Bahamas Coastal Bird Trip is coming up - and your help is needed!

To all our supporters, we have some updates. The dates for our expedition to the Bahamas are May 7-21. There are a couple of spots left on both weeks - May 7-14 and 14-21. The trip is going to be amazing. These beautiful limestone islands are full of beautiful tropical plants, lizards, endemic birds, and other wildlife, and they are surrounded by the clearest waters in the world. We will be doing good science, but we will enjoy and document the beauty of our surroundings.

The first trip we will explore seabird breeding colonies around Southwest Abaco  including Pelican Cays National Park. Our goal is to find tern colonies, survey them, and band them. We will also survey the southern coast of Abaco itself, where we should run in to some of the famous ground nesting Bahama Parrots as well as many other Abaco birds. We will bring our kite-camera system that takes fantastic pictures from above on a remote-controlled, rotating camera mount. It will allow us to get a drone-like view above colonies without having our drone blown out to sea by 25 knot winds. We will also use mist nets and other means to catch birds and band them with field-readable bands. Are the birds moving to nearby colonies (hope) or being extirpated from the area (fear)?

We will spend a chunk of each day exploring, snorkeling, and observing the natural world, and we will have the flexibility to visit as many cool islands and coastlines as we can to get a full survey of the nesting seabirds in Southwest Abaco. These are some of the most unspoiled but accessible beaches in the world. 

During week 2 (May 14-21), we will visit the beautiful Berry and Joulter Cays. These small islands are mostly private or crown land. In Kushlan and Steinkamps surveys in the 2000's, seabirds were abundant here (Kushlan and steinkamp, 2007). We need to get really good counts of the birds to compare to their numbers. We also can explore for new colonies for hidden species like Audubon's Shearwaters - so bring your flashlights and we can survey shearwaters. We should also find some incredible places to snorkel and see life underwater. 

The trip is still a month out. If you have ever thought it would be fun to go to the Real Bahamas, don't miss this opportunity. Contact me for information. 

Thanks again to all of you for donating to make this research possible. We have some additional costs to cover. If you can't go on the trip, consider donating a tax-deductible amount to help us cover the costs to BirdsCaribbean.org.