Eleuthera's Rarest Winter Songbird Lives in Regrowing Scrub, and Rock Sound Is Planting Its Food

The Kirtland's Warbler arrives for the dry season about now. It is one of North America's rarest songbirds, and the place it chooses to spend the winter on Eleuthera has little to do with old-growth forest. Researchers have caught it in shrubby land that is 3 to 28 years past some human disturbance. American Bird Conservancy reports that it often turns up on goat farms, where grazing keeps the shrubs at the right height.

That changes how the bush along the Queen's Highway looks. The cut-over plots, the old fields growing back, the low scrub around a goat pen are winter habitat for a bird that flies roughly 1,700 miles from the young jack pine forests of Michigan to get here. This season, the One Eleuthera Foundation's new trail in Rock Sound is planting that bird's food along its edges.

Young bush suits the warbler best

The warbler is fussy at both ends of its migration. American Bird Conservancy describes its winter habitat as "early-successional upland scrub, especially among wild sage, milkberry, and black torch shrubs." In plain terms, that means land a few years to a few decades into growing back. Mature coppice has grown past that stage, and bare cleared ground has not reached it yet.

Eleuthera has a lot of land at that stage. A 2024 study in Avian Conservation and Ecology describes the island's landscape as "a mosaic of variably-aged vegetation primarily as a consequence of shifting agriculture, fire, or failed development." The same paper reports that the places where warblers were caught had more of the bird's favored fruit shrubs than random plots in the surrounding landscape. The bird is choosing land that is full of fruit, and on this island that tends to be the regrowing bush.

The research centered on south Eleuthera, from Tarpum Bay to just south of Wemyss Bight and Greencastle. Its study sites were named DD Road, Rock Sound, Wemyss Bight, Ocean Hole and Madera Road. The radio-tracking behind that paper took place in the winters of 2004 to 2006, so the site list records where the birds were studied then. It does not say where any particular bird is this year.

The bird follows the fruit as the island dries out

The warbler's timing runs against the island's rain. Most of Eleuthera's rainfall, about 1,090 mm a year on average, comes in the May to October wet season. The warbler stays through the November to April dry season, while its fruit and insect supply shrinks at some sites as the months go on.

The bird adjusts by moving. Earlier work cited in the 2024 paper found that warblers leave sites where food runs low and stay where it holds up. In drought years, that can pack many birds into small patches that are still rich in food. The researchers split the winter into three field periods, which give a rough calendar of how the season changes:

1. Early winter, October 1 to December 20. Birds arrive and settle onto sites.
2. Midwinter, January 6 to February 29. The dry season deepens.
3. Late winter, March 1 to April 30. Food shrinks at some sites, and birds shift toward the patches that still have it.

The paper links one more effect to the Michigan breeding grounds. Male reproductive success and annual survival have been positively associated with March rainfall in The Bahamas. A wet or dry March on Eleuthera shows up in nesting results more than a thousand miles north.

Rock Sound built a trail around the menu

That is the background to the Bird's Eye View Birding and Nature Trail at the CTI campus in Rock Sound. The One Eleuthera Foundation and its Centre for Training and Innovation created it with the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme and American Bird Conservancy. The trail runs about 870 meters through Inland Limestone Coppice Forest. It is rated easy to moderate and can be walked self-guided or with a guide.

The detail that ties it to the warbler is what is growing at the edges. In its December 2025 announcement, OEF said The Farm at CTI was growing native White Sage and Black Torch to add to the trail. Those are the berry shrubs the warbler depends on. The trail's own page says these plants are now propagated and planted at strategic points around the trail's outskirts, where they also support the insects the warbler eats. The trail lists November through April as its best birding season. That makes the next few weeks the opening of its first full winter.

The comeback in the numbers is part of the reason for the effort. According to OEF's December 2025 announcement, the species fell below 200 birds in the 1970s and has since recovered to more than 2,300 worldwide, with The Bahamas as its primary wintering ground.

"Once reduced to fewer than 200 singing males in the wild, the Kirtland's Warbler is now considered one of the world's great conservation success stories."

That line comes from the Bird's Eye View Trail page, which also says protecting the bird's winter habitat in The Bahamas remains essential to its survival.

The trail covers more than one species. Signs along the route carry audio tracks with titles such as "Migratory Wonders: Winter Birds," "Poison & The Cure," "The Healing Forest" and "Species Spotlight: The Bahamian Boa." OEF also posts free downloads: a Birds of Eleuthera list of more than 180 migratory and resident species, a botanical guide to over 100 plants on the trail and their traditional medicinal uses, and an invasive species fact sheet. OEF's April 2026 update reported that international birding groups had already begun visiting. It also said OEF had run its first eco-guide training at no cost for local tour guides and tourism stakeholders.

A second stop in Governor's Harbour

The goat farms where the warbler often turns up are working farms. Two places on mainland Eleuthera are set up for the public to walk through coppice in winter, and the Bahamas National Trust's Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve in Governor's Harbour is the second of them. The Trust lists it as a bird hotspot with trails and boardwalks.

The preserve's hours and admission come from its official website, and both are worth confirming before a winter visit. For the Rock Sound trail, write to OEF at [email protected] to arrange a guided visit.

Every sighting adds to the record

The trail is also set up to collect data. Citizen-science monitoring of birds and the ecosystem is one of the project's stated aims, and OEF provides a downloadable citizen-science form for recording what visitors see. Among its resources, the trail page links to the Merlin Bird ID app and to eBird.

That matters for a bird that is easy to miss. The 2024 study notes that earlier researchers rarely followed warblers once they moved into the dense vegetation around their study sites, which is why the team turned to radio telemetry. A warbler eating black torch berries on a trail edge in Rock Sound, recorded with a date and place, adds to what is known about how this bird spends the winter on Eleuthera.

Bond Bahamas works across Eleuthera, from Rock Sound to Governor's Harbour. If you are thinking about a winter base close to the coppice, our Eleuthera team can talk you through the settlements, the drives, and the practical side of owning a home here. Start with the Balmoral Guide and get in touch when you are ready.