News of The Abacos

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The Endangered, Underground-Nesting, Bahama Parrots
Hannah Solo and Rosemarie Gnam

In the late 80's, biologist Rosemarie Gnam was careening down a rapidly flooding logging road in South Abaco desperately hoping to rescue endangered Bahama Parrots from drowning. But, how can a bird drown; it can fly away from danger, can't it?" Well, yes and no.

According to Dr. Gnam, "The Abaco population of the Bahama Parrot has evolved a most unusual housekeeping habit - it nests beneath the ground in deep limestone solution cavities. No one knows why they do this. Perhaps, on an island that lacked predators, ground nesting offered some natural advantage over nesting in trees. Or perhaps Abaco's trees did not offer suitable nest cavities."

Whatever the reason, the ground dwelling parrots, or at least their young, were at risk of drowning. On that rainy day back in the 80's Dr. Gnam raced to save weeks-old chicks from drowning in one particularly vulnerable nest. She found three chicks with only their white heads above the rising water. She plucked them from the flooded nest and dried them in a favorite T-shirt. For three hours she and an assistant worked to save the nest while the chicks squawked and bit whatever they could reach. The nest was bailed with a yogurt bucket, sand was collected to add a floor to the nest cavity. This raised the level of the floor so the chicks could perch on a ledge above high water. The chicks survived.
Dr. Gnam has kindly provided the following information about the Abaco Parrots:

"When Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, he was greeted by vast flocks of colorful parrots. He wrote in his journal - 'there are flocks of parrots that obscure the sun; and birds of so many kinds and sizes, and so different from ours that it is a marvel.' Today, visitors to the Bahamas can experience the same delight when they visit Abaco and Great Inagua.

The endangered Bahama Parrot, which has the scientific name of Amazona leucocephala bahamensis (the white-headed Amazon parrot from the Bahamas) lives in the pine forest of Abaco and the dry scrub, coppice forests of Great Inagua. Once abundant, it was found on most of the Bahama islands but habitat destruction, capture for pets and hunting reduced its numbers. Similar problems plague other parrots in the West Indies and today the once common Bahama Parrot is rare.
Abaco parrots nest in early summer and usually lay two to four white eggs. Females incubate the eggs for about a month before they hatch. During the month the female incubates the eggs, the male visits the nests four to six times a day to feed his mate. Females, on average, spend only 62 minutes a day off the clutch. Four to six times a day the male arrives on a nearby tree or shrub with food. Upon hearing his squawk, the female flies straight up from the nest to join him.

After uttering territorial takeoff calls the pair usually flies to a clump of pines where the male grasps the female's bill with his and transfers partially digested seeds and berries to her. Should the male die or abandon the female, she would be unable to raise the chicks alone. Bahama Parrots invest a great deal of time and care in raising their few chicks, unlike chickens or ducks.

"On Abaco, parrots feed on the unripe pine cones, extracting the seeds with their heavy bills. During the nesting season, pine seeds provide the protein in the parrots' diet so that chicks can thrive and grow rapidly. Parrots are not picky eaters and also feed on the fruits of native shrubs, including poisonwood, wild guava, pigeonberry, cinnecord, cocoplum, pond top palm, and mahogany.

"Parrot chicks hatch blind, helpless and practically naked with only a few wisps of white down feathers on their small bodies not necessarily the 'cutest' baby bird. The eggs usually incubate for about 28 days, with the chicks hatching about 12 to 72 hours apart. Parents usually have one, two or three chicks in a nest. The chicks are completely dependent upon their parents to keep them warm and fed. By the time the chicks are a month old, they begin to develop feathers. Abaco parrots are terrific parents and they feed their youngsters four to seven times a day. They protect them from predators until the chicks are fully feathered and able to fly. By the end of the first week the chicks have grown quickly and the female joins the hunt for food. At three weeks old the chicks eyes open and feathers sprouting beg vigorously to be fed."
Dr. Gnam noted in International Wildlife, 'Sometimes adults remain near a nest for 20 to 60 minutes after feeding their chicks. Often during these lingering moments together they preen each other, smoothing or cleaning feathers with their bills. Known as allopreening, this is the equivalent of mutual grooming among monkeys. Parrots frequently preen their mates head, cheek and neck regions. A bird solicits preening by pushing its lowered head against the other's breast. Allopreening helps maintain pair bonds."

Dr. Gnam's information continues:
"When the chicks are two months old, they leave the nest - 'fledge' from early September and fly off with their parents to join other parrots in flocks. The eight-week-old chicks are fully feathered and ready to leave. Like hatchings, fledging of nest mates occur 24 to 72 hours apart. The biggest challenge seems not flying but landing. Fledglings can be readily distinguished from adults by their clumsy crashes into the pines."
"Parrot chicks recognize their parents by the sounds of their calls. In time, they learn to find food and become independent from their parents. Also, they must learn to avoid predators such as wild cats, Red-tailed Hawks and Barn Owls which often attack and eat parrots.

"Because Abaco parrots nest on the ground, they are extremely vulnerable to nest predation by wild cats. Each year less than half of all nesting pairs on Abaco successfully raise young. Those nests which are lucky enough to survive fledge one or two chicks. Nests are lost when cats, rats and giant land crabs eat the eggs or chicks. Sometimes, nests are flooded during heavy rains. The Bahamas had no mammalian predators until Europeans arrived in the seventeenth century, bringing cats and rats. Today, wild cats are the largest threat to Abaco's nesting parrots. Scientific data collected suggest that wild (feral) cats have destroyed more nests, eaten more eggs and killed more nesting females and chicks than has anything else, including rats, crabs, snakes and floods.

Dr. Gnam wrote in International Wildlife, "During one biweekly inspection, I found a clutch of three freshly laid eggs (in the nest from which she had earlier saved the three fledglings from drowning). When I returned three days later, only eggshell fragments and a few parrot tail feathers littered the cavity bottom. Cat hairs clung to the nest entrance, a grim calling card. To my relief, however, I heard a parrot's loud bugle. There was the female, minus some tail feathers. She had escaped, presumably to breed again."

In 1985 Dr. Gnam and an assistant conducted the first major research project focused on Abaco Parrots. Writing in International Wildlife, she describes the 12" parrot as "a colorful bird, mainly green but marked with white on the forehead and with rose-red on throat, breast and sometimes abdomen. It is one of five races of the Cuban parrot (the other four live on either Cuba or the Cayman Islands). At the time some 1200 parrots inhabited the southern end (of Abaco) in a remnant forest of Caribbean pine and evergreen hardwoods logged during the first half of the century, then ravaged by Hurricane Betsy in 1965. In this forest we set up camp."

"Our first task was to find some of the parrots' underground nests. Abaco's limestone substrate is honeycombed, and water percolating through it for thousands of years has carved deep cavities, perfect burrows for nesting parrots. Finding cavities was easy, but finding nests was not.

"Time and again we followed parrots in the hope that they would guide us to nests, only to be led on a wild-parrot goose chase. All too often we ended up in a thick patch of poisonwood, a favorite parrot food that produces an itchy rash in humans.

"When hot pursuit failed, we turned to auditory clues that signaled the whereabouts of feeding birds. While nesting the birds focus on Caribbean pine seeds. The birds extract the seeds from unripe cones, picking and stripping the cones before dropping them to the ground with a solid thump. Walking through the forest I could easily locate parrots by the thumping. Unfortunately, cone thumps failed to lead us to a nest.

"As I began to despair, I happened to scan the terrain with my binoculars just as a parrot rocketed from the ground like a missile shot from a silo. When I combed the area I found a cavity about 8 inches across and more than five feet deep, my first nest.

"During the next six years my assistants and I found more than 100 nests. Nest 54A, located on a ridge top offering an unobstructed view, became especially useful for spying upon parrots.

"We monitored 54A and other nests from blinds built of PVC plumbing pipe and burlap. Cramped inside, we normally watched from sunrise to sunset, three days a week. Uncomfortable as this was, it enabled us to answer questions about the birds' unusual nesting behavior. We were also able to look directly into nests."

Dr. Gnam continued, "Since few parrots are successfully raised each year, parrot populations are sensitive to human disturbance and their size increases slowly. In 1989 the Abaco population numbered less than 1300 birds. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Bahamas National Trust organized a survey of the parrots of Abaco in 1995 and the preliminary data analyses suggests the population's current size is stable, around l989 figures.

"Things are getting better in the Bahamas for the parrots of Abaco. Parrot protection took a gigantic leap forward in 1992 when the government, the Bahamas National Trust and a coalition of local conservation groups on Abaco launched, with the U.S. based RARE Center for Tropical Conservation, a nationwide Bahama Parrot Conservation Awareness Campaign. The late Abaconians Owanta Gottlieb and Jill Weech were both dedicated to the parrot's conservation and were tireless in their efforts to create the park.

"These efforts were rewarded in 1994 when Prime Minster Hubert Ingraham announced the creation of a National Park on Abaco. The Park is managed by the Bahamas National Trust and has become an integral part of eco-tourism efforts for Abaco. Abaco has now attracted the attention of serious birders as the June issue of Birding Magazine profiling bird watching on Abaco."

While the Abaco parrots are still in the forests, they are not yet 'out of the woods.' It has been suggested that efforts to support the parrots should focus on a still critically needed humane feral cat control program. This is a delicate issue, but the simple fact is that wild cats are destroying our still rare parrots. Humane removal of feral cats from parrot habitat and spaying and neutering of town cats so that Abaco's permanent residents won't dump unwanted kittens in the forest would go a long way to increasing the survival rate of baby parrots.

The creation of the National Park was critical in order to save the parrots. But the simple establishment of some boundaries will do nothing to help the birds without continued support and ongoing programs. Dr. Gnam suggests that relocating some parrots from Abaco to other Bahamian islands with suitable habitats would reduce the chances that a single catastrophe, such as a hurricane, could wipe out Abaco's small, localized population. Also needed is a new population survey to find out if the parrots are gaining or losing. Active park management needs to be encouraged, possibly to include construction of a Visitor's Center. This could be done by the local Abaco community in conjunction with the Bahamas National Trust.

Bahamians and visitors alike must continue to be educated about the parrots, their rarity, their predators. Most residents of Abaco are now aware of the problems faced by the Abaco parrot. But creative minded people are still needed to come up with solutions for the problems these beautiful birds still face. With continued help, someday their flocks may once again obscure the sun.