Photographing Cuban endemic birds (Feathered Friends Community)

When I go out to photograph birds, I don’t always have it so easy when it comes to locations. There are some species that I find relatively close to home because they are so common. Without much sacrifice, I can plan ahead and go out. But, on the other hand, others are quite complicated, and this is due to the fact that their population is fragmented and only inhabits very specific places.

Today I bring you my adventures trying to photograph some of these species, which, to my great difficulty, only inhabit regions far away from where I live.

The destination of the expedition is the Caujerí Valley in the province of Guantánamo, the easternmost area of the country, the location where bird species such as the Cuban Gnatcatcher, Oriente Warbler, the Cuban Grassquit and others inhabit, which you can take advantage of to take some snapshots of them.

The trip was very tiring, almost 1000 km, 900 of them by train, about 20 hours was the journey. This is something I really enjoy doing and, in the end, seeing the results makes all the effort worthwhile.

Now I share with you the pictures I took of the birds and a little description of how I got them, I hope you enjoy them:

Oriente Warbler / Pechero

This is an endemic species of Cuba. One of the main characteristics that identify them is that they are very noisy, they can be heard from a distance, as they walk in large flocks, they inhabit forests and bushes. Photographing them is not so difficult, they are less frightened than other species that inhabit the area. To take this photo I made a place for myself in the middle of some bushes and near a river, and after a while they appeared because of the heat.

Cuban Gnatcatcher/ Sinsontillo

It is also a species endemic to the island, and unlike the previous one, these are very small, and they are also very energetic. They literally never stay still, they feed under dense bushes. They are not difficult to find either, for this I used the same technique, I stayed close to the river waiting for them to come to drink water because of the heat of the day.

Cuban Grassquit / Tomeguín del Pinar

This was the prize of the day, of all the endemic Cuban birds; this is one of the most endangered, due to the destruction of its habitat and illegal hunting. Nowadays it is difficult to see them. They are very small and have a beautiful song. It is said that their first name was Tomeguín de los espinos (Tomeguín of the thorns) because they are used to perch on thorny plants and with time they changed their name to the current one. Coincidentally, for this photo they were perched on a thorny plant.

Cuban Pygmy Owl / Sijú Platanero

I think this is one of my favorites, it is also endemic to Cuba, and contrary to the previous ones, they are easy to find almost everywhere in Cuba. But it is something I could not resist, suddenly it landed in front of me and I had to photograph it. In one of these photos I enjoyed it very much because there was a mockingbird that wanted to chase it away from the place and the bird did not even move, that gave me a good picture.

If you notice the pictures, you can see the small birds, I made them this way because they are really small birds and I wanted to show it. I hope you enjoyed them and I will tell you about my next adventures.

All the pictures were taken by me (@muhammadhalim) and I used a Nikon D200 camera and a Tamron 70-300mm lens.

For the translation of the text I used DeepL.