Birds, Turtles and Dead Fish at Silver Sands

Tricolored Heron

The plan was simple, leave home early to do a count at Chancery Lane Swamp for the Caribbean Waterbird Census (CWC), and get back home before 9 am.  Simple!  It was going to plan until I saw a Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor) as I drove past the estuary at Silver Rock, Christ Church.  I stopped and the first thing that I noticed was a stench, a really bad stench.  

Dead Fish

As I approached the water I saw the source of the smell, hundreds of dead fish were lining the bank and sick ones in the water. The water was still full of life, lots of healthy looking fish of all ages, thousands of Cane Toad (Rhinella marina) tadpoles feeding on the dead fish, and even more, toadlets were on the banks of the inlet.  Along with the Tricolor, were five juvenile Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla) feeding on the fish,  and a few shorebirds - Semipalmated Plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus), Semipalmated Sandpipers (Calidris pusilla), and Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius), feeding on the banks.  While photographing the heron I noticed a hatchling Green Turtle  (Chelonia mydas) stuck in some of the vegetation around the pond and then I found another and another until I had five of these beauties in my clutch.  I contacted Carla Daniel of the Barbados Sea Turtle Project and within minutes, she was on the scene and finding more hatchlings (you can see her video here ). 

In her search, she came across a dead Semipalmated Sandpiper and too sick Semipalmated Plovers.  The other birds in the area appeared healthy, even the gulls which were feeding on the fish.  Unsure of which government entity was responsible for these bodies of water and the quality of them, I reported our findings to both the Ministry of the Environment and the Coastal Zone Management Unit.

I knew that Cane Toads were toxic but I was unsure about the toxicity of the tadpoles and toadlets.  I found a 2015 paper by The Australian Threatened Species Scientific Committee to the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment intitled The biological effects, including lethal toxic ingestion, caused by Cane Toads (Bufo marinus) which stated that  “All stages of the Cane Toad's life cycle: eggs, tadpoles, toadlets, and adult toads, are poisonous”.  Can the dead and sick birds be the result of poison, from ingesting the toadlets and have nothing to do with the fish kill?  I am hoping to find the answer to that question.

I never got to  Chancery Lane Swamp for the CWC count and would try to fit it in sometime during the week. Let's hope no more birds are affected by whatever is going on at the Silver Rock estuary, it would be a tragedy for these long-distance travelers who are already under immense pressure. 

Other Images  

The 1st Green Turtle Hatchling I saw

More hatchlings

The final count by 
Barbados Sea Turtle Project : 25 Hatchlings

Juvenile Laughing Gull @ Silver Rock

Laughing Gull

Laughing Gull eating a fish