By Denis O'Connor, Wharfedale Naturalists' Society

In early March I escaped English wind and rain for the blue skies of Cuba. The trip started with a glimpse of Cuba’s colourful past, courtesy of Havana’s Seville Hotel.

Lobby photos included Graham Greene, who used the hotel as a location for Our Man in Havana, as well as Al Capone who on occasion occupied an entire floor with his bodyguards. The 1959 revolution closed the hotel casino and nationalised many US industries, resulting in the departure of the Americans, the Mafia among them.

Havana reminded me of a 1950s film with its lack of traffic but with every other car an ancient American giant. The countryside seemed to take a step further back in time with roads dominated by horse and bullock- drawn carts and traps.

Like many islands, much of Cuba’s wildlife is unique and a lot of time was spent searching for its 28 endemic birds. For me the avian stars were the national bird, the dazzling Cuban Trogon, the Cuban Tody, a four-inch jewel of a family confined to the Caribbean, American wood warblers in their spring finery, a roosting, cryptically coloured Cuban Nightjar, four woodpeckers (unfortunately not including the legendary Ivory-billed Woodpecker, perhaps surviving in eastern Cuba) and three owls. Bee Hummingbirds, the world’s smallest bird, fed on flowering trees along a hedgerow and were chased off by another hummingbird, the Cuban Emerald, at four inches twice their size.

Birds were not the only endemic species and on a shower curtain of our hotel alongside the Bay of Pigs I came face-to-face with a very agile Cuban tree frog. I ejected it but three nights later it had returned.

Active by day but sleeping on the window screens at night was a large bright green lizard with elongated gecko-like toes, a Cuban Green Anole. We were escorted by local wildlife guides at each site, all of them experts in their own patches.

Their skill was illustrated by Mario, who led us into a patch of woodland to the roost site of a huge, black-faced, devil-horned male Stygian owl (pictured left).

In a different patch were the female and two wild-eyed youngsters, completely lacking their parents’ indifferent poise.

Cuba, caught in a time warp due to its revolution and the subsequent US blockade, has a unique character that may not last much longer. For that alone it repays a visit.