Audubon donates 50 homes for cahows

Fifty new homes are ready and waiting for our endangered national bird, the cahow. The artificial nest boxes were donated to the cahow recovery programme by the Bermuda Audubon Society. 

The nest boxes were designed by former conservation officer Dr. David Wingate, who worked with cahows for 50 years. “Cahows are soil-burrowing birds and in pre-colonial times they would have dug their own burrows, but for hundreds of years they had to survive on rocky little islands where that was impossible,” he explained. “As the numbers increased under the restoration programme, we started building artificial burrows out of cement, which was labourious, back-breaking work. I saw the need for a mass-produceable surrogate which was durable, light and compact enough to transport to remote locations.”  Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros tried some artificial burrows from Australia, but they were designed for a smaller petrel and were not ideal for the cahow, so Dr. Wingate decided to design his own. “These meet all the requirements of our picky national bird – a long, curved tunnel and a nest chamber that is in total darkness.”

“Cahows still have the instinct to dig their own burrows and probably will start to do that now that they are nesting on Nonsuch Island, where there are appropriate conditions, but this could delay the start of breeding by new-formed pairs by several years. The provision of ready-made burrows not only results in much higher nesting densities within a restricted area but can also speed up population recovery in a restoration project,”  said Dr. Wingate. The nest boxes could be used by any mid-sized burrowing sea-bird, said Dr. Wingate. He believes that other seabird conservation programmes around the world could benefit from them.

Manufactured in kit form out of durable plastic, the nest boxes are easy to install and have a removable lid so that Mr. Madeiros can monitor the progress of chicks. He has already installed a number on Nonsuch Island.  The Bermuda Audubon Society paid for the molds from which the kits are made and for the manufacture of 25 boxes. A grant from BirdsCaribbean paid for the other 25 boxes.