Sunday, March 1, 2009

Day 5 - Thursday, Feb. 19

Day 5 - This day we birded at La Turba in Ciénaga de Zapata (Zapata Swamp). Now I know that the word, 'swamp' conjures up images of crocodiles, mozzies, water-water-everywhere, unseen flesh-eating monsters lurking behind every bush and tree, but this was quite unlike that. We drove on a solid dirt road, which had such exuberant plant growth that Jesus, our facilitator, was asked by Palacio, our driver, to hold the plants back as we drove along. This necessitated that Jesus go outside the bus, pull the offending branches back, wait while the bus passed and then run ahead and repeat the previous action. At one point, when the road looked fairly clear, Palacio forgot that Jesus was outside and someone looked back to see him jogging along behind the bus. A great hue and cry was set up and Jesus re-boarded the bus to enthusiastic applause.
We did a fair bit of walking along this road, which seemed to go as far, perhaps, as Honduras. I think we never did reach the end of the road! The birding was great, though, especially for the neotropical migrants with which we were concerned, as required by the CCT's license.
In the afternoon, we ventured into the woods on the Refugio de Fauna trail in the village of Bermejas and had our first sighting of the endemic Cuban Parakeet. These extremely gregarious and noisy birds were high in the palm trees, eating the fruits which were in abundance. We had some excellent views and ended up seeing around 35 of them. (If I can purloin a photo from Ivan, I'll post it in the next post.)

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