“Inna” our latest CahowCam 2 Star, fledged just after midnight on June 13th as part of this season’s final batch of Cahow chicks to fledge out to sea, marking the end of the 2024-2025 breeding season. Watch the above video summary of the most eventful CahowCam season since we (the Nonsuch Expeditions) started streaming 14 years ago, including highlights of the final 4 nights that Inna spent exercising and imprinting around Colony “A” before finally fledging.
Jean-Pierre Rouja | Nonuch Expeditions Founder & CahowCam Creator: “The CahowCam platform currently consists of 2 underground cameras: CahowCam1 in burrow # 831 (which failed earlier this season) and CahowCam2 in burrow #832, which have been LiveSteaming for the past 14 years. This season the 24/7 monitoring that they enable has truly proven its value to the recovery and management of the species, including raising paternity questions for the Cam2 chick, whilst also saving it from an invading Tropicbird.
The CahowCam3: Surface Cam, located on a post in the middle of Colony “A” has remote “PTZ” (pan, tilt, zoom) functionality, allowing us to monitor the comings and goings of Cahows (and threats) to the burrows in the vicinity, as well as the external nocturnal activities of chicks when they come out to exercise and imprint on their surroundings the few nights before they fledge. Every season as we document and archive the events in the Cam1 & 2 burrows we also aim to capture the final fledging of those chicks as an end-cap to the season, which in practice is easier said than done. In normal circumstances it requires many all-nighters on the part of myself and Jeremy, alongside our daytime responsabilites, which we have somewhat gotten used to, however this year was all the more challenging.
Our CahowCam2 chick, (one of the last to hatch and fledge in the Colony) was projected to fledge starting around June 10th, which coincided with the UN Oceans Conference in Nice which I was attending. This meant that my nights were spent tracking Inna around the Colony (on hotel wifi and the corresponding frustrating delays) and my days were spent navigating Nice and the associated UN meetings, etc. Nonetheless I managed to do so nightly until Inna finally fledged just after midnight Bermuda time on the 13th, a compilation of which can be seen in the above video.”
*Unfortunately the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has ended their much appreciated support for the program. To help keep the Cams going, our International followers can support these efforts here, else please contact us directly.
Jeremy Madeiros | Chief Terrestrial Conservation Officer & Nonsuch Island Warden: “We ended up with a total of 78 successfully fledging chicks, from 165 established nesting pairs (that produced an egg this season). The total number of chicks would have exceeded 80, but unfortunately at least 4 chicks were killed by smaller then usual White-tailed Tropicbirds (Longtails) which managed to squeeze through entrance baffles (designed to exclude them) and kill the resident chicks while trying to take over the nests for their own use.
Additionally, two Cahow chicks were barely saved during nest checks when Tropicbirds were found in the nests with the chicks and were unceremoniously tossed out before they could kill them.
One of these was the CahowCam2 chick, named "INNA", in the Nonsuch Island R832 nest burrow, which fortunately was being watched online by J-P Rouja whilst he was on the phone with me from my home in Flatts, when the Tropicbird broke in. I was then able to dash out down to the boat in Flatts Inlet, and race at full speed down the North Shore, across Castle Harbour, and arrive at Nonsuch in time to eject the Tropicbird before it seriously injured the chick. JP had been studying the CahowCam feed that morning as there was an adult Cahow in the burrow which we had observed was not acting like a parent, (aggressively preening the chick, but not feeding it etc.), but this adult effectively saved the chick by lunging at the much larger Tropicbird distracting it long enough to enable me to get there in time to save the chicks life. Imagine my surprise when I checked this adult, and found that it was not one of Inna's parents, but rather a young adult, named "Zephyr" which fledged as a chick from this same nest in 2020! So, Inna may have been saved by its half-sibling!
Adding to the drama, there is some uncertainty as to who the father of Inna actually is. Once again thanks to the 24/7 nest monitoring enabled by the CahowCam platform, when the female from this nest first returned, it was joined for 4 days in the nest, not by its mate, Sampson (band no. E0174), but by another male bird (band no. E0296) that had been temporarily ejected from its own R821 nest elsewhere in the colony by a new prospecting pair. They were seen mating together before "Sampson" returned, sized up the situation within seconds, and being a larger bird, quickly attacked and ejected the other male. A blood sample had already been collected from the E0296 bird a couple of years ago during a study of Persistent Organic Pesticides in Cahows, and another sample was taken from the "Inna" chick by local vets Andrew Madeiros and Jenn Busby from Ettrick Animal Hospital. These samples have been sequenced by Genomic Population Study partners BioQuest, and soon we should be able to answer the question of which male Cahow is Inna's daddy!
The graph shows the weight (in grams) and wing chord length (in millimeters) of "Inna" from a 4-day-old chick at 65 grams of weight on 13th of March, to a 2-month-old large chick on 11th of May reaching a maximum of 433 grams, to a fully-fledged, 93-day old bird on 11th of June, 2 nights before it fledged to sea, the last Nonsuch chick to do so. Before fledging, it was confirmed that "Inna" is a male, so we should see him back in 3 to 4 years.
All the best and good journeys, Inna!”