A “Happy Day” for Jeremy as he checks in on the first Nonsuch Colony Cahow chick of the 2022 Season that also has one of the earliest recorded hatch dates in the program’s history!
" On Wednesday, 23 Feb. 2022, J.P. Rouja and myself were able to visit Nonsuch Island to check on the progression of the Cahow nesting season, and I was finally able to get on one of the other smaller nesting islands, Green Island, to check on things there. Bad weather, and rough conditions, had prevented a landing for almost 6 weeks.
On Green Island, things were proceeding better than I had hoped for; I found and weighed my first downy Cahow chick of this season, which at this point was only about a day old and was accompanied by its father. I also found a startling total of 7 eggs being incubated by adult birds in their burrows that were already "pipping", when the chicks start chipping their way out of the eggs, a process that can take 24-48 hours. The large end of these eggs showed multiple dimple-shaped punctures as the chicks within slowly break out, and one egg showed a 1-cm hole with a tiny hooked beak busily nibbling away at the edges to enlarge it. Another 5 nests showed fertile eggs in earlier stages of development, being quietly incubated by the dutiful parents.
In addition to the nest checks, so far, our collaborative researcher Letizia Campioni from MARE ISPA (Portugal) and I were able to attach 21 geolocator tags (out of 30), on the legs of adult Cahows, where they will be left on for a year or two, to monitor the oceanic movements of the birds with two daily position fixes.
On Nonsuch, we were also able to confirm that the first downy Cahow chick had hatched on the island this season, This chick was beginning to hatch last Friday, meaning that it was certainly fully hatched by Saturday, 19th February, possibly one of the earliest hatchings ever recorded for a Cahow. Chicks normally hatch at about 38-41 grams, and this chick was already up to 53 grams, meaning that it had already received its first feeds from the female bird which was brooding the chick. As an added bonus, the female was found to have a GPS tag on its tail feathers, attached by Letizia and her colleague Martin Beal about a month ago to record "off-shift" feeding trips by adults during egg incubation, when the partner relieves it and it returns to sea for about a week to feed. So far we have recovered about half of the 18 GPS tags deployed on adult Cahows.
Finally, we made a quick check of the Nonsuch CahowCam 1 nest, to see what was happening in preparation for the Camera in that nest coming back on-line. The egg was still fertile and not pipping yet, but appeared to be quite close to hatching. Cahow eggs take 49-53 days to hatch, which would put the projected hatch date between this Sunday (27th February) and Wednesday (2nd March), if all goes well, but possibly sooner so start watching the LiveStream over the weekend via: http://www.nonsuchisland.com/live-cahow-cam
All the best, Jeremy
Jeremy Madeiros, Principle Scientist - Terrestrial Conservation, Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources