Learning About The Birds Of Cayo Norte

By Lourdes Mugica

Dennis Denis is a PhD student of the University of Havana. He has been working with me for the past three summers to study the ecology and reproduction of colonial waterbirds of the Biramas Swamp. As soon as the breeding season starts, the research team moves to a very small and rustic blind alongside the colony.

This is an aerial view of Cayo Norte. One of the most important wading bird colonies in Biramas Swamp is situated here. In the left side there is a view of the little house (blind) used to work during the breeding period.

How do we even know the birds are there? If you can get close to a colony, you can hear them, see them, and smell them!! A good way to find colonies is to look for them out of the window of a low-flying airplane. We have identified three colonies this way, while we were carrying out aerial surveys. The birds look like thousands of white dots on the trees of the swamp. One colony uses an area of mangrove forest with a shallow lake in the center, called Cayo Norte. Just imagine how exciting it is to be there during the breeding season, when we have seen more than 7,000 nests of 6 different species at the same time!!!!

See the US Fish and Wildlife website for ways to census colonial waterbirds. — Ed

Aerial view of a colony with waterbirds in flight.

How many birds can you count?

Every morning the researchers go to the colony and survey and label the nests, measure the eggs, measure the nestlings: bill length, chick weight and leg length to determine growth of the different parts of the body. In the colony, when the young are scared they throw up! Dennis and his team collect the regurgitated food to figure out what the parents are feeding them. It takes a hundreds of hours of patient observation to collect information about the birds’ behavior, growth, and ecology.

Who eats the eggs or the young? What are the major diseases and parasites they have? How many survive to become adults? At what age are they able to fly and to be independent from their parents? These are the questions we are answering with our research.

Dennis measures a nestling snowy egret.

To do this research you really need to love birds and being apart of preserving this beautiful and important area. We are an enthusiastic group of researchers, always ready to overcome the daily difficulties we face in the field.

©The Wild Ones 2001