Grand Bahama’s special birds
WBF09 - Feature - Grand Bahama’s special birds
Grand Bahama’s special birds
Birds adapted to the island’s ecosystems
The popular image of birdwatchers is that they are patient, quiet individuals, not given to violent displays of emotion. But Erika Gates—a Ministry of Tourism certified bird tour guide—has seen birders “get crazy” after glimpsing a species they could put on their life list.
“Sometimes they get very excited,” Gates says. “They’re jumping up and down. This is the bird they’ve been wanting to see for 20 years … a birder is always interested in adding more birds to their life list.”
Of the 10,000 or so species of birds worldwide, The Bahamas has about 18 that cannot be found in the United States, Canada or Europe, says Gates. Three out of those 18—the Bahama swallow, woodstar and yellowthroat—are endemic to The Bahamas, which is to say they breed only here. “Those are the species that many of our visitors come to look for,” says Gates.
Perhaps the hardest to identify is the Bahama swallow, which perches on high branches deep in the pine barrens. Its slender body, pointed wings and deeply forked tail all become a blur as it darts through the air to catch flying insects.
The Bahama woodstar, a green hummingbird with a white chest, can be spotted sipping nectar as it hovers over a flower, wings beating faster than the eye can see.
But the most distinctive of the three is the Bahama yellowthroat, a relatively large, slow-moving warbler with a grey cap, black mask and heavy-looking bill, as well as the brightly coloured throat plumage for which it is named.
The yellowthroat is a permanent resident of Grand Bahama, which is home to the third-largest number of bird species in The Bahamas after Abaco and Andros. There are around 200 different kinds of wild birds living here, adapted to environments that range from mangrove swamp to recently burned forest.
Tours to order
Gates and her Grand Bahama Nature Tours company do not confine themselves to the island’s many wild habitats, however. Depending on what birders want to see, Gates might take them to the newly restored, 12-acre wildlife habitat called Garden of the Groves, where roughly 20 species of warblers have been spotted.
If ducks, waterbirds and shorebirds are the targets, she may head out to one of the golf courses, where artificial water hazards attract exactly those species.
Demand for birding tours has increased in recent years, and Gates now organizes four a month, all on request, and with numbers kept down to 15 persons so as not to “dilute” the experience.
Tours start at 8am and run for about four hours, usually making four stops in total, chosen according to the species that birders have placed on their target list.
As Gates points out, human beings have always watched birds, and not just for pleasure. Fishermen use seabirds to guide them to schools of fish. As long ago as 340 BC, Aristotle described how the behaviour of cranes can be used to forecast changes in the weather.
More importantly today, many birds are examples of what biologists call “indicator species,” meaning they can be used to assess the health of an environment. By that and any other measure, Grand Bahama is flourishing.
Something for everyone
Serious bird watchers are not the only ones beginning to discover the abundance of wildlife found on this island paradise. Tansey Louis, an environmental biologist and nature enthusiast, established Bahamas EcoVentures in 2007, along with her husband Joanel.
Created so as to make as little ecological impact as possible, the company takes visitors on a four-hour airboat tour of Grand Bahama’s isolated north shore.
“A lot of people who come on tour with us might not be avid birders,” says Louis, “but they do have an underlying interest in nature generally, and wildlife. Our guests tend to be more interested in the larger, obvious birds.”
The mangroves along the shore are natural nurseries for fish, and Louis and her group occasionally spot a great blue heron—easy to identify with its long legs and S-shaped neck —standing alone on a swampy bank. Laughing gulls and flocks of large, dark-feathered, double-crested cormorants also feast on fish in these waters.
A few wading birds, such as the squawky green heron and the larger, white-bodied great egret, can also be seen on the nature walk segment of the tour. But here visitors also have a chance to spot non-aquatic birds such as the hairy woodpecker, a medium-sized woodpecker with black-and-white plumage, or the red-winged blackbird, so-called because the male songbirds have brilliant red shoulders.
Like any good naturalist, Louis uses birdlife to gauge the health of the environment. “Our tour takes place in an area that hardly anyone goes to, simply because the waters are so shallow. Not many people can get there,” she explains. “It’s an area that’s very untouched, very pristine, and nature is just flourishing.”
From the fringes of the golf course to the farthest shore, the birdlife of Grand Bahama is in good health and accessible to all.
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