Wildlife

Turkey Vultures are great and graceful fliers and look a little like kites in the air, but on the ground they are ugly things and do resemble a turkey, which I'm assuming is how they got their name - but I might be completely wrong. They are everywhere, there must be tens of thousands of them on Cuba and they dominate the skies both inland and here on the coast. I lay on the beach today watching eight turkey vultures thermal up and out over the sea, then fly back and did it again.

The only other bird of prey I've seen is a small hawk similar to the ones we used to see in Tortola and probably live on the lizards we see scurrying around. I don't know if this is unique to Cuba or the Caribbean but the lizards here have a curled up tail, it really does look a bit odd as they scurry off towing this coiled spring behind them.

Then there are the pelicans, but these are in smaller numbers. There are half a dozen here in La Boca that I see at the river mouth, taking fish just beyond the distance I can cast a line, and lazily flapping and gliding by.

In the Lesser Antillies we used to see large numbers of frigate birds and we have seen the odd one or two here but nothing like the numbers I expected. They are also great fliers but always look a little sinister in the air with their black angular wings and deeply forked pointed tail. If you were to produce an image in your mind of the Angel of Death it might look something like a frigate bird.
At the other end of the scale has been the tiny Cuban hummingbird which can't be much more than a couple of inches long, a dark green little jewel of a bird that darts around the flowering shrubs and bushes.