MIGRATORY BIRDS IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS: SEASONAL VISITORS TO OUR SHORES

Celebrating Birds

By Morgan Golden-Ebanks

Photographs by Matthew Southgate

Throughout October and November, migratory birds are making their way south to Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Migratory Bird Day fell on 11 October this year, with bird lovers across the region focusing their advocacy on making the spaces humans inhabit more bird friendly, and raising awareness about the challenges migratory birds face from human activities, including urban development. The campaign has advocated for both strategic urban planning and conservation efforts that ensure birds are safe and welcome in human communities.

One way to protect migratory birds is to replant native grasses and flowers that have been mowed, and trees that have been chopped down, helping to restore important sources of food and places of rest. This is particularly urgent in cities where the diversity of life is not usually welcomed, and concrete deserts have come to dominant the landscape.  

Protect Now, Plant Later

Planting native vegetation is necessary, but it’s only one solution to conserving Caymanians that just happen to be nonhumans. Communities of plants and their occupants are often removed and replaced by individuals that have no home here. Even when native vegetation is replanted, the specific set of possibilities for life to emerge in that particular space is lost.

There is a saying that goes, “the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts” and that couldn’t be truer when it comes to our living world. When lifeforms intermingle under the sun, soil, and ocean, new relationships take shape, sometimes altering the Earth in unexpected ways.

Web of Connections

Each individual plant is connected to one another underground, sharing nutrients and sending messages through microscopic creatures and fungal networks entangled in its roots. Other plants attach themselves to the trunk of others, sending airborne signals to attract their pollinators. Some birds prefer a plant’s fruits rather than the insects that find a home in its branches.

As a bird flies across the landscape, they drop seeds that provide an opportunity for new life to blossom from the forest floor. Buds of leaves open to the sky, offering oxygen and medicine to whoever’s in need. At the grand scale, this forest ecosystem, with all of its living and non-living beings, regulates our climate and gives us rain, something one tree cannot do on its own. If we want to protect a tree or bird, we must protect the living communities from which they belong.

Winged Travelers

In each of Cayman’s uniquely green spaces, there are birds of all sizes, colours, and songs. Some of Cayman’s birds are home all year round, while others travel across geopolitical boundaries. Migratory birds fly long distances to spend time in different regions in search of food or their historic mating grounds. These travels happen seasonally for species like the Summer Tanager, Acadian Flycatcher, and the Short-billed Dowitcher (see photos).

In order to safeguard Cayman’s birds, we must learn about the places they feed, mate, and rear young, and protect them. Our migratory birds can be found in many places across the three Islands, from the dry forests of East End, to the high rocky cliffs of Cayman Brac. The Central Mangrove Wetland on Grand Cayman is a particularly special refuge for migratory birds. These extensive mangrove wetlands, spanning over 8,600 acres, are pulsating with life.

Local Challenges, Global Impacts

Because migratory birds rely on habitat in different countries, this can make conservation efforts very challenging. What happens when a flock that has flown 1,000 miles south from the United States, only to find that its winter-feeding ground in the Central Mangrove Wetland is gone?

Being the largest continuous wetland in the Caribbean, it is unlikely that the birds would find sufficient food to make it back North for the summer breeding season. It is likely, that ecosystems up north would be changed by their absence. This is just one example of the unfortunate circumstances that migratory birds face around the world.

Your Actions Matter

Migratory birds emphasize a broader point: our focus on protecting the individual parts without also caring for the complex whole, will not achieve much. Migratory birds also demonstrate that life on Earth does not follow the arbitrary boundaries that humans have created: what we do here has consequences for life elsewhere.

You can help by advocating for the conservation of trees and birds, but most importantly, the ecosystems that they rely on and, in turn, help shape. 

Email us at treeplanting@gov.ky  to continue the conversation, or visit www.gov.ky/nationaltreeplanting  for more information on the National Tree Planting Programme.