story was very different. The staff at the hotel were brilliant and worked hard and long hours to make the necessary preparations to ensure everybody’s safety while worrying about their own families often living in flimsy structures that would not withstand the full force of a hurricane. With global warming we are told we should expect such extreme weather events more commonly in the future.