CubaPLUS Magazine

Due to their impressive variety of shapes, sizes and colors, birds make up one of the most diverse and unique zoological groups in nature.

As a result of a long evolutionary process, there is a large number of species that, throughout the entire history of humanity, have been appreciated for their extraordinary beauty, but also because birds play a transcendental role as biological controllers.

In the area of ​​the so-called insular Caribbean there are about 558 species of birds, of these, 371 are reported in the Cuban archipelago, so that Cuba becomes, within the Antillean territory, the place that presents the greatest diversity in terms of bird fauna.

It has a high degree of endemism as a result of the isolation that its geographical condition confers it, despite the fact that birds are a zoological group characterized by their great mobility. Among the endemic Cuban bird species is the munuscule and sympathetic zunzuncito (Mellisuga helenae), discovered by the German naturalist residing on the island Johann Christoph Gundlach in 1844.

The showy tocororo (Priotelus temnurus), considered the national bird because its blue, red and white plumage matches the colors of the Cuban flag, is another endemic one. It belongs, like the quetzal of the Mesoamerican region, to the trogon family.

The totí (Dives atroviolaceus), closer to populations due to its spatial distribution than the Santo Tomás chicken (Cyanolimnas cerverai) or the Ferminia (Ferminia cerverai), both from the Zapata swamp and discovered by the Spanish naturalist Fermín Zanón Cervera, they are also endemic to the country.

The Cuban macaw (Ara cubensis), a very abundant species in 1492 upon the arrival of Christopher Columbus and his sailors to the new lands of America, is today reported as extinct endemic. Of great size and extravagant plumage, it attracted the attention of Europeans, who adopted it as an exotic bird, uprooting it by hundreds of its habitat.

This, together with the cutting down of the great forests where they used to reproduce, caused their population to decrease to the point of irreversibility. In total, there are 28 species of birds that are recognized as endemic in Cuba; some such as the Caguarero hawk (Chondrohierax wilsonii) are in critical danger of disappearing.

To counteract the losses of what could be irreparable, actions have been taken aimed at identifying and protecting those essential sites for survival, such as the largest wetland in the Caribbean, in the Ciénaga de Zapata, a natural refuge for thousands of migratory birds.

Also the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, in the eastern provinces of Holguín and Guantánamo, whose variety of ecosystems make it unique on the island and special for such purposes.