Cuban caracara and royal terns

On 11 March 2017, the day after 10 March, we went to Cayo Coco island, from Camaguey in Cuba. In the morning in Camaguey, these flowers. And house sparrows.

8:27: a red-tailed hawk in a tree along the road.

9:25: great egret and cattle egrets.

Later, an eastern meadowlark.

Cattle egrets in a tree.

Greater Caribbean grackle.

A white-winged dove.

11:21: a little blue heron along the road.

11:41: a great lizard cuckoo crosses the road.

This is a great lizard cuckoo video. These birds live only on Cuba and a few other islands.

We are on the causeway to the small islands north of Cuba proper. Sandwich terns flying.

As we arrive on Cayo Coco, a northern mockingbird sings.

A common ground dove in a garden.

A northern flicker nest along the road.

Along the road to Cayo Romano island, Zenaida doves.

We arrive at a bridge linking Cayo Coco to Cayo Romano.

Tricoloured heron.

Cuban black hawk.

Caribbean flamingos.

A flock of royal terns resting.

This is a royal tern video.

A reddish egret.

A flock of 25 grey plovers.

Black-necked stilts.

A yellow-crowned night heron.

A magnificent frigatebird flying.

This is a magnificent frigatebird video from the Galapagos islands.

Cave swallows flying around. They have nests under the bridge.

This video says about itself:

26 January 2016

A Cave Swallow works on its nest in a cave in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. These birds are colonial and place their nests on a vertical wall, usually in the twilight zone of a cave or sinkhole. They make their flattened cup nests of mud pellets, sometimes with sides extending up and enclosing the bowl. Nests may be covered, with a small entrance tunnel on one side, and are lined with grass and plant fibers.

Video recorded by Eric Liner/Macaulay Library

A female red-breasted merganser swims.

As we go back, a northern crested caracara drinking from a puddle at a crossroads.

This December 2016 video shows a northern crested caracara drinking in the garden of Iberostar Daiquiri hotel, Cayo Coco.

After nearly two years of planning, a team of scientists from the US and Cuba has explored never-before-studied mesophotic coral reefs during a month-long circumnavigation of the entire coast of Cuba, spanning about 1,500 miles. Except for a few places along the coast, prior to this expedition, there were virtually no data or charts indicating what was beyond the shallow reef zone: here.