I don't have a dog, and I hate cats for the appalling damage that they do to our native birds and other wildlife, but if I do ever get a dog it would be one like this. We learned later that her name was Sasha. She was bright enough to know that if she sat outside the restaurant at meal times with a doleful expression that she would get fed scraps. Lynn is always a sucker for this and despite the fact that Sasha was clearly the best fed dog in Cuba, Lynn would always save some tasty bits for her. This led to her following us back to our room each evening and in the morning before breakfast following our scent trail up to the security gate to sit with us while we went through the moth trap that we had left there.
Yesterday we were kindly given permission to leave the moth trap on next to the security gate so at first light Doug and I went up the hill to see what we had caught. We guessed it would be quite good as even during the day we had seen quite a few moths on the walls that had been attracted to the building light that had been left on all night. I've managed to identify a few of them so far and will have to spend more time on the others later. This is just a selection:
On our walk after breakfast we encountered an Escambray Twig Anole Anolis garridoi making a rather risky crossing of the road. This was a huge find. It is known from only a small area centred on Topes de Collantes and nowhere else in the world. It doesn't get much better then that.
Cuban Twig Anole Anolis angusticeps 24 Mar 2017 Topes © Tim Norriss
We watched several fresh White Peacock Anartia jatrophae including a female laying on Phylum sp.
And Doug once again managed to find some larvae including a nice Zebra Heliconian Heliconius charithonia.
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