Cuba has been a very popular destination for British birdwatchers for the last decade, ever since emerging from 50 years of international isolation.
At nearly 750 miles long, but with a low population density, it has large areas of unspoiled habitat, and of course it’s well placed for watching migration between South America and North America, and vice versa.
It has a superb range of breeding birds, including c.26 endemics, such as the tiny Bee Hummingbird, Fernandina’s Flicker, and the Cuban Trogon.
Now a new, free digital magazine – The Cuban Birder – is covering birdwatching and ornithology in Cuba, and is proving extremely popular.
It was launched in March 2021 by Birding Havana and the Cuban Birders Club, two independent and non-profit birding organizations. It’s distributed online and free of charge, mainly through social networks, and is being published in both Spanish and English, to reach as many people as possible. Published quarterly, Issue No.7 will be released in mid-August 2022.
Aimed at both experienced birders and those new to it, its main objective is to deepen and expand the awareness and environmental education in the Cuban population, especially in the youngest, through birdwatching, and thus contribute to raising awareness about the conservation and protection of birds and their environments.
This is vital, given the challenges of climate change, the suppression/modification of natural habitats by man, and the growing practice in Cuba of caging wild songbirds. These factors, among others, constantly threaten the survival, reproduction and development of many bird species on the island.
For more information, and to read the magazine, go to www.thecubanbirder.wordpress.com