We enjoyed it so much yesterday that we decided to come back here again and we picked up our guide on the way to save him having to walk all the way there. As we walked up the hill there were two young Red-tailed Hawks calling incessantly. I've noticed that newly fledged Buzzards here at home do the same and I'm presuming that they are just letting their parents know that they are hungry.
Red-tailed Hawk 21 Jun 2019 Lomas de Cunagua © Tim Norriss
And again we saw Yellow-billed Cuckoo and Northern Flicker and several other of the common endemics - what a lovely piece of woodland this is.
juv Cuban Peewee 21 June 2019 Lomas de Cunagua © Tim Norriss
And the butterflies didn't disappoint either with Zebra Heliconian Heliconius charithonia, Cuban Snout Libytheana motya, Many-lined Daggerwing Marpesia chiron and even a beautiful Red-striped Leafwing Siderone galanthis that glided around before settling in front of us. We also found a small Cecropia tree with the distinctive feeding damage of Mosaic Colobura dirce larvae but they were long gone.
view from half way up the hill
Back down in the horse field next to the road we added another skipper that we hadn't seen yesterday - a Eufala Skipper Lerodea eufala and we saw again many of the species that we had noted then. And again it was nice to get up close and personal with Cuban Mercurial Skipper Proteides mercurius.
Cuban Mercurial Skipper Proteides mercurius 21 June 2019 Lomas de Cunagua © Tim Norriss
And this dragonfly has me a little puzzled. It has been suggested that it is Seaside Dragonlet Erythrodiplax berenice again but the makings on the sides seem significantly different to those we've seen previously. But I can't think what else it is.
I managed slightly better pictures than yesterday of the Tricolored Munias, though not much better.
And this is just so, so sad. No animal or bird should be subjected to this. It is frankly an utter disgrace that a globally endangered bird should be kept like this. And for what - just the mindless pleasure of an unthinking human. And I'm not singling out Cuba in this regard though it is a big industry in Cuba as it is in many other countries around the world. Here in the UK it is much less of a problem I think though we certainly have more than our share of stupid unthinking humans - I could name quite a few in our current government.
Cuban Parrot - globally threatened near-endemic - in a tiny cage - 21 June 2019 Lomas de Cunagua © Tim Norriss
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