If you want to see the rarest seabird in the North Atlantic, come to Bermuda in November and look for the boat before you book the flight. On a couple of Saturdays that month, in the years it runs, a small party lands on Nonsuch Island, walks it with the government's cahow warden, then goes offshore at dusk to watch the birds come in off the sea.
The cahow is a gadfly petrel about the size of a small gull, named by Bermudians for its wailing night cry, the sound that made Spanish sailors call Bermuda the Isle of Devils. It was thought extinct for three hundred years until a handful of nests turned up on bare rock in Castle Harbour in 1951. There are now about 165 breeding pairs, and the colonies on Nonsuch are the second largest.
November is the month because it is courtship. The birds are back from months on the open ocean, pairs are reclaiming their burrows, and late in the afternoon they fly display loops low over the water before going to ground after dark.
Outside it, the timing works against you. From January to February the birds are incubating and nobody lands, and from about mid June to late October there is not a cahow on the island at all.
The boat, the Endurance, leaves from the dock at the aquarium in Flatts around midday and comes back at sunset. On Nonsuch you scrub your shoes on bleach-soaked mats before you climb the stair cut into the cliff, and the walk takes in the replanted forest and the artificial burrows the colony was rebuilt from.
The dates are set each autumn by the Bermuda Audubon Society and the aquarium, and places are few, so start looking in September and book the day they appear. The boat is small and the harbour mouth can be rough after a storm: bring a waterproof layer, binoculars, and whatever you take for seasickness.
If November does not fit, you cannot land. Nonsuch is closed to the public, landing without permission is an offence, and boats may not tie up at its dock. To ask about a visit out of season, write to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources at terrestrialconservation@gov.bm.
What anyone can do, any day of the season, is watch the CahowCam, a live camera inside a Nonsuch burrow. Watch it the evening before you go east: in February and March it shows a single chick, a ball of grey down, waiting in the dark for a parent to come in off the sea.
For the day itself, go to Cooper's Island Nature Reserve at the south-eastern tip of St David's, which looks straight across the water at the cahow islets. Park outside and walk in; every beach is under fifteen minutes on foot.
Climb the spiral stair of the old radar tower, now a viewing platform, for the whole of Castle Harbour laid out below, and take the binoculars up with you. Longtails nest in the cliffs from spring and sea turtles sometimes come into the shallows.
Well Bay is the beach you may have to yourself. Turtle Bay has shallow water and a lifeguard in season, and Clearwater, just outside the reserve, has the beach bar, the kayak hire and the planes coming in low over the airport. There is nothing to buy inside the reserve, so bring water and food, and come early or late to miss the midday heat.
Boats may anchor off the north side of Nonsuch to snorkel the reefs there, though not to fish and not to land. It is the closest you will get to the island without a place on the November boat.
Give the east end one day: the reserve in the morning, Clearwater for lunch, and the CahowCam that night. If you are here in November, give it the boat instead.
