Yellow-crowned Night Heron 1 Dec 2018 Guardalavaca © Tim Norriss
Life has been rather busy lately so it has taken me rather longer than usual to report on our latest trip to Cuba during December. We took a three week all-inclusive holiday to the Luna y Mares hotel near Guardalavaca in the north-east but took the middle week out to travel further east to the Alejandro de Humboldt NP. The Luna y Mares hotel was great as always. Due to our close calls with hurricanes in the last two years we decided this time to go a little later so set off from London on 28 November. The photographic opportunities around the hotel are great and the hotel gardens themselves were the best we have seen them with lots of flowers in bloom creating perfect conditions for many butterflies and birds to feed.
Luna y Mares garden 29 Nov 2018 Guardalavaca © Tim Norriss
Northern Mockingbird 14 Dec 2018 Guardalavaca © Tim Norriss
I haven't counted up how many butterfly species we saw in the gardens but it was impressive and included some great finds like Cuban Hairstreak Allosmaitia coelebs. In all we saw 104 butterfly species during the trip including four new ones for us, Lantana Scrub-Hairstreak Strymon bazochii, Bruner's Skipperling Oarisma bruneri, Corrupt Skipper Panoquina corrupta and a new Calisto - so 'new' in fact that the paper describing is still awaiting publication.
It was lovely to catch up with old friends including Doug who came with us for a week as we traveled further east, Felix, Paquita and Sandy at Gibara, and we enjoyed some wonderful trips out with Karlos who showed us some some great things around Guardalavaca including Hooded Warbler. One of the most memorable things during the trip was watching two immature merlins hunting bats in the grounds of the Luna y Mares. They would put on a terrific flying display each evening and I'll write more about this later but suffice it say that it would have been worth going there just for this.
It was lovely to catch up with old friends including Doug who came with us for a week as we traveled further east, Felix, Paquita and Sandy at Gibara, and we enjoyed some wonderful trips out with Karlos who showed us some some great things around Guardalavaca including Hooded Warbler. One of the most memorable things during the trip was watching two immature merlins hunting bats in the grounds of the Luna y Mares. They would put on a terrific flying display each evening and I'll write more about this later but suffice it say that it would have been worth going there just for this.
Cuban Knight Anole Anolis equestris 9 Dec 2018 Alejandro de Humboldt NP © Tim Norriss
As usual we saw several new species of dragonflies and reptiles, some of which I still have to identify. Several species of orchids were in flower and we were shown the tiny Lepanthes fulva with its flowers just 2mm across - I hadn't realised orchids grew that small.
Lepanthes fulva 6 Dec 2018 Pinares © Tim Norriss
And we made a special effort too to photograph the Hymenoptera that we came across for Julio Genaro so I will be posting these on the blog as well. On the outskirts of Guardalavaca we found a pair of Tiger beetles in the genus Cicindela. The butterflies can wait till further blogs...
Cicindela sp 15 Dec 2018 Guardalavaca © Tim Norriss
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