On Saturday, June 5th, 2021, at 10:43 pm, the Bermuda Petrel Cahow chick, recently named “Poppy”, whose life has been chronicled over the past 3 months by scientists and other viewers of the Nonsuch Expeditions CahowCams, took one last look around and launched herself, seemingly effortlessly, up into the air.
Jeremy with “Poppy” on June 5th
Nonsuch Expeditions Team Leader J-P Rouja: “Traditionally, Cahows use the edge of a cliff, a tree, the lids of their burrows, and sometimes even Jeremy as a vantage from which to launch into their first flight, but in her case, her body weight to wing chord ratio (see prior article) must have been so perfectly balanced that she was able to take off from flat ground almost vertically, and head straight out to sea.
Over the prior nights, the Nonsuch and Cornell Teams had been using remote-controlled infrared cameras to track her nocturnal movements, walking around, exploring the Colony, whilst exercising her wings and what can be best described as practicing for gliding by extending, and locking her wings whilst pitching her body forward. Then on multiple occasions, she approached the edge of the “launching pad” cliff face flapping her wings, but had failed to take off.
This resulted in virtually no sleep for our Teams as the camera had to be shifted and refocused every time she wandered out of view, otherwise, we ran the risk of missing the moment when she finally fledged, which from a filmmaking point of view is the culmination of the season.
Then the 4th night, (Saturday June 5th) we had just settled in for what was expected to be another long night, when only a few minutes after exiting her burrow and from the flat ground just outside the entrance, she just launched herself vertically into the air, and fledged!
What I find amazing is that they are able to instinctively practice advanced flying techniques despite having not yet flown. Also, once fledged they have approximately one week of fat reserves to sustain themselves until again instinctively they make their way to the cold waters beyond the gulf stream and teach themselves how to catch the krill, squid, and oily anchovy type fish that they need to survive.”
They will remain on their own, in the North Atlantic, on the High Seas, never touching land, until, should all go well, they return in 3 to 5 years to Nonsuch and the neighboring smaller islands to find a mate. The males upon returning will find or excavate a burrow and try to attract a female to it. If he strikes her fancy, she will land and inspect the burrow, and if it (and he) strikes her fancy, they will "seal the deal" with acrobatic courtship flights over the nesting colony. They will generally be faithful, lifelong partners, with pairs returning annually to the same nesting burrow, often for 20 years or more, to lay a single egg each year. Pairs do not stay together when they leave the burrow, but live a solitary life at sea, only meeting when they return to the nest to court, mate, incubate their egg, and carry out feeding visits for their chick for up to 90 days or more, until it fledges out to sea.
Jeremy’s two decades of extensive monitoring, note taking and banding of virtually all adults and chicks that he is able to access throughout the Colony, and by default the Species, has led to some interesting findings:
Chief Terrestrial Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros: “Cahows return to the specific island from which they fledged, often landing within yards of the burrow where they were raised (usually still occupied by their parents), and the males will generally stay there to try and attract a mate and build or claim a burrow. Some of the females however, will then roam to seek out mates on neighboring islands, a trait that may very well have saved the species from inbreeding during the hundreds of years when their population remained in the dozens of pairs. This is borne out by the fact that when I find new pairs, their burrow usually is on the same island where the male fledged from, however, the female most often will have fledged from a neighboring nesting island in the Castle Island Nature Reserve.
They are thought to live for 30 to 50 years, and seem to mate for life unless something has happened to one of the pair, or if they have a particularly long run of egg failures. However, if their nest burrow has been destroyed in their absence by a hurricane, this will usually lead to the break-up of the pair, which may eventually find new mates in new nest burrows. This process may take several years, so every effort is made to repair or rebuild and nest burrow destroyed or damaged by wave action.
This had generally been a good nesting season for the recovering Cahow population, with a record number of 142 breeding pairs being confirmed. I have just been able to confirm that 71 Cahow chicks have successfully fledged out to sea in 2021, up from 69 in 2020 and just short of the record of 73 successfully fledged chicks in the 2019 season.”
Poppy’s Final Health Check on June 5th
As a storm-front approaches, see “Poppy” the Cahow chick is exercising whilst adults buzz the colony from above, then “Stormy” lands and enters the burrow.