Tag: Birding
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Cuba – Day 6 – Por un Socialismo Próspero y Sostenible
Tuesday, January 10, was another driving day. Still, we looked for birds en route. Our first stop was at a nearby wetland. Driving a good distance east we had a restroom and fuel stop at Cienfuegos, stopping again at Jardín Botánico de Cienfuegos in a failed search for Gundlach’s Hawk. We then continued up the…
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Cuba – Day 5 – Ciénaga de Zapata y Paella
I awoke on day 5 in Cuba expecting that day would be the highlight of the trip and I was not disappointed. Once again we departed under the cover of darkness, our bus weaving its way through difficult turns in narrow one-lane city streets. We eventually got out of town and realized as the sun…
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Cuba – Day 4 – Un Combate Decisivo Para la Victoria
We boarded the bus in the dark on day 4 excited about the list of target birds for the day. From Playa Larga we headed south along the coast of Bahía de los Cochinos to Playa Girón, then east to Refugio de Fauna de Bermeja. There we picked up two additional guides and headed into…
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Cuba – Day 3 – Bay of Pigs
Bahía de los Cochinos: Most Americans know it as Bay of Pigs, a place name that is usually followed by the word “invasion”, due to a failed 1961 landing operation that while manned by Cuban exiles, was organized and financed by the Central Intelligence Agency in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It is both…
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Cuba – Day 2
Despite the time shift I had just encountered from traveling to Cuba I was up well before dawn. My unexpected first bird calling from somewhere in the darkness was a Killdeer. The second was more expected as a Barn Owl screeched while flying somewhere nearby. I saw a strange light behind the trees and thought…
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Cuba – Day 1
I opened my eyes at 4am on January 5, 2023 initially confused at where I was, then soon remembered that I was in a hotel room in Fort Lauderdale. A familiar mixture of exhaustion (from a difficult day of flying from Los Angeles the day before) and excitement consumed me as it was on that…
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Cuba – Prelude
Like many Americans, I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Cuba. At first it was the stuff we all know about US – Cuba relations with such history as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion, leading to what is nearly a complete ban on travel there by Americans. Later, the wont to…
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Horned Lark with California Poppies
I’m spending a little of my Sunday morning playing around with my photography workflow on an iPad Pro instead of a laptop. My experimental subject is this Horned Lark I photographed this week not far from the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. The Horned Lark is a bird of fields, low grasslands, and other open…
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Bird Notes: January 2019
Los Angeles County Life List As noted in my end of the year blog post, it is a goal of mine (likely an impossible one) to boost my Los Angeles County life list of bird species observed to 400. I started the year at 302. I brought the total to 310 by the end of…
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A Night at West Fork
The degree to which I am enamored with the freedom of backpacking is not reflected by the frequency with which I go. For awhile now, I’ve taken an interest in expanding my knowledge-base of the fauna of the San Gabriel Mountains by backpacking into remote campgrounds, preferably on a weekday when no or few people…