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On March 11th at around 11 pm, our CahowCam 2 chick finally hatched. It was an abnormally long hatching process as Jeremy had first seen signs of dimpling 5 days prior, but in the end, it went smoothly. Watch a video of its first health when it was 3 days old below. Watch the LiveStream here.
Article By: Aaron Tremper Editorial Intern, Audubon Magazine
For the past decade, the CahowCam Project has entertained viewers while revealing new insights into the lives of the endangered Bermuda Petrel.
JP Rouja makes adjustments to CahowCam 1 | Photo Chris Burville
Article Excerpt: Just after midnight in March, 2017, an intruder enters a seaside burrow on Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island. He’s a young male Bermuda Petrel, or Cahow, a 15-inch-long seabird wearing slick gray-and-white feathers. He is also one of only 350 or so individuals left of his species in the world. As the bird waddles into the basketball-size nesting cavity, he’s excitedly greeted by a fluffy mass of down—a cheeping, five-day-old Cahow Chick waiting for its parents to return with a meal.
But the young male is not the chick’s parent; he is an invader looking to take over the nest. He suddenly grabs the chick’s neck with his hooked bill and starts biting. The next 18 minutes are tense, as the male alternates between scoping out the nest and assaulting the chick. Unsatisfied, he finally exits the chamber, leaving behind a shaken but otherwise intact nestling.
This encounter—caught on camera and livestreamed to thousands of online viewers—was the first time Cahow conservationists had ever observed such a behavior. At that point, researchers were well aware of the dangers that invasive rats, land crabs, and competing tropicbirds pose to young petrels. But this video footage documented an unknown threat to the endangered seabird: other Cahows.
The discovery is one of several made by The CahowCam Project, a set of livestreaming webcams currently in its 10th season of monitoring Cahow nesting burrows of Nonsuch Island, a 14-acre wildlife sanctuary in Bermuda. The project consists of three cameras: two tucked away in nesting cavities, and one stationed outside of the two burrows. Jean-Pierre Rouja, a photographer and environmentalist who founded the project in 2013, runs and maintains the livestreams. Last year, they collectively saw roughly 450,000 views from people around the world… Read the Full Article: https://www.audubon.org/news/how-webcams-are-helping-scientists-save-one-worlds-rarest-seabirds
Article from the Bermudian Magazine Website > March 16, 2022
Written by: Fae Sapsford
JP Rouja installing first generation of CahowCam in 2012 | Photo Chris Burville
Article Excerpt: Inside a cahow’s egg, the chick’s skull takes up most of the room – they are packed in tightly, their whole bodies folded up. When they hatch in late February and early March, in just hours they take up ten times the room that the egg they have just emerged from did, puffing up to a ridiculous size as their fluffy down dries out. The flamboyant grey down chicks are precious things – they represent incredible time and energy investment from the cahow parents, which mate for life – and they are a testament to the tremendous dedication of Bermudian conservationists, who have enabled this ‘Lazarus species’ to be brought back from the brink of extinction.
All 155 pairs, representing the entire species of the rare bird, nest on Nonsuch Island and a few small, surrounding rocks. This incredible living museum, designed to represent pre-colonial Bermudian ecology, free from introduced flora and fauna, was created to enable cahows to thrive. Though the cahow is Bermuda’s national bird, few Bermudians have seen one in person: Nonsuch Island (currently closed due to covid) grants very limited access to the public in order to protect the survival of the fragile species, and the recovery programme is carefully managed by principal scientist for terrestrial conservation in Bermuda, Jeremy Madeiros. However – thousands of people watch the mating, nesting, hatching, and fledging of this living fossil every year through the ingenuity of fellow cahow champion, Jean-Pierre Rouja… Read Full Article of the History of the CahowCam on the Bermudian Website
Today, Bermuda's pioneering Cahow Recovery Program is excited to announce that on February 27th, at 1.57 am, CahowCam 1 captured the successful hatching of the first of this year's Cahow chicks. Seen attended to by the male parent, this milestone moment in the recovery of Bermuda's unique and critically endangered National Bird, the Cahow strengthens the program's reputation as one of the most successful conservation recovery programs for a critically endangered species in the world.
(Watch its first health check along with a preview of other chicks from Nonsuch Colony A in the video at the bottom of this post)
The Cahow played a role in Bermuda's early history, helping to prevent the Spanish colonization of Bermuda and giving rise to the earlier naming of the island as the "Isle of Devils".
Further expanding on the history, the Minister of Home Affairs, the Hon. Walter Roban explained, "The Cahow was catastrophically affected by the arrival of man on Bermuda, the introduction of mammal predators, and thought to be extinct for over three hundred years. Miraculously re-discovered in 1951, it became known as a "Lazarus Species", but with only 18 nesting pairs, the entire Cahow population was on the brink of extinction."
"However, since its rediscovery, the Bermuda Government's Cahow Recovery Program addressed threats to the species, enabling its increase to a record number of 155 nesting pairs in 2022."
At the same time, a partnership with program partner J-P Rouja of Nonsuch Expeditions has been responsible for the installation of infrared LIVEstream CahowCams in Cahow burrows on Nonsuch Island, enabling the public and researchers in over 100 countries to observe the nesting activity of this iconic species unobtrusively and enabling new discoveries to be made. The CahowCams have enabled the Recovery Program to achieve one of its most important objectives: public outreach and education, informing the public about the importance of our National Bird to Bermuda's history and natural heritage.
We invite everyone to follow the growth and development of this chick, (and if all goes well the hatching of the CahowCam 2 chick which is expected in the next few days) and feeding visits by their respective parents, for the next three months.
2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the CahowCam service, which has helped to raise Bermuda's profile in the international arena concerning innovative conservation management.”
Watch LIVEstream now: http://www.nonsuchisland.com/live-cahow-cam
CAHOW HATCHING ALERT!!! The hatching process for the Cahow chick in the CahowCam1 burrow is well underway!
Jeremy first observed dimples in the egg during his nest check on the 25th, then @2:32 am on the 26th JP observed the first pip when the parent took a quick break, briefly uncovered the egg.
During another reveal @ 3:24 am 3 pips were observed, which had then combined into a larger pip / hole by 4:12 am.
By 5:46 am the hole/ crack was even larger with peeps being heard from under the parent @ 5:51am, but most likely still from inside the egg.
It can sometimes take up to 48 hours from the first pip until the chick manages to fully emerge by chipping away to make a large enough hole, or by connecting a series of pips into cracks around the larger end of the egg so that it can then be pushed off.
At 12.16 pm, an energetic preening session revealed a still mostly intact egg.
At 8:30pm after several more reveals over the afternoon, the parent takes a break leaving the egg alone in the nest and the chick can be heard very clearly vocalizing from inside the egg.
At 9:12 pm the second parent returns and after a few minutes of vocalizing and preening its mate, takes over incubation and starts aggressively rearranging the nest.
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
Candling exercise indicates that the CahowCam1 egg is fertile.
“January 2022 has brought with it a number of winter storms and gales affecting the Bermuda area, with one gale on the 13th-14th Jan. bringing winds gusting up to 54 to 68 knots (62 to 80 mph). Calm spells to get out in a small craft to visit and survey the Cahow nesting islands have been few and far between, but J-P Rouja, Carla Marquardt and myself were able to get out on Sunday 16th January to carry out a check of nest burrows on Long Rock and Nonsuch Island, and shoot a video of the latest check of the CahowCam 1 (# R831) nest to find out what was happening.
In particular, Carla was able to candle Cahow eggs that were being incubated by the adults, while I carried out weight and body condition checks and band checks of the adult Cahows. Candling can determine whether an egg is fertile or not, and check on the development of the embryos inside fertile eggs. Although a number of eggs had failed on Long Rock, indicating that breeding success rates will be low, possibly impacted by disruption to and disturbance of the burrows after this very low-lying islet was completely submerged by 20-foot waves during near-miss hurricanes during both 2020 and 2021. On Nonsuch Island, however, a higher percentage of the eggs already laid that were checked were fertile and their embryos developing normally, probably helped by the fact that the nest sites on this island are at much higher elevation and were not impacted at all by hurricane flooding and erosion.
Regarding the CahowCam 1 nest, the adult birds at this nest returned and laid their single egg on the night of 8th January. JP and I were able to visit Nonsuch on the 9th, and it was noted that the egg was not only quite large at 60 grams weight but was unusually long & elongated in shape. This can sometimes indicate that the egg will not be fertile (although we have had chicks hatch successfully from elongated eggs before!). Nevertheless, it was a relief when Carla was able to confirm that the egg was in fact fertile, with a normally developing 7-8 day old embryo. The Cahows in the other, CahowCam 2 nest are always one of the last pairs to return and had not returned yet as of this check. The CahowCams can be seen here: http://www.nonsuchisland.com/live-cahow-cam
At this point, about 90 % of all pairs have returned to lay their eggs. A number of male birds had arrived first and were waiting for the arrival of their mates, so that they could start the first and longest incubation shift. During this time the female returns to sea for 7 to 14 days while the male cares for the egg, living off accumulated fat reserves. The female needs this recovery period to feed and recover after laying an egg which can be a fifth to a quarter of her body mass - the equivalent of a human having a 30-lb baby! This is the reason Cahows can only produce 1 egg a year.
24 hours after making this check of the islands, Bermuda is again being lashed by heavy rain and winds gusting to gale-force. It will likely be a couple of days before we can make the next visit to the islands, during which we will continue to check nests on the remaining nesting islands to get a better idea of how many chicks of Bermuda's critically endangered National Bird we can expect for this nesting season."
Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Scientist - Terrestrial Conservation | Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources
“Poppy” the 2021 CahowCam 2 Star
Wishing you and yours a safe and healthy Holiday Season.
We look forward to you joining us in January when the Cahows return to lay their eggs for what we hope to be another record-breaking nesting season.
J-P, Jeremy and the Cahows
Winter edition of US National Audubon Magazine Cover and photos by Jean-Pierre Rouja
The Winter edition of the U.S. National Audubon Magazine has a major feature on the Cahow project with the cover and other photography by Nonsuch Expeditions founder, and CahowCam creator Jean-Pierre Rouja.
The in-depth article written by author Jessica Bruder (whose book was the inspiration for this year’s Oscar-winning Nomadland film) documents Jeremy Madeiros’s daily activities and his groundbreaking Cahow Translocation Project along with the history of the original Cahow Recovery Program started by his predecessor David Wingate, and the dynamics between the two conservationists.
Jeremy Madeiros: " It was an honor for the Cahow Recovery Program to be selected, for this feature, as the National Audubon Magazine is one of the larger environmentally-themed publications in the United States. With over 400,000 readers it goes a long way towards fulfilling the program's objective of public outreach and education, as do the live-stream Cahow Cams, both for Bermudians and for international audiences. I would also like to acknowledge other staff at the Department of Environment and natural Resources, especially Conservation Officer Peter Drew and the Terrestrial Conservation Crew, led by foreman Kiwon Furbert, that have carried out much work with the Recovery Program, and been instrumental in enabling Bermuda's unique National Bird to continue its inspiring recovery".
J-P Rouja | Nonsuch Expeditions Founder / CahowCam Developer: “Our CahowCams (now in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) are also featured including screen grabs taken from the LiveStreams, and we look forward to engaging with the hundreds of thousands of Audubon members and readers as they logon to our CahowCams just in time to witness the return of the Cahow pairs to lay their single egg in early January.
It was great to work with their photo editors who along with requesting new images, gave me an excuse to go through the thousands of photos taken during the now 10-year-old CahowCam project, alongside the weekly update videos that I produce throughout each nesting season.”
“Having one of my photos used for the cover was already amazing, however the fact that the subject they selected was “Poppy” our 2021 CahowCam 2 star, made it all the more iconic as:
Its parents were both translocated to and then fledged from Nonsuch Translocation Colony A in 2005.
They first returned in 2009 and produced their first egg in 2010 since when they have produced a single egg each year, for 12 years.
From these they have successfully fledged 10 chicks, making them one of the most successful pairs in the Colony.
It has Band # E0782 and is from burrow #R832 from which the Nonsuch Expeditions CahowCam2 is LiveStreaming and was named “Poppy” by Nonsuch Expeditions junior explorer Sophie Rouja
It hatched as seen live on camera on March 9th at 9:42 pm and fledged again on camera on June 5th at 10:43pm
When the cover photo was taken on May 23rd it was 75 days old, weighed 375 grams, had a wing chord of 210 mm and its tarsus was 39.4 mm. Its bill length was 28 mm and bill depth 10.9mm, indicating that it is most likely a female.
When I provided the above caption to Audubon they said it was the most detailed they had ever seen, but this just further highlights the level of detail that Jeremy has been logging for virtually all members of the species.”
An online version of the article can be found here, where you can also become a member and receive a copy of the magazine: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/winter-2021/it-takes-helicopter-parent-rescue-rare-seabird
The 2022 Cahow nesting season can be watched LIVE here: www.nonsuchisland.com/live-cahow-cam
A newly discovered un-banded adult Cahow.
The Cahow recovery program is moving into high gear, with the number of breeding pairs increasing from last year’s record of 143 to 156 this year.
In the Nonsuch Island A and B colonies alone, from which an incredible 102 chicks have fledged since the first chick to hatch on Nonsuch Island in over 300 years fledged in 2009 as a result of the Cahow Translocation Progam; this year the number of breeding pairs will jump from 27 to 36, the largest increase in the program’s history!
Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Scientist - Terrestrial Conservation |Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources:
"As of the 19th November, all breeding Cahows had returned back to their nest burrows, with over 80 individual adult Cahows checked for band numbers, weight and general body condition. Included in this are the 4 Cahows from the two "Cahow-Cam" nests, all of which returned safely. In addition, all 9 of the new nesting pairs that only formed last season have now returned to Nonsuch for this season, and will hopefully produce their first eggs together later into the season.
As of this date, we are half-way through the courtship and nest building phase of the breeding season. In December, all of the birds will leave their nests to return to the open ocean for 4 to 5 weeks of intensive feeding, the females to develop their single large egg, and the males to fatten up with fat reserves to carry out egg incubation duties. In the beginning of January, the birds will return to lay their eggs and start egg incubation, which lasts 53 - 55 days”.
J-P Rouja | Nonsuch Expeditions Team Leader & CahowCam Creator:
“Surprisingly, as I was filming Jeremy doing a nest check for the most recent video, he found an un-banded adult female. The pair in that particular burrow had previously been productive, but had not produced a chick for the past 2 years, and we now suspect that the original female has not returned for some reason. Jeremy had checked on the male earlier this season but this is the first time for this new female.
Each season he is able to band virtually all of the chicks in accessible burrows throughout the colonies, but there are a handful located in natural deep crevices on the outer islands that he can’t reach and therefore fledge un-banded, this female being one of them. Watch the above video for a full explanation.”
Watch the CahowCam LIVE here: http://www.nonsuchisland.com/live-cahow-cam
At 8.50am on the 4th July 2021, The “Bermuda Longtail” White-tailed Tropicbird chick (Phaethon lepturus catsbyii) that has been followed since it hatched on the 24th April at the Artificial nest-site # 387 (which is fitted with a Nonsuch Expeditions / Cornell Lab of Ornithology live-stream video camera) at the Nonsuch Island Nature Reserve on Bermuda, fledged successfully out to sea at 71 days of age.
“Events at this nest for the 2021 nesting season have been fairly dramatic, to say the least; after laying one of the earliest recorded eggs for this species, around the 7the March, the pair of Tropicbirds that have made this nest their home for the last 6 years hatched their egg on the 24th April. This made it the first Tropicbird chick to hatch in 2021 out of the hundreds of nests monitored every year on the Castle Harbour Islands Nature Reserve on Bermuda, home to the largest concentration of breeding White-tailed Tropicbirds in the North Atlantic.”
“Only a couple of weeks later, around the 5th of May, there was further drama as the adult female bird stopped visiting this nest. This was almost certainly due to the death of the bird at sea, perhaps due to predation by a large fish or Tiger Shark. Normally, the loss of one of the adults means that the remaining adult will not be able to adequately feed the chick, which will slowly lose weight and be unable to develop and fledge successfully unless we intervene and take the chick into care to hand-feed it.
The Male bird from this pair, however, is an exceptionally healthy, vigorous bird that has experience in raising several successfully fledging chicks, and for the next two months, was able to carry out one to three feeding visits almost every day! This is when the value of regular weekly growth checks of the chicks was highlighted since I was able to confirm that not only was the chick being fed enough Squid and Flying Fish to grow normally with above-average body weights, but the adult male bird was also able to catch enough food to maintain its own body condition at a normal weight. This is very rare for a single adult to be able to pull this off and to put this feat in context, the male did a better job of feeding and taking care of the chick than most adult pairs, working together, are able to achieve.
Even though our “Tropicbird Cam” chick has now departed and fledged out to sea, the Tropicbird Breeding Success Survey, which has been carried out annually for the last 16 years (since 2006) is only at the midway point. Every year for this survey, I monitor over 300 Tropicbird nest sites at ten study locations around the eastern half of Bermuda. This is done because Bermuda supports the largest breeding population of the subtropical seabird species in the Atlantic Ocean (over 3500 breeding pairs), making this an internationally significant population for the species. During this survey, the breeding success rate and number of successfully fledged chicks are recorded. And all adult birds and chicks that can be safely reached are fitted with corrosion-resistant identification leg bands, to ensure individual birds can be positively identified over their entire lifespan. In addition, a subset of chicks are weighed and measured weekly as a study of chick growth rates, to gauge relative annual ocean productivity around Bermuda.
So far, as of July 4th, I have been able to visit about 250 of the 321 study nests. Although I do not band the chicks until they are at least half-grown, it has been possible to band 76 chicks and 14 adult Tropicbirds, and will be hopefully continuing this work until the last chicks fledge by late September to early November. Bermuda was hit by 2 hurricanes in the latter part of last year’s study period, and a good deal of work has had to be carried out this season to repair damaged nests so that the birds (both Cahows and Tropicbirds) could use them. Hopefully, hurricanes will give Bermuda a wide berth in 2021!”
Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Scientist – Terrestrial Conservation, Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources, Bermuda Government
Happy Father’s Day from Nonsuch Island in #Bermuda where Jeremy would like to nominate our “Bermuda Longtail” #Tropicbird Cam male as a #FathersDayHero
He has been feeding his chick completely on his own since his mate stopped returning 6 weeks ago and against all odds the chick continues to grow healthily and has an above average weight.
Watch them on the TropicbirdCam LIVEstream an ongoing collaboration with the Cornell Lab Of Ornithology.
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.
On #WorldOceansDay, check out the photos by @nonsuchexpeditions Team Leader & Photographer J-P Rouja (with collection assistance from Chris Flook), in this informative article by the Sargasso Sea Commission Program Manger, Tess Mackey. She outlines why the Sargasso Sea is such a special area of the ocean, and gives great background on a grant that the Commission recently obtained from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). This is the first-ever GEF grant designed to address conservation and governance in a well-defined high seas ecosystem.
The Global Environment Facility approved a project titled ‘Common Oceans - Sustainable utilisation and conservation of biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction’ - and the Sargasso Sea ‘child project’ in June 2020. The project is supported by the United Nations Development Programme, and the @ioc_unesco is the executing agency. Other partners of the project include @biosstation , @dukeuniversity Marine Spatial Ecology Lab, the @imperialcollegeCentre for Environmental Policy, @edinburghuniversity , the World Maritime University, and the French Global Environment Fund. The project will also benefit from the Western Tropical Atlantic Planning Group for the Ocean Decade.
Read the full article in ECO Magazine!
Over the past few nights, Nonsuch Expeditions team leader J-P Rouja along with Jeremy and our collaborators from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have been remotely operating the infrared surface cam installed above ground in Nonsuch Island Colony A to remotely track, film and live-stream the star chick of the 2021 CahowCam nesting season and her neighbors as they prepare to fledge.
She is expected to fledge imminently and started venturing out of her burrow after dark on recent nights, to exercise, explore, and imprint on her surroundings, (which will assist her in finding her way back a few years from now).
Their parents will have been fattening them up over the past few weeks, often beyond their optimum flying weight. Then, just prior to fledging they are effectively abandoned in the burrow from which will emerge at night to exercise and help convert their extra fat to leaner muscle and, drop weight whilst growing their wings, until they reach the optimum conditions for flight.
It is their body weight in grams and outer wing length (wing chord) in mm that are used to predict when they will be ready for their first flight (known as fledging). The resulting numbers are based on 21 years of meticulous note taking and statistical analysis conducted by Chief Terrestrial Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros, who over two decades has banded and tracked the growth of virtually every accessible chick throughout the colony. As Cahows only nest in Bermuda he has effectively been able to track the entire species which is quite a rare achievement!
Over this period he has established that a healthy chick will fledge with weights ranging from 265 - 300 grams and a wing chord / outer wing length of 255 mm to 275 mm.
As of June 1st our star chick was 303 grams and had a wing chord of 245 mm so by now (updated June 3rd) she should have lost a few grams in weight as she has not been fed, and her wing chord should have grown to reach 255 mm putting her in the perfect condition to fledge successfully from tonight onwards.
The Team will continue to follow and film them nightly until she fledges, starting just after dark each night and viewers wishing to follow this LIVE or watch replays can do so via the CahowCam Page.
To meet our star chick filmed during her last health check on June 1st, please see the video below:
1 day old Tropicbird chick which recently hatched in the burrow adjacent to our Tropicbird Cam.
Watch a replay of the 3 week health check for our Tropicbird Cam chick on May 14th. Its growth rate is above average due to its very attentive parents which this season are finding a good source food nearby allowing for more frequent and regular feeding visits.
Watch the LIVEstream here.
It is being raised in one of the artificial burrows coming up from the dock on Nonsuch Island, and its newly hatched neighbor is quite possibly one of the cutest chicks so far this season.
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.
The 2021 nesting season edition of the White-tailed Tropicbird “Longtail” Cam is now live-streaming from Nonsuch Island.
This years chick hatched on April 24th and as of its first health check on the 29th was up to 55 grams.
“For Earth Day, 2021, it is good to recognize, and address both the many environmental challenges and disasters, many human-caused, which are ongoing around the planet, but also to celebrate the many successful recovery and restoration projects, which aim to sustain, restore and protect the amazing natural heritage that Earth supports and that we, as humans, are blessed with and dependent on.
At this point, it is appropriate to provide an update on the progress of this year’s Cahow Breeding Season, as many of this year’s crop of chicks are already reaching the half-fledged point (6 to 7 weeks old). With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic impacting human activities and societies world-wide for more than a year now (and Bermuda undergoing a second lock-down due to a surge in confirmed cases and deaths due to Covid as I write this report), I feel that it is very timely to deliver some good news, for a change!
1 day old Cahow chick photographed 2/28/2021
I can confirm that we now have a new record high number of 142 established breeding pairs of Cahows (up from 135 pairs in 2020); the number of breeding pairs on Nonsuch Island also increased to 27 pairs in 2021. There are 13 chicks currently on Nonsuch Island (including this year’s CahowCam 2 chick), tying the previous record of 13 fledged Nonsuch chicks in 2018. In addition, we have confirmed perhaps the highest recorded annual number of at least 14 newly establishing pairs, that will probably produce their first eggs next season. Nine of these new prospecting pairs are in the two new nesting colonies on Nonsuch island, which only produced their first fledged chick in 2009.
Nonsuch was originally a historic nesting location for the Cahow, from which they were completely wiped out by the 1620s through overhunting by the recently arrived human colonists and predation by introduced mammal predators. Near-fledged chicks were moved or translocated to artificial burrows during two projects on Nonsuch from 2004 – 2008 and 2013-2017 and hand-fed squid and anchovies, so they could imprint on Nonsuch instead of the original islets, which were vulnerable to hurricane flooding and erosion and sea-level rise. After fledging from Nonsuch, these birds spent 3 to 6 years at sea before they returned, and as hoped, they mostly came back to Nonsuch Island.
The first of these newly returned Cahows paired up on Nonsuch in 2009, producing the first naturally hatched chick recorded on Nonsuch Island for almost 390 years. Since this first chick, the new Cahow colonies on Nonsuch have increased from 1 pair in 2009 to 30 breeding pairs producing eggs in the 2021 nesting season. The number of successfully fledged chicks produced by these new Nonsuch colonies also increased from 1 to 89 chicks by 2020; if all 13 of this year’s crop of Nonsuch chicks fledge successfully in late May and June, then these colonies will have reached a significant milestone in having produced a total of 102 fledged chicks. It is worth noting that naturally fledging chicks only have about a 33 % return rate; in other words, of every ten chicks fledging, only 3 or 4 chicks survive the first 3 to 6 years at sea before they return to the nesting islands to choose nest burrows, pair up with a partner (generally for life), and start producing their own chicks.
Of these Nonsuch-born chicks, at least 16 have already returned as adults to pair up, 13 on Nonsuch and 3 on the other smaller nesting islands. Three of these birds have already produced their own chicks, producing the first “second-generation” Nonsuch Cahows.
For the 2021 Nesting Season, I can now confirm that there is a total of 71 chicks presently in nest burrows on all nesting islands, although there may be one additional chick in an especially deep nest that I am still trying to confirm. This is just below 2019s record number of 73 successfully fledged chicks, and is good news to convey on this year’s 2021 Earth Day!”
Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Scientist – Terrestrial Conservation | Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources | Bermuda
