How Webcams Are Helping Scientists Save One of the World鈥檚 Rarest Seabirds

For the past decade, the CahowCam Project has entertained viewers while revealing new insights into the lives of the endangered Bermuda Petrel.

Just after midnight in March, 2017, an intruder enters a seaside burrow on Bermuda鈥檚 Nonsuch Island. He鈥檚 a young male Bermuda Petrel, or Cahow, a 15-inch-long seabird wearing slick gray-and-white feathers. He is also one of only 350 or so individuals left of his species in the world. As the bird waddles into the basketball-size nesting cavity, he鈥檚 excitedly greeted by a fluffy mass of down鈥攁 cheeping, five-day-old Cahow Chick waiting for its parents to return with a meal. 

But the young male is not the chick鈥檚 parent; he is an invader looking to take over the nest. He suddenly grabs the chick鈥檚 neck with his hooked bill and starts biting. The next 18 minutes are tense, as the male alternates between scoping out the nest and assaulting the chick. Unsatisfied, he finally exits the chamber, leaving behind a shaken but otherwise intact nestling.

This encounter鈥攃aught on camera and livestreamed to thousands of online viewers鈥攚as the first time Cahow conservationists had ever observed such a behavior. At that point, researchers were well aware of the dangers that invasive rats, land crabs, and competing tropicbirds pose to young petrels. But this video footage documented an unknown threat to the endangered seabird: other Cahows.

The discovery is one of several made by The CahowCam Project, a set of livestreaming webcams currently in its
of monitoring Cahow nesting burrows of Nonsuch Island, a 14-acre wildlife sanctuary in Bermuda. The project consists of three cameras: two tucked away in nesting cavities, and one stationed outside of the two burrows. Jean-Pierra Rouja, a photographer and environmentalist who founded the project in 2013, runs and maintains the livestreams. Last year, they collectively saw roughly 450,000 views from people around the world. 

鈥淭he 24/7 monitoring of these feeds is so, so important,鈥 Rouja says, noting the impact a global audience plays in helping to keep an eye on the Cahows. 鈥淚nvariably, just because of the time zones, where our followers are from, there鈥檚 always somebody watching.鈥 

The CahowCam Project's feeds typically goes live to the public sometime during winter, once the birds have occupied their burrows, and runs through June, when the breeding season ends. In late February, the nesting pair currently occupying the burrow surveyed by successfully hatched a single white egg鈥攖he clutch size for every Cahow. In early March, a second egg monitored by also hatched. The survival of each and every nestling is critical toward saving one of the world鈥檚 rarest seabirds.

The main goal of the CahowCams and other bird webcams is to get as many people as possible interested in bird conservation, says Charles Eldermire, who oversees livestreams of owls, ospreys, birdfeeders, and more with the , which partners with Rouja鈥檚 CahowCam Project. Making viewers understand the value of the Cahows and other at-risk species is key to helping them, he says. 鈥淧eople are going to be the thing, ultimately, that saves these birds.鈥 

The idea for the CahowCams came to Rouja while he was filming the final years of a Cahow translocation project led by Jeremy Maideros, Bermuda鈥檚 senior terrestrial conservation officer. In Madeiros began translocating Cahow chicks from Bermuda鈥檚 outer islands to manmade burrows crafted on the higher grounds of Nonsuch Island, moving more than 100 chicks over five years. (Read the full story of Madeiros鈥檚 effort in the Winter 2022 issue of 探花精选 magazine.) But for all the decades of work done above ground to help Cahows, dating back to the 1950s, little was known about their subterranean lives.

鈥淭he underground burrow is in complete darkness and occupied for six months straight,鈥 Rouja says. 鈥淲e had no idea of what was happening down there.鈥 

Observing any Cahow activity is complicated by their relationship with light: They don't like it. Living most of their non-nesting lives on the wing at sea, the birds don't approach land in daylight and even shy away during the brightness of a full moon, an adaptation that helps deter predation by raptors including owls, Rouja says. Their nests are also pitch black: Madieros鈥檚 artificial burrows, which mimic a Cahow鈥檚 natural home, are each made of concrete and consist of a six-foot-long tunnel with a 90-degree bend to keep out sunlight. 

So when Rouja proposed the CahowCam Project in 2011, he modified his own cameras and built custom military-grade infrared lights that would be invisible to the Cahows. The cameras also needed to be solar-powered, waterproof, and energy efficient, allowing them to stay online when storms or other obstacles prevented him from reaching the island for maintenance.

Two years later, the CahowCam Project officially launched. Initially, the cameras served only as scientific tools; when Madeiros visited the island to check on the birds, he would use the WiFi on his iPad to connect to each camera and survey the nests. But Rouja had grander ambitions鈥攈e wanted to broadcast the nesting birds online. The following year, in 2014, the installation of a larger solar array and wireless internet would allow the CahowCam Project to start livestreaming to viewers around the world. And in 2017, a partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology brought the stream to even more homes. During the first year of working with Cornell,  with a total of 8.5 million minutes of video watched.
 

This constant vigilance has led to some important discoveries and observations over the years. For instance, conservationists rearing translocated or rescued young have benefited from watching how Cahows preen over-excited chicks  before feeding, a ritual that can take up to 15 minutes. And a few years ago, CahowCam 3, which is angled toward the burrow entrances, captured a fascinating fledgling behavior. When young Cahows are around three months old, they leave the nest and head out to sea, where they鈥檒l spend the next 3 to 5 years before returning to breed and raise their own chicks. Apparently, , chicks emerge from their burrows during their final few nights to exercise their wings鈥攆light practice, essentially. Rouja believes this is how young birds test out different maneuvers they will use out over the opean ocean.

鈥淚t's not like their parents teach them this,鈥 he says. 鈥淭hey're on their own, and they instinctively know to teach themselves how to do something before they do it.鈥


Another time, a camera captured a surprising threat to Cahow chicks. In 2017, a viewer in Japan  that a flatworm had dropped onto a young bird鈥檚 back鈥攁 potentially dangerous situation. Of Bermuda鈥檚 three flatworm species, two are flesh-eating, and though unlikely, there was some concern that the worm would harm the chick. But before Madeiros could rush to the island, the Cornell team was able to verify via video that the flatworm had harmlessly exited the burrow.
 

The CahowCam Project has also revealed an unexpected suitor in the colony. In 2016, a male Leach鈥檚 Storm-Petrel entered the Cahow burrows after the chicks had fledged and began calling out to potential mates鈥攖hough there were none around. A smaller cousin of the Cahow, storm-petrels had  in Bermuda; instead, the West Atlantic population prefers islands farther north along New England and eastern Canada. For the next three years, the petrel returned, arriving earlier and earlier each season. Then, in 2019, he did something really unusual: The storm-petrel, later nicknamed 鈥淪tormy鈥 by webcam viewers, attempted to court Cahow nestlings five times his size. He remains an annual visitor despite continuing to strike out on the mating front, Rouja reports. 
 

The CahowCam team sees the storm-petrel鈥檚 appearance as a positive, if unintended, development鈥攁 sign that Madeiros鈥檚 work is, whose nesting sites have in the past been repeatedly compromised by hurricanes and erosion. Meanwhile, what once started out as a one-man nest-monitoring project has turned into an international outreach effort supported by thousands of dedicated cam watchers.  

For centuries, Cahows have been a mystery to humans. To early explorers crossing the ocean, they were specters whose haunting calls carried over the water. And until their rediscovery in the 20th century鈥300 years after the last documented sighting鈥 researchers believed the birds were extinct, pushed beyond the brink by hunting and invasive species. Now, thanks to Rouja鈥檚 CahowCam Project, they are becoming less of an enigma by the day for both researchers and viewers across the globe. 鈥淭he ability for the public to be sitting there right alongside is a powerful experience,鈥 Cornell鈥檚 Eldermire says. 鈥淭hey're part of the inside crew on one of the rarest birds on Earth.鈥 

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