Good morning, #Bermuda: today is #Wednesday, December 24—Christmas Eve. Down the centuries around this time of year, East End fishermen noticed curious cries issuing from an elusive night creature they called the Christmas Bird. It was, in fact, the Cahow, thought to have been extinct in Bermuda since the early 1620s. Explained senior conservation officer Jeremy Madeiros to this newspaper in a 2011 interview: “Fishermen were out fishing, and would stay out for a couple of days. Very few do it these days, but back at that time, especially during the 1800s and early 1900s, fishermen off the East End would fish at night for deep water snapper. “They were very observant, and some reported hearing this unusual bird, a sea bird, only at night at that time of year, off Cooper’s Island in particular. That is why it’s called the Christmas Bird. They asked if it could be a Cahow. The experts said ‘no’, and the consensus was that the Cahow was gone.” The return of the Cahow was Bermuda’s Christmas present, Dr Madeiros said. The birds were officially rediscovered here in 1951, and are pictured at sea in a composite photo. Dr Madeiros can also be seen cradling a Cahow chick earlier this year – while the final, almost ghostly image is the picture he waited “about three years to get”: a shot of the fast and stealthy nocturnal bird zooming in to land.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 12:01:14 +0000
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