The Bahama warbler, a small songbird found exclusively on Grand Bahama and Abaco, two islands in the north-east Bahama archipelago only “became” a species in 2010. But due to its limited range and increasingly fragmented habitat, the warbler was immediately treated as a species of conservation concern.
In 2016, these islands were devastated by a category five storm called Hurricane Matthew. Storms of this strength pose a serious threat to the Bahamas’s unique birdlife. So as conservation biologists, we wanted to determine how well the warbler had fared.
In 2018, our University of East Anglia Masters’ students, David Pereira and Matthew Gardner, spent three months researching birds on Grand Bahama island. They chose Grand Bahama because this island was the sole home of another newly recognised species, the Bahama nuthatch. Both species are tied closely to the native Caribbean pine forests that cover (or covered) the islands.
