Cuba

     When February had arrived it had become a time for Cuba to be on our list of things to do -- now that it was way below freezing at home! So we booked a trip with Sunwing, which included flight, travel to the resort, accommodations and the traditional 'all inclusive' profile. We did a 5 star program, as those were the ones where the travel advisory indicated the food was good and so were the beds. Those are the two things that are most important to me now 😌.
     With the hope that the fishing might be good too I brought along my fly rod and spinning rod with associated gear, and my snorkeling stuff. We flew into Santa Clara, which is an old Russian military airport, complete with abandoned MIGs in their bunkers, in the middle of Cuba, about 60 min from the north coast.  After clearing customs and boarding our tour bus, these next several pictures were taken through the window of our bus on the way to Santa Maria, the island housing our resort where we were scheduled to stay.

The bus had a tour guide with lots of information. For example, the tree of Cuba is the royal palm. Who would have guessed? But they were everywhere and huge. The leaves of the tree are used locally for roofing.

We passed through several villages, all with very poor housing, so I took a few pictures of the better looking homes on one main street.

On the way we passed a number of tobacco fields that were very well maintained. You will remember that cigars are a major product of Cuba -- which are reputed to be the best in the world.

As we approached the coast, one of the last towns housed a famous ice cream (Helados) factory, which supplied all of the resorts in the area, and its products are very good. I had a different ice cream bowl every night in one of the several different restaurants on the island.

After about an hour of travel crossing the mainland, we arrived at the coast and entered the causeway to the island. This is the best I could do through the window. Note  the causeway curves away to the left in the far distance.

Can you believe that this causeway is 48 kilometers long to Santa Maria Island? When the Russians abandoned Cuba, there was little left for creating an economic base, so in 1989, Castro decided that tourism would be a major source of income. The sand beaches on the north shores of Cuba and its adjacent islands were the best bet, but how to get to the islands? To achieve this goal, the Cubans dug out a huge chunk of one of the nearby mountains to serve as a base, and the causeway required a decade or more to finish about 20 years ago. It was designed to service all the hotels that were to be built subsequently on the island. No one else lives there, nor did they before it became a "tourist mecca". The hotel and restaurant staffs to the resorts are bused in and out every day and live on the mainland. Note: Other causeways were built to access other off-shore archipelago islands along the north shore of Cuba.  As the causeway is entirely rock based, like a solid dam, there are tidal through-ways cut along it frequently, which allow the sea creatures and tidal water pressure to equalize on the two sides like the example below.

There are a few buildings out on the island that are not hotels like the marina below, which has available catamarans, but all appear to be out on the water somewhere. There is also a police and gas station and a health unit, but little else.

We arrived at our hotel and checked in.

The staff was very nice and quickly led us to our second story pad. Nancy is waiting at the top for her suitcases. Happily that did not involve me this time!! (although we did have to haul them down the stairs at 6 a.m. on the morning we departed).

From our porch, the pool view was nice. There was a larger one off screen to the left.

And then from the pool area, the view is back to our room, which was on the right corner at the second level in this picture.

On the inside, my favorite afternoon spot was in the outside shower. Each day was about 28C or 80F, thus wonderfully comfortable to be outside, naked and wet.

And my required 'comfortable' bed in its associated room. Also, you go straight through to the door  in the center of the picture, which leads to the bathroom areas and the outside fenced in shower porch.

We quickly went to the sun. Actually Nancy goes to the sun, and I go to the shade - as the sun is no longer my best friend.

Of course, sitting in such a warm relaxing place playing with your ipad had the expected consequence ... somnolence, but nothing worse.

On the way to one of the beaches, we pass our breakfast-lunch building off screen on the right below.

We were directed to all of the hotels activities and resort structures by our hostess Dianelis, who was always available and helpful for things like locations for events and booking times for dinner in different restaurants, etc. Again the breakfast/lunch building on the right.

One of the events we enjoyed was a local eco-tour with our guide Navy.

I love seeing different environments and being able to discuss what we see with a guide. Mangroves are common in Florida and similar longitudes, but I had not before seen one of the mangrove seeds that are dropped, land point-down and settle into the sand to grow and increase the mangrove's footprint.

And thus the beginning of a new dense mangrove. The dense root system is the rookery of many minnow species and crustacean forms, which are critically important in the biology of the aquatic system, as well as a collector of sand to create new land. In Cuba it is illegal to cut them down.

Other interesting points along the tour included the experiment focused on different forms of concrete to discover which one was the best suited to be used in a salt water environment. This experiment was long over, but the subjects still stand ready to report again and again.

Many of the shells that volunteered below were quite lovely, and this one wanted to come home with us ... hush.

Other critters included a large land crab, the size of your fist. In this case, a dead one, as the live ones don't hang around very long when you show up.

And then there is the local botany. As I mentioned, the tree of Cuba is the Royal Palm. But heavily transplanted around the resort were coconut palms. These nuts were harvested frequently for food and to eliminate the possibility of human head injuries when they fall. I got bonked pretty good once years ago in the Cayman islands.

There were also beautiful flowing trees like the gorgeous Plumeria below. Note the many future flowers coming on the left side just behind this mature flower.

Many other flowering plants decorated the grounds, like bougainvillea.

And others ...

Indeed, I got to see many other plants on my daily walks down the concrete path (see below) extending from our resort a distance of 3 km down the road to the next resort (an unbroken beach connected them too, but the beach was steeply sloped and difficult to walk on ... to be shown further on).

So how about the beach and accesses to the water? There were two beaches in the resort; one facing the north east and one the west. As the wind always came from the north east onto the long beach, which extended for miles to the next resort, that area experienced very rough water.  However, the approach to that beach was scenic below.

Once on the beach, looking to the east, you can see quite a distance, and it is all sand. Note the steep wall of sand at the high tide level, and soft on the top, thus difficult for an old man to walk on.

The beach bar is immediately to the right. No I did frequent it.

The sharp rise in the beach is due to the pounding surf. This is most obvious when looking immediately to the left or west where there is no beach sand but volcanic rock.

If we leave this beach and go through the resort to the west beach, this is the beach access at low tide (as measured against the two little lounging-huts on legs). Note it is much calmer and the hammocks are above the water at low tide

Then at high tide. The hammocks are in the water.

This 'high' tide is when the schools of minnows come into the shallow water (if you can see them in this picture as I can).

Now at the same low tide looking to the right of the dock. The tidal variation between high and low is less than one foot. Observe the volcanic rock shelf that protects this beach; the rock lies between the two beaches and forms a peninsula. Always very few people on the beach. More people around the two pools.

At the end of a 'hard' day of staying awake, there is nothing like a margarita at poolside watching the sun set.

On the last day, kindly Dianelis showed up at our room with a couple of special drinks for us before dinner.

Happily Nancy does not drink vodka but I do! Needless to say I had both of them....

     We left for the airport then next morning at 6:30 am for the 90 min ride back to the airport. I won't describe my nightmare of standing in line for an hour, discovering (via the x-ray machines) a lighter in my back-back, leaving my exit visa in our room, having Nancy accidentally pick up my passport at Cuban customs (although we eventually found it and I boarded the plane for home), and finally shoveling out our car at the airport parking as a result of the blizzard when we left for Cuba. Welcome back to the great white north ...
     And here we are today at home .. in another blizzard!! Apparently wearing my Cuba hat did not change things here for the better. Thus we will likely return to Cuba in the future, especially if I can find a place with kayaks and calmer seas.

The good news is that we will escape again in two weeks to see our daughter Jenifer and my sister Connie and both their spouses in Seattle, and then trip over to Hawaii with Jen and Scot for a week. Thank heavens!!! Adios and aloha amigos.  

Domestic duck experiment

     Every spring we have wild waterfowl invade our backyard because of our ponds -- lots of water and lots of weeds, a veritable vegan delight. First to arrive are the Canadian geese (below). This happens on nearly the same date each year, when the ice is still there - the middle of April ...

...which appears to not bother them a bit.

This arrival is followed by the hooded mergansers. The male has the white patch on its hood. They are fish eaters -- small stuff like minnows. I don't worry about the trout in the pond, some of which are big enough to eat the merganser!😀

Then come the mallards. This, of course, is a green headed male.

And last to show up are the wood ducks.  The male is the magnificently colored dude below, and is only challenged in color by the male arctic harlequin or Asian mandarin ducks, of which I have no pictures. However I still think the wood duck male wins the competition.

I am always excited to see these wood ducks, as they love my four tree boxes for nesting, and use them all - after the competition has been resolved. Note the female entering the box. The labeling on the bottom of the picture is from my 'game' camera.

All of the wild birds get along fine, and actually hang out together. The spring grass below is covered with buds from the aspens. Nobody eats them.

The only trouble with having the wild birds in the yard is after hatching their clutches, they only hang around for a relatively short period of time (days or a few weeks) and then WALK away with their chicks. This must be very dangerous for them -- walking through the bush in coyote/raccoon country -- but they do it anyway. I suspect many go to my neighbor, Pat O'Grady's, down the road a quarter mile or so to the south of us to his Ducks Unlimited built lake ~150 acres in June. Thus, when this happens, I have no ducks for the rest of the summer. To remedy this a few years ago, when I mentioned my concern to Pat's son Danny who lives the same distance to the north or me, he captured for me two of his semi-domestic Muscovy ducks; one male and one female. This relative large bird originally was native to South America (Argentina), but has been moving slowly to the north (mainly to Florida), as well as has been transplanted to many areas in the 'far' Canadian north. It has not become 'wild', and likes to hang around and be fed.  As they were still in a reproductive mode (July), Danny suggested giving them an old dog house, like the one I had at camp, to use as a nesting box. Below is the pair. Note the 'wart red spots' on the male's face. This is very common in the Muscovy males, while the female's spots are much less obvious.

Although they bred repeatedly over the next week or so, and the female laid her eggs in the dog house, which I had placed in the woods near the pond, she lost the eggs every night to a raccoon. And then one day, she disappeared (perhaps killed) so the male was now alone. I felt badly for him being alone every day. As a result, after a few weeks I found 2 sisters at another farm that were available and I presented them to him.

Apparently he was so pleased, he mounted one immediately.

There were no more eggs, however, as the breeding season was over (end of July). The 3 birds survived to the fall in the pond, but not beyond (by my hand) 😒.

     As the nesting experiment was not a complete success with the dog house on the land, I thought it might work to fool the predators if it was in the middle of the pond! So a new project was devised for the next year; one which involved putting the dog house on a raft in the middle of the trout pond to see if the ducks could learn to use it, and use it successfully. Thus the following winter, I built the new dog house system on the ice, so that in the spring it would simply float and I could anchor it wherever I thought it should go. In this picture, the spring thaw has begun and the log raft is partly frozen and stuck in the ice. It floated free a few days later.

As soon as the ice backed off, I obtained a new pair of Muscovy's that I hoped I could train to use the dog cage (the cage can be seen slightly at the top of the picture out in the ice just beyond the dock platform).

When the raft was clear of the ice, I floated the cage to the shore and secured there with easy access for the birds.

After baiting it with corn, and putting a board ramp up to the platform, they began to visit frequently, and occasionally went inside!

Most of the time, however, they would lounge around under small bushes at the edge of the shore, where they could quickly escape into the pond if a predator showed up.

Although the hen hung around on the shore much of the time, she did start going into the box by herself on a daily basis, but only for a short time, presumably to lay an egg. Afterwards she would  return to the yard to feed. Over subsequent days, she stayed on the nest and incubate her accumulating eggs for much of the day, but would come out a few times during the day to feed. And then one day she did not. After we had not seen her for a few days, I decided to canoe out to the cage and check her out. The cage has two internal compartments, so to access her in the second compartment for me was difficult because I was in the canoe. Thus I used my camera and my 'long' arm to view her and what she was up to. And there she was -- on her nest, but not moving and apparently dead! I retrieve her body and the two eggs she was sitting on. This picture is only her back, which was recorded with the camera at the end of my reach.

And her eggs were huge. Since she wasn't killed by some critter and appeared in perfect shape, I suspected that her eggs were so big that the last undelivered one may have killed her??

Thus the project was over for that year. Ironically I still have her eggs here in a tray of small stones from Lake Superior. No odor from the eggs.

 

The next summer, I had no domestic duck plans, but one day a large Muscovy male appeared like magic in the yard and apparently liked our trout pond. Exactly where he came from we have no idea. Muscovies can fly so he could have come from anywhere. I thought maybe he was from Danny O'Grady's up the road, but his dad said the coyotes had killed all of his birds already. So the duck stayed and we called him Marvin. Marvin was a handsome bird who liked the water and, obviously, could fly.

Marvin also liked the geese and hung out with them.

When they would go somewhere, he to would follow them on land or in the water.

But once the geese did their summer migration with their chicks, Marvin was left alone. He spent the season alone but did not leave. By the end of the fall the 'experiment' was all over again.

     The next spring I did not have a new plan. But because the 'doghouse' (or by now, the duck house) was still in the pond, my daughter-in-law, Tracey thought it would be fun to put the ducks that she had hatched in her kindergarten class in the pond to see how they would do. As the summer progressed, they survived and thrived. It appeared that two were French Rouen ducks (brown) and three were white Peking females.

By some miracle they survived the summer, so we trapped them in the fall and over-wintered them at a friend's farm. They were returned in the spring to see if they would use the dog cage for incubating eggs. They were very pretty birds, especially the two Rouens. With their new adult feathers, it was clear that one Rouen was a male (who looked like a giant male mallard) and the brown one was a female. You would never guess that the two Rouens simply were not big mallards.

As the breeding season was soon upon them, they began to use the cage platform for resting and then for laying eggs. In the picture below are the 3 white Peking females and the tail of the Rouen female sticking out of the house door as the male Rouen swims by. This past July we were in the grip of a drought, so the water level in the pond was down about 6 feet. In the spring the water was 2 feet above the limestone shelf you see in the background.

Soon after this period, however, two of the Peking females 'disappeared'. One bird I saw being killed in the yard by a big fat raccoon before I could save her -- as I was in the upper reaches of the house at the time. The two surviving hens (one Peking and the Rouen) were laying eggs and coming back and forth daily to the yard for corn. Then one day that did not show up. Again I canoed out to the cage to see what was up and removed the end of the cage with my chain saw to access the nesting compartment. There were lots of eggs evident, but just one dead bird on site. The other one was gone and presumed it too had been killed and removed. After talking to my hunting friend and local trapper, Gord Hill, he suspected a raccoon was the culprit. I didn't realize that that raccoons are good swimmers, as I have only seen them hunting crayfish at the shoreline, so it would have been easy for him to trap the hens in the cage and dispatch them. Damn... I trapped the raccoon the next day in a live trap and then he disappeared.

And a closer view of the nest ...

All together there were 22 intact eggs (not including the broken and eaten eggs, one of which can be seen in the back ground of the above picture). I collected the eggs and Tracey tried to incubate some of them at home, which succeed somewhat, as two hatched, but later died. Below are the eggs on their way to the incubator. The color differences were slight, but one is bluish and the other white, likely reflecting the two different species of the mothers (Rouen and Peking).

As the project's thesis was to see if the duck hens would use the box to nest in, "the experiment was a success, but unfortunately the patients died". This left only the male Rouen alive, who now foraged on his own most of the time.

However he did get to hang around with smaller wild male mallards until they too disappear in early fall (as well as every night during the summer). When our Rouen was alone, he used the cage platform for roosting, but wisely did not go inside and thus avoided being trapped like the hens.

He did have to share the platform daily with up to a dozen painted turtles and an occasion a great blue heron.

The cage currently is sleeping under a foot of snow, so we will have to wait until spring to see what the next season has to offer. Being mildly demented I might just try it again 😏.