Birding in Cuba

Flamingo reflection pool

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Heading back to the jeep we pass clouds of butterflies hovering over shallow pools of water. A great lizard cuckoo sweeps across the trail a hundred feet ahead, its huge russet wings and barred tail flashing. They are big birds, up to 22 inches in length, and known to eat small lizards and even mice. In a birder's game of carrot and stick, we follow it from shrub to shrub, catching occasional glimpses.

On the drive back to Morsn we stop for fresh cane juice, milky green in cloudy plastic glasses. It must be drunk on the spot: Fermentation begins immediately, turning the liquid a muddy brown, no relation to the smooth Cuban rum we've come to enjoy. The cane fields around us are being harvested, and hundreds of egrets are here for the bonanza of insects displaced by the heavy equipment. Mills here are fuelled by spent fibers, which are burned, and crushed fiber is also used to make paper and construction materials.

In the early evening we head off in search of cranes. The area is swampy, and there comes a point when I'm so caked with muck—my shoes sucked off and eventually rescued with much tugging—that I decide to simply walk barefoot, enjoying the cool mud between my toes. We see plenty of anis and doves but little else, and I wander off to take photos of a termite nest, where the honey-colored bodies writhe in the dying light. I discover my hair has picked up about 30 guizazos, small burrs with a depressing tenacity. I sink onto the damp earth, resigned, while my two Cuban companions laugh and argue about the best way to remove them. At eye level is a creche for zebra butterflies; two perfect pairs of wings are folded in the quiet dusk, while their fellow beauties flutter, undecided, in the shade. In the distance the sun and moon hang still in the indigo, while far below the silver blades of reeds whisper in the swamp.