Melissa Groo Photography | ROLLING HARBOUR ABACO

FLAMINGO BREEDING SEASON ON INAGUA, BAHAMAS

The national bird of the Bahamas, featured in the nation’s Coat of Arms, was once a familiar sight in the Bahamas, but sadly no more. On Abaco they are no longer seen, apart from occasional vagrant birds that stay for a few weeks and then disappear.

An attempt in the 1990s to reintroduce flamingos on Abaco and to establish a breeding population failed. You can read more about the history of the ‘fillymingo’ on Abaco HERE.

Nowadays, the flamingos breed only on Inagua, and to see these gorgeous birds you will have to go to the INAGUA NATIONAL PARK , where you will find the world’s largest West Indian flamingo colony.

The breeding season is now under way, with large numbers of fluffy gray chicks finding their legs in the lagoons. A team from the BAHAMAS NATIONAL TRUST is working with them at the moment.

The team have with them the distinguished wildlife photographer MELISSA GROO, whose wonderful award-winning work will be known to anyone with a keen interest in wildlife. If you want to see wild birds and wild animals as you may never have seen them portrayed before, do visit Melissa’s superb website by clicking her name link above.

Credits: Melissa Groo, with thanks as ever for use permission [please note that her images are subject to her professional copyright]; BNT, especeially Lynn Gape & Casper Burrows (header image)

I had been going to post a selection of bird photos to mark Endangered Species Day today. I’d begun to plan the details – the birds to use, the captions for each and so on. Then I saw one photograph that is so charming and yet so poignant that I realised that adding further images would be superfluous. This tiny piping plover chick is a potent symbol of the vulnerability of all threatened species.

This shot was taken by award-winning and renowned wildlife photographer Melissa Groo. If you want to see the most wonderful and varied wildlife photography that you could ever imagine, please go to Melissa’s website and prepare to be amazed. You will find it HERE.

I have posted several times about the endangered piping plovers, many of which overwinter in the northern Bahamas generally, Abaco particularly, and the Delphi Club beach specifically. There are believed to be fewer than 8000 individual birds on earth, and their little world of the shoreline is threatened at both ends of their migration, as well as at their rest ‘stopovers’ en route in either direction. Conservation programs at each end of the range are proving effective at preserving the plovers’ habitat, and the population does seem to have increased slightly. Each chick protected represents a small triumph for conservation.

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Photo credit: Melissa Groo, with thanks for the inspiration! “Less is more…”; Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ for their partnership conservation work with PIPL on Abaco and in the Bahamas; the originator – ?Great Lakes Piping Plover Project – of the neat small logo…