Nonsuch Island

It is a special place - an essentially uninhabited island on which the long-thought-extinct cahow, a sort of petrel and relative of the albatross, I'm told, has been reestablished, where endemic and native plants have been planted and basically required to overtake ...While not physically spectacular - I can't say that Bermuda is given to spectacular, just consistently beautiful - it is lovely.

I was able to visit (access is controlled) as a participant in another 'Historical Heartbeats' event set up by the Government's Community and Cultural Affairs folks (a shout-out here to Dr. Kim Dismont Robinson, who heads this up, maintains an amazingly upbeat attitude and is shortly to get married - ergo a discussion about what to do with a third name when you already have two longish ones.) We boarded the Coral Sea in St. George's and tootled out, threading between reefs and shorelines to as close to Nonsuch as we could get with that boat, then clambered over the side of the one to drop onto the evocatively named Feral Cat , 12 at a time, to cover that last 40 yards to Nonsuch's dock.

The cahow is given credit for this being a British colony rather than a Spanish one. Spanish sailors knew of the place. but - because of the habits and cry of the cahow - thought it the 'Isle of Devils'. (Cahows are ground burrowers, emerge to hunt at night and have this loud, low eerie moaning call that started off by sending shivers up their spines and went from there. There were lots of them back then, and the image is of an evening sky suddenly,, inexplicably, filled with hundreds of birds, crying like lost souls. Maybe if they had been on their mainland it wouldn't have spooked them so badly, but I can see how this little rocky bit of land could seem to hold an enticement that might steal souls and wreck boats. I get a little queasy, myself!)

So - two birds are so central to Bermuda's image and history...the cahow was too friendly, too unflustered, to survive the predations of the colonists. In fact, they were 'harvested' and packed for food provisions for Jamestown colonists - recently proven thru refuse digs in Jamestown - and saved lives there, as well as on what became Bermuda. It is incredibly rare, literally considered extinct until recently. A breeding pair survived and today there are 14 breeding pairs established again on Nonsuch, perhaps 80 all told in the world.

We saw the first chick born on Nonsuch in over 350 years, nicknamed Somers, while visiting today. Not many people see these birds, and Somers is barely in existence.

Jeremy Madeiros and company watch the few burrows/nests on other islands in this sound; if it seems the parents have left the babies prematurely he brings them over to Nonsuch and provides the parenting they need to survive their fledging. He's built several burrow-like nests for breeding pairs; they've adopted a sort of door to let the flatter, larger wing-span cahow parents in but NOT the rounder long-tails in, because the long-tails will eliminate the chicks and claim the burrow for themselves - rather a competition there, and they are mere feet apart. (The long-tails also have nests build for them, to encourage their nesting locally - little stone ''igloos'.)

Lots to share, but - sorry - I'm wiped out and will just post some photos for now... Water and skink and longtail chick (white) and cahow chicks (grey dust bunny Somers, and probably-fly-off-this-week much more bird-looking chick that had been prematurelyy abandoned at a remote nest) and such...