At 11:17 pm on April 29th, online followers of the CahowCam 2 LIVEstream heard a familiar call from the tunnel, as “Stormy” the very lost, lonely, annoying, and now infamous Storm Petrel was back once again.
He is a diminutive Leach’s Storm-Petrel, (a related species, about one fifth the size of the resident Cahows), a long way from his nesting colonies on the East Coast of the US and Canada, which for the past five nesting seasons has returned to try and nest in the CahowCam 2 burrow much to the annoyance of the current occupants.
In past years he has insisted on living with the Cahow chick until it fledges, during which time he attempts in vain to court it nightly with mating calls and other antics, however, for some reason, the Cahow parents and even the chick which is several times his size, do not evict or hurt him, even though they could easily do so.
Time will tell if this will continue this year, however the first interactions with this years Cahow chick seemed to indicate that it may not be as patient as its siblings from prior years, and it was already being quite quite aggressive towards him.
Watch the LIVEstream here where he can be expected to return around midnight.