Barn Owls

Hard to believe but I almost forgot to post about this. Upon arriving at Cayo Coco this year I seen eBird posts of  multiple Barn Owls. I have been lucky enough to observe Barn Owls almost every year we have visited Cuba but usually in flight early morning. So I reached out to my favourite Cuban guide and indeed, he himself had discovered a nesting barn owl location and was more than willing to share the info with me. It was in a known birding location that I had birded many times before and I was ecstatic to go and observe these new hatchlings. The only problem I had was that my shortest lens on this particular vacation was the 500mm so hence the iphone 15 was gonna have to do. I was very fortunate as two days after I visited the nesting site the owls fledged and disappeared. All in all a very, very cool experience.

Cuban Bird images

Finally some of my favourite Cuban bird images the last couple of years.

Cayo Coco Birds 2025 D

The Cuban Green Woodpecker are a common sight out on the cay. Once you find a nesting site you are frequently offered great views of this very colourful woodpecker.

The West Indian Woodpecker can also be observed out on the cay.

The Giant Kingbird is one of the many species of kingbird found out on the cay.

                                                    The Loggerhead Kingbird.

Cayo Coco Birds 2025 C

Some more of the more interesting birds found out on Cayo Coco.

The Key West Quail-Dove certainly qualifies. In the right light they offer an incredible array of colours.

The White Crowned Pigeon is another bird offering up an interesting assortment of colour.

Smooth-billed Ani are also fairly common and usually found in small family groups. Sometimes you will find 4-6 birds while other times flocks number in the twenties.

The Cuban Bullfinch is also a common bird usually found in the forested areas around the resorts.

The Greater Antillean Grackle is also a very, very common and noisy resort bird.

Cayo Coco Birds 2025 B

Continuing with some more Cayo Coco Cuba birds April 2025.

Roseate Spoonbills can be observed out on Cayo Coco, usually hanging around other wading birds in the lagoons.

Tri-coloured Herons, although not in great numbers can also be found in local lagoons and along the ocean mangrove areas.

Immature Yellow-crowned Night Herons that are usually very relaxed while fishing in the local lagoons.

Green Herons are very numerous around the resorts out on the cay.

A favourite bird to observe and listen to are the numerous West Indian Whistling Ducks. An absolute beautiful sound if you start birding just around sunrise.

And of course most lagoons out on Cayo Coco have flocks of Flamingoes, sometimes numbering in the hundreds.

White Ibis are also a fairly common bird hanging around the local sewage lagoon with numerous shorebirds.

Cayo Coco Birds 2025 A

 

After my birding trip to Costa Rica, we again visited Cayo Coco Cuba in April for 10 days. This was our 5th year staying out on the cay, our 7th overall trip to Cuba. Previously we had also stayed in Varadero and birded Zapata Swamp and Holguin. We find the people, culture, and its people to be just spectacular and love vacationing in Cuba.

I regularly am able to observe around a hundred species every year, some migrants, some endemics, and an assortment of local birds. And since I’ve already done blogs for all these birds on past trips, I have condensed the birds we observed into a few short blogs.

Always a favourite to observe and photograph the beautiful Cuban Tody.

Another favourite bird to observe and photograph is the Cuban Emerald.

The Cuban Oriole on the Yellow Agave Flower. Hanging around these flowering trees always produces a multitude of bird observations.

The endemic Oriente Warbler are easily found along most back country roads.

Although I've been fortunate to get many images of the Great Lizard-Cuckoo, I was very happy to finally capture an inflight shot.

The ever gorgeous Western Spindalis.

And I never get tired of photographing the Red-legged Thrush, a very common bird in Cuba.

Automeris Postalbida

 

Okay, one more image from Costa Rica. I totally forgot that I took all kinds of images of toads, frogs, tree frogs, snakes, butterflies, moths and flowers etc. on my cell phone so I thought I would post my absolute favourite cell phone image.

iNaturalist says this is an Automeris Postalbida moth caterpillar. I certainly can't claim in any way, shape or form that I’m a moth or butterfly expert, however I certainly enjoy observing them like I do all wildlife, I guess I just never really took the time to learn about them. However, this is by far the coolest caterpillar I’ve ever seen. I found him on the wall of the lodge at Arenal Bird Observatory. It’s from the family Saturniidae and was first described by William Schaus in 1900. They are found in Costa Rica and Ecuador.

Rufous-tailed Jacamar

To conclude my images of my Costa Rica birding trip I chose the Rufous-tailed Jacamar. The Rufous-tailed Jacamar is a handsome, slender, green-and-rusty bird of humid tropical lowlands that lives in evergreen forest, often at edges and around adjacent clearings.

They perch upright at mid-heights on vines or other exposed perches, in this case a hydro power line, and sallies out for flying insects, especially butterflies, dragonflies, and wasps. They have a very long, slender black bill (like a giant hummingbird). The throat is white on the male and buffy on female.

Next up will be images from our Cuban holiday back in April.

Thanks for reading.

Dave 

Barred Antshrike

The Barred Antshrike is a retiring bird of thickets, forest edge, and other tangled vegetation.

The distinctive song is heard regularly and pairs are usually within earshot of each other, but antshrikes generally remain hidden so I was really excited with these images.

The sexes look very different, but both have a spiky crest that is often raised. Male is barred black-and-white in ‘convict stripes,’ whereas female looks a lot like a wren with a stout bill that has a slightly hooked tip. Cornell All About Birds

Wedge-billed Woodcreeper

The Wedge-billed Woodcreeper is a very small woodcreeper of evergreen forest in humid tropical lowlands and foothills.

Creeps up trunks, often in spirals, picking at the bark for food, then flies low to another tree before hitching upwards again. Forages on fairly large trunks as well as slender trees. Often travels with mixed-species feeding flocks. Note the short, wedge-shaped bill and pale buffy breast spotting. Cornell All About Birds

Scaled Antpitta

The Scaled Antpitta is a plump ball on sticks. Uncommon and elusive on forest floor in humid evergreen forest of tropical lowlands and foothills. Moves quickly and stealthily on long legs. May be seen feeding or hopping along quiet trails.

Okay, so one of the shots I really messed up on. We had waited hours in the rain patiently watching a dark forested path in the mountains at Hotel Quelitales on word that a Scaled Antpitta would eventually spend a few short seconds on the trail just after dusk. Sure enough it showed up, in the rain and in near darkness. Shooting at 256000 ISO and f5.6 at plus 2EV got me 1/4 of a second and a very shaky image of a Scaled Antpitta. A "record" shot to say the least.

White-throated Shrike-Tanager

The White-throated Shrike-Tanager is a large, long-tailed tanager with heavy hooked bill.

The striking plumage is reminiscent of an oriole with yellow body with black head, black wings, white throat, and white shoulder patch. They are found in forests, usually at moderate heights, often in pairs leading a mixed-species flock. Cornell All About Birds