DAVE SHERWOOD and ALIEN FERNANDEZ, of Reuters, report from Havana…
Havana, Cuba
Reuters
University of Havana Professor Daniela Ventura has intercepted a migrant.
Her internet, stretched taut on a forest path in Havana’s Botanical Garden, trembles. A catbird – a discretely clad grey hen with a black cap – thrashes then succumbs as she plucks it from the web’s close to invisible webbing.
Ornithologist Lourdes Mugica checks a mist internet to seize birds, at Havana’s Botanical Garden, in Havana, Cuba, on ninth February, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Norlys Perez/File picture
University of Havana professor Daniela Ventura removes a catbird from a mist internet, at Havana’s Botanical Garden, in Havana,Cuba, on ninth February, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Norlys Perez/File picture
“Birds don’t understand embargoes or geographic borders, they don’t need a visa to enter our country. I hope there comes a time when relations are normal and that we can have joint projects between [the US and Cuba].” – Lourdes Mugica, an ornithologist who helped to organise the analysis.
Ventura calls out observations to her college students who take notes close by – species, weight, an estimate of the hen’s physique fats. They are contemporary information factors in a undertaking that goals to unravel mysteries into how and the place migratory birds from the United States and Canada spend their winters in Cuba.
“We know a lot about their ecology in the breeding zone [in North America] but very little about what happens in their wintering zone,” Ventura mentioned in an interview.
Part of the issue is politics, mentioned Lourdes Mugica, an ornithologist who helped to organise the analysis.
A US Cold War-era embargo, which restricts commerce and monetary transactions on the Caribbean island, has lengthy difficult cooperation – even in science – between the US and Cuba. The birds, although, are detached, Mugica mentioned.
“Birds don’t understand embargoes or geographic borders, they don’t need a visa to enter our country,” she mentioned. “I hope there comes a time when relations are normal and that we can have joint projects between [the US and Cuba].”
Mugica and Martin Acosta, pioneering ornithologists in Cuba, say this undertaking – with partnership from Environment and Climate Change Canada – hints at what is feasible.
Together, the Canadian and Cuban companions have put in a radio telemetry antenna – Cuba’s first beneath a world monitoring program known as MOTUS – which follows birds radio-tagged in different components of North America.
University of Havana professor Daniela Ventura takes measurement of a catbird, at Havana’s Botanical Garden, in Havana, Cuba, on ninth February, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Norlys Perez/File picture
The antenna lately detected in Cuba a tiny Swainson’s thrush, first tagged in British Columbia, Canada, a voyage of 5,000 kilometres.
“We never though we’d reach the level of sophistication we now enjoy,” mentioned Acosta.
Mugica and Acosta recall exhausting days throughout their careers – Mugica mentioned she misplaced 32 kilograms doing analysis many years in the past, at a time when meals in Cuba was scarce.
Logistics stay a problem even right this moment. The scientists’ 20-year-old pick-up truck wanted a push begin on a recent morning.
But the group celebrates small victories.
University of Havana professor Daniela Ventura speaks to college students at Havana’s Botanical Garden, in Havana, Cuba, on ninth February, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Norlys Perez/File picture
The catbird ensnared within the mist internet had been captured and affixed with an figuring out leg band again in November on the similar web site, Ventura’s information confirmed. It had gained physique fats within the three months since, she mentioned, forward of its coming migration north throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
“To think these little birds, which weigh less than 10 grams, cross the sea and come back and survive is spectacular,” she mentioned. “It’s humbling…to think that other living beings can perform these feats.”
– Additional reporting by CARLOS CARRILLO
