After the near record-breaking and very eventful 2024-25 Cahow nesting season, the upcoming 2025-26 season has started earlier than usual, and whilst we were on track to break records this year, the Cahows are now facing a potentially devastating threat from the passage of Hurricane Melissa.
On October 14th the CahowCam1 LiveStream recorded the earlier than expected arrival of what was later confirmed to be the male from the well-established resident pair, the earliest return on record to be logged by Jeremy, following a trend that has become apparent over the past few years...
This was then followed by the early return of several other individual Cahows and pairs throughout the Colony, and the return of the CahowCam1 mate the night of October 21st. Watch the season’s first video health check shot earlier that day, as seen above.
The longtime pair failed to fledge a chick last year due to a cracked egg, but were able to head back out to sea early and have more time to recover and build up fat reserves putting them in better condition for this coming season. They successfully fledge a chick roughly every other year, so hopefully this year will be a good one!
On October 29th a Cahow has also returned to the neighboring CahowCam2 burrow where last season there was a “Who’s the Daddy ?” paternity scandal after an interloping male spent a few days with the new resident female prior to the original males return.
To answer this question the Nonsuch Expeditions and the DENR are collaborating with BioQuest, CariGenetics’ conservation NGO spin-off, (using bloodwork drawn with help from the Ettrick Animal Hospital), which the local CariGenetics Lab is using to produce a genetic paternity test to determine who the father is of the resulting chick, with results due to be announced during a talk / presentation later this month.
The groundbreaking Nonsuch Island nesting colonies, where Cahows had not nested since the 1620s, saw the first Cahows in nearly 400 years hatch in 2009 as a result of Jeremy's pioneering Translocation Projects in 2004-2008 and 2013-2017. These new colonies are now growing from strength to strength with 23 chicks fledged from 41 breeding pairs in 2025, just two off the record of 25 chicks fledging in 2024. This makes the Nonsuch colonies the second-largest sub-population of Cahows on Earth. In the 16 years since the first Nonsuch chick fledged, these colonies have produced a total of 185 successfully fledged chicks.
With so many prospecting younger birds and new pairs seen returning we expect it take the lead this coming year or next. This will require a big boost in the building of new Cahow burrows to speed up the process and avoid conflicts, so stay tuned to the Nonsuch Expeditions if you would like to help.
Things are definitely looking positive for Nonsuch, however elsewhere in the original nesting colonies, on the smaller lower lying outer islands, we are currently facing the increased sea-level rise / hurricane threats that the 25 year Nonsuch effort was designed to counter: