March 8th 2020 12:46 pm
Scientists, students and followers around the World were watching as the new chick in the CahowCam2 burrow was finally revealed.
Its peeps had been heard for the past few hours once it had “pipped” and started breaking its way out of its egg, but as this process can at time take 24 hours or longer, viewers were not sure as to when it would completely hatch.
This is the second CahowCam chick to hatch this Season as the first had hatched in the burrow being monitored by CahowCam1eight days prior, and is doing very well.
The CahowCam2 female which had been taking turns with its mate to incubate the egg for the past 50 days, fed the chick its first few meals by regurgitating food it had been storing since its last trip out to sea. The following evening it departed to forage for food leaving the chick alone, less than 36 hours after hatching, which is not uncommon for the species.
J-P Rouja - Nonsuch Expeditions Team Leader | "The past 2 seasons the Nonsuch Expeditions Team has been collaborating on a new “Bermuda Petrel Biomonitoring Project” with the DENR and researchers from MARE / ISPA which has been geo-tagging some of the birds in the Colony.
One of things we are observing is that this year the birds seem to be foraging closer to Bermuda than last year, allowing for shorter excursions, more frequent feeding visits and higher overall body weights throughout the colonies.
This is clearly being seen in the CahowCam1 burrow where the chick has been fed almost every night, at times from both parents, versus extreme examples from the past where a parent has flown thousands of miles over 10 days to find food to feed the chick just once…
Should these favorable conditions continue over the next 3 months it should help us match or even break last years record of 73 successfully fledged chicks.”
Interested viewers can watch the chicks develop in both the CahowCam1 and CahowCam2 nest over the next few months via www.nonsuchisland.com where they may also sign up to the Newsletter for Nonsuch updates and alerts to significant nesting events.
Educators may also contact us for class room resources and video replays.