Bahama Nuthatch

Frontiers in Taxonomy: Bahama Nuthatch Recognized as a Separate Species Shortly Before (Probably) Going Extinct

The devastating severity of Hurricane Dorian’s impact on the Bahama Nuthatch’s entire range in September 2019 was likely fatal to what remained of its precariously small global population.  It remains premature to declare the species extinct, but that result had seemed inevitable for several years already.

In his original description of the Bahama Nuthatch in 1931, the ornithologist James Bond designated insularis as a subspecies of Brown-headed (Sitta pusilla), and this presumption remained until the early 2000s.  Although it was known to have a different voice, the visual similarity between the two forms had always seemed definitive.

Having been consigned to the rank of a subspecies, its status went largely unmonitored over the decades, and the precise point at which its steep decline began and the causes of that decline are not well understood.  It was reportedly common in the 1960s, but considered “very rare” by the 1990s (Raffaele et al. 1998).  In 2004, a paper published in the Bahamas Journal of Science took a fresh look at its status and concluded that it should probably be classified as a separate and endangered species (Hayes et al.).  By 2016, this proposal had gained wide enough acceptance that BirdLife International announced its intention to reclassify it as such.

In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew hit Grand Bahama, and persistent searches for the Bahama Nuthatch during 2017 were unsuccessful.  To all appearances, it had gone extinct just before gaining formal recognition as a species—in effect, while its application for the rank of full species was still pending.  But 2018 brought the dramatic headline: “Bird Feared Extinct Rediscovered in the Bahamas.”

In its inaugural Red List status report on the newly recognized species, BirdLife International summarized its population estimate: “In 2018, four days of intensive surveys for the Bahama Nuthatch, covering all sites where the species has been recorded in recent years, failed to find any individuals.  Furthermore, once per month for a year, a local bird guide visited one of the main sites where the species was previously recorded, without recording any individuals.  In Spring 2018, a further series of surveys recorded a single individual.  The small number of recent sightings suggests that the population size of Bahama Nuthatch may now be extremely small.”  Later that year, however, researchers disclosed additional 2018 sightings, enough to confirm that at least three and probably a few more Bahama Nuthatches remained alive.

In 2019, as in 2017, searches for the Bahama Nuthatch during the breeding season yielded no detections.  Once again, the species was considered likely to have gone extinct, but with the caveat that it had returned from that status once before.

On September 2, 2019, Hurricane Dorian hit Abaco and Grand Bahama as a Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of about 185 miles per hour, and remained centered on Grand Bahama for over 24 hours.  The catastrophic storm killed approximately 500 people on Abaco and Grand Bahama, damaged or destroyed most structures on both islands, and permanently altered the lives of those who survived.  As a footnote to that overwhelming tragedy, Dorian also snuffed out any lingering hope for the Bahama Nuthatch.