As the Nonsuch Expeditions Team and followers from around the World watched online, the Cahow chick in burrow #831 where CahowCam1 is located hatched around midnight on Friday the 28th, officially launching the 2020 CahowCam Season…
Watch a video of its’ 1st health check (including highlights of the hatching process) produced by Nonsuch Expeditions Team Leader J-P Rouja as he and Jeremy headed out to Nonsuch the following day to check on the Colony. (Read Jeremy’s report below)
Jeremy Madeiros | Principle Conservation Officer (Terrestrial Conservation), Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources
“As the end of February approached, we began to prepare for the first Cahow chicks to begin hatching, as this usually occurs around the 26th to 28th of the month. Cahow eggs take from 50 - 55 days to hatch after being laid and incubated in turns by both adult birds.
Sure enough, in the early morning hours of 28th February, 2020, an eagle-eyed viewer spotted the first signs of a pip, or small hole in the shell of the egg in the "CahowCam 1" (R831) nest on Nonsuch Island, which is the first sign that a chick is beginning the often lengthy process of breaking out of the eggshell. by 3.00pm that afternoon, the pip was getting larger and the chick could easily be heard cheeping from inside the egg.
By 11,18pm that evening, the egg was splitting apart across the top, and by 11.40pm the chick was clearly emerging. At 11.51pm, the chick was mostly out of the egg, but still wearing the shell on its posterior like a diaper! The chick then fully emerged shortly after. The adult bird incubating the egg during the hatching then gently preened the chick and brooded it until its down had dried out and the chick assumed its normal "fluffy" appearance.
I managed to get out with JP Rouja to Nonsuch Island on the following day, Saturday 29th February (as it was a "Leap Year"), where we found that the CahowCam 1 chick was one of four Cahow chicks that had already hatched on Nonsuch. I was also able to confirm that it was the male bird (band no. E0197) that was with the chick during the hatching, and that the 14-hour old chick already weighed 54 grams. Since a newly hatched Cahow chick weighs between 34-39 grams, it had obviously already been fed by its father. It was also clear that the male had been incubating the egg for some time and was probably on the verge of being relieved by the female, as its own weight was down to 305 grams, compared to 421 grams when it first arrived in early January to begin sharing egg incubation duties with the female bird.
At 4.00am the following morning, after feeding the chick again, the male left the nest burrow, and was seen departing to sea on the surface cam shortly afterwards at 4.07am. After spending its first day alone, the chick was then joined by the female bird, which arrived in gale-force winds as soon as darkness fell at 6.59pm on the night of 1st March. We were relieved to see the mother begin bonding immediately, preening & feeding the chick and then staying over in the nest with it the rest of the night and the following day. We hope to get out again on Tuesday as soon as the current strong winds subside, and see if additional chicks have hatched on the island."