185 Trouble in paradise 



The Rio Cauto (cauto means "cautious") is the longest river in 

 Cuba. It rises to the north of Santiago de Cuba and follows a 

 winding course northward and then west, for about 150 miles, 

 flowing into the Golfo de Guacanayabo northwest of the seaport 

 of Manzanillo. It is the delta that is especially interesting to an 

 ornithologist. Some 25 kilometers in breadth where it meets the 

 gulf, the delta is bordered by dense mangroves to the south, and 

 wide mud flats and salinas to the north. On our first morning 

 with Julio it was evidently his plan to take the boat up one of the 

 several fingers of the delta, Rio Jutia, thence by piragua up the 

 smaller Gutta Jutia and from the head of that, on foot, to the 

 large salina where he said the flamingos had nested. I say "evi- 

 dently" because Julio's plan was always a trifle uncertain and, 

 since he spoke not one word of English, I was never too sure of 

 his intentions, even with the advantage of Arturo's free transla- 

 tion. In fact, Arturo admitted later on, in a moment of confidence, 

 that he too found the old man's mental processes somewhat vague, 

 if not just plain downright irresponsible. Or words to that effect in 

 the Spanish manner of expression. 



So we chug-chugged up the coast and into mangrove-lined bays 

 and channels, routing out sizable flocks of white ibises, which 

 the Cubans called coco bianco, and troops of cormorants and 

 water turkeys. Their name for the cormorant is corua, and for the 

 water turkey, coma real, intimating, perhaps, that the cormorant 

 is a fake, an imposter, while the water turkey is the real cormorant. 

 This was especially interesting to me since I had run into a some- 

 what similar distinction among the Eskimos several years before, 

 when Bob Smith and I were counting waterfowl along the Arctic 

 coast. The Eskimo's name for the Canada goose is ulualik neglek 

 "the goose with the cheeks" but the black brant of that same 

 region is called neglekenak, which means "the real neglek" I To 

 pass the time of day, I tried to get Julio's opinion on the distinc- 

 tion between the cormorant and water turkey, but he didn't seem 

 to understand. Arturo became interested, being fascinated with 

 the strange behavior of the corua reales anyway, and I explained 

 to him that we have several names for this particular bird, which 

 also occurs in the southeastern United States. Besides water tur- 



