“This year, it looks like the number of breeding pairs (those that have produced an egg, whether it hatches or not) has increased to 142, a new record high, up from 135 pairs in 2020. On Nonsuch Island, the number of breeding pairs at the two nesting colonies increased from 23 in 2020 to 26 in 2021”
Report from Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Scientist - Terrestrial Conservation | Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources | BERMUDA
January 2021 has so far been unusually windy and stormy, with frequent weather fronts and winter storm systems forming off the east coast of North America and sweeping out to sea towards the Bermuda area. These have been bringing unusually heavy rain and strong to gale force winds, sometimes two to three times a week. Although this has made it difficult to get out to Nonsuch and the other offshore islands that are the sole breeding grounds of the Cahow, it has been good for the birds themselves, as the strong winds provide free energy to enable them to travel to and from their distant feeding grounds.
Therefore, on Wednesday morning (20th January), when winds finally dropped to 10 - 15 knots before the next onrushing weather system blew into the area, I decided to drop everything and go in the work boat from Flatts Inlet approximately 8 miles to Nonsuch island, on the southeast side of Bermuda, where I was able to carry out a complete check of all nesting burrows. As it turned out, I only had four hours to carry out the check before having to hurriedly leave Nonsuch and beat my way back across Castle Harbour and down North Shore in winds that had already increased to near gale-force. This is definitely not recommended in a 17' open Boston Whaler, or any other small craft for that matter! I arrived back to safety at Flatts Inlet, soaked but happy that I was able to carry out the check in the brief window of time available
The check confirmed that as of the 20th January, essentially all of the breeding Cahows have now returned, laid their eggs, and started incubation of them. This year, it looks like the number of breeding pairs (those that have produced an egg, whether it hatches or not) has increased to 142, a new record high number, up from 135 pairs in 2020. On Nonsuch Island, the number of breeding pairs at the two nesting colonies there increased from 23 in 2020 to 26 in 2021, in addition to two more pairs that established, built nests, but did not produce eggs (these pairs will probably produce their first eggs next year), and three additional nests that were being prospected by young returning Cahows. These Nonsuch colonies were established by two separate 5-year projects, involving the translocation of near-fledged chicks from the original small nesting islands to artificial burrows, where they were hand-fed daily and allowed to imprint on the new location, returning to their point of departure when they matured in 3 to 5 years.
One final surprise arising from this check was the confirmation that the male bird in one of the new pairs on Nonsuch was a bird that we had very much seen before - when I took the bird out from the nest to check its weight and band number, I was able to confirm that I had banded it as a chick in the CahowCam 1 (R831) nest burrow in 2017, and that it had been named "Shadow" by JP Rouja's daughter Sophie on June 1st of that year. So welcome back, Shadow, after three and a half years of living out on the open Atlantic Ocean!
So, overall, things are looking well for this year's nesting season, but with more strong winds predicted, it will be several days before I can go out again to start candling the eggs to see how many are fertile and likely to hatch in 50 to 55 days.