Times of the Islands Summer 2020

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Resplendent silence By B Naqqi Manco, TCI Naturalist On a high traffic day on Bellefield Landing Road in Kew Settlement, North Caicos, we might see a dozen cars roll by. Dogs lying side-down on the narrow strip of asphalt are barely bothered to move and aside from the breeze and the birds, my landlord’s firm “Yo!” to the drivers is all that’s heard. It’s difficult to conceptualise an inhabited place quieter than North and Middle Caicos. The COVID-19 quarantine period of 2020 showed us a new—ah, old—side of the Turks & Caicos Islands. The country did indeed wind down. The ferries toting day-trippers ceased. Flocks of rental cars were corralled into inactivity. Daily commuters to the docks vanished. Fume-billowing school buses and dump trucks desisted from their roars and rumbles. The frequency of the “Yo!” declined to barely one a week—usually to Her Majesty’s Royal Police. As streets around the world emptied and bustling urban centres fell into an eerie, post-apocalyptic stupor, documentation of peculiar natural events—both factual and fallacious—began appearing on social media. The first I remember seeing was a poorly edited photo of Venice, captioned with a claim that following the dearth of anthropogenic disturbance and pollution, dolphins had reinstated themselves in the waterways, frolicking Flipper-esque along the Canal Grando. A similar meme appeared with equally image-doctored swans swarming over the same aquatic routes, then another appeared with hundreds of photo-replicated pink flamingos. Eventually the memes began lampooning themselves; one celebrated the return of blue whales flying through the now-clear skies of at least three Eastern European megapolises. Ridiculousness manifested itself into the claims, and I was asked if the slightly more credible claims were true. There being no solid evidence, I told my associates to get-a-hold-of-themselves and brushed off the memes as products of boredom. But then, the deer showed up downtown. A friend of mine shared a video made from a police dashcam in an urban neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. A family of deer a dozen strong placidly allowed themselves to be herded along by the squad car’s gentle advance. They moved forward, ignoring a direct route of escape into wooded hillsides and made a sharp left onto the main drag of the town. Looking less like typical deer gripped in fight-or-flight response and more like a blasé meander of window-shopping stags, they occasionally glared at 80 www.timespub.tc the car with an anthromorphised accusatory scowl. They would not be hurried. As humans no longer had the ability to execute their myriad daily things-to-do, the does and bucks opted to see what it was all about. “Surely there must be something to it if they like doing it so much,” I imagine the deer queried, and “Now that they’re out of the way let’s go see what it’s all about.” Tragically, they will have missed some of the better points of the tour, with things like soft pretzel stands and upmarket confectionary shoppes being shuttered; most likely they’ll have returned to the oak-hickory forests with an apathetic aftertaste for whatever so obsesses the naked apes. Meditating on the downtown deer on an afternoon stroll through my garden, I noticed the first gray kingbirds of the season had arrived from their winter in Hispaniola, their sharp trills notably more audible against the silent backdrop. The return of the Antillean nighthawks a day later was revealed by their distinct staccato buzz as they swooped after the season’s first mosquitoes. The scratches of a land crab’s legs on a rock and a curly-tail lizard’s telltale dead-leaf-scattering were clear, but not unusual, sonorities. But a week later, in the midst of complete lockdown, an evening promenade around the garden led to a startling encounter. There, right on the lawn in the open, was a Key West quail-dove, one of Turks & Caicos Islands’ rarer birds. Inhabiting only the shadowy floor of the tallest dry tropical forest in southwestern North Caicos, these mahogany red pigeons are notoriously shy and retiring. To date none of my colleagues has been able to get a meaningful photograph of the species, and yet there one was, its iridescent green and purple neck glossing the low sunbeams back to me, its distinctive eye stripe concealing its otherwise obvious focus on looking for insects and seeds in the grass. B NAQQI MANCO
Key West quail-doves in North Caicos unequivocally object to people and our preposterous noise—their tolerance is so low that I’ve met people who have lived in Kew Settlement their entire lives and have never seen one. But since that day, this bird has made its presence in the yard a habit. Without cars rumbling by and with considerably less noise, it exposed itself from its clandestine life on the dark forest floor each late afternoon. Then it brought a friend. The pair struts about the now all-but-abandoned back road throughout the day. They’re still difficult to photograph, but I’ve at least captured one on my camera that is identifiable. But I’m not the only one with photographic proof of this natural takeover. In late May, photos and videos appeared on social media of one of my familiar haunts with a nostalgic twist. Twenty years ago, I lived in Bambarra Settlement, before the causeway linked the islands of North and Middle Caicos and before the roads were paved. Day trippers were so rare there was only one occasionally-functional rental car on the island. Bambarra Beach, with its expansive sandbar jutting half a mile towards Pelican Cay, was only ever peopled by the rare fisherman or rarer winter villa visitor. My peanut-butter-coloured potcake usually accompanied me, and unfortunately that’s why I never got to see the flamingos up close. Flamingos have tolerance toward humans but no time for canines, and on several occasions, I only arrived in time to see a flock of roseate Caribbean flamingos wheel around the sandbar in post-take-off surveillance swoop before their group’s line undulated over the Casuarina trees back inland toward the protected ponds. Since Bambarra Beach has become such a popular stop on the regular tourist route, the flamingos retired the location from their usual circulation. But this May some truly impressive flocks of flamingos, hundreds strong, appeared on the sandbar at Bambarra Beach. Taking advantage of the unpeopled beach and low tide smorgasbord, they’ve settled in daily to reclaim their former habitat. A flock 194 strong, including 196 recently-fledged first year birds, was enjoying the sandbar the day I carefully, respectfully (and dog-lessly) visited. While flamingos may not be festooning the Grand Canal in Venice, they certainly are reinforcing their prerogative on one of our most picturesque beaches. Let me not run from my identity as a cynical curmudgeonly misanthrope—I indeed hope somehow things don’t go back where flamingos would be expunged from Bambarra Beach—yet I recognise and honour the unprecedented difficulty this collapsed-coal-kiln of a year has thrown at so many people. But the fact that wildlife is showing us that they need space that we use, and they only avoid it because we really are nature’s most obnoxious production, should give us a second-guess of how we comport ourselves going forward. One of my favourite literary works notes that after careful restoration of nature, “Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.” I’ll do what I can to maintain the silence, but I’ll also enjoy its zenith while I can. I’ll go out this evening to greet the not-quite-anatopic Key West quail-dove, and who knows? Perhaps along the empty streets I’ll catch a glimpse of a Lucayan family. a DEMITRI HARVEY Times of the Islands Summer 2020 81
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TIMES OF THE ISLANDS SAMPLING THE S
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contents Departments 6 From the Edi
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from the editor MARTA MORTON-WWW.HA
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TIMES MANAGING EDITOR Kathy Borsuk
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My father, Jeffrey Handfield, was b
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with his growing family. All along
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island life If the thought of ownin
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My son Tim and I were blessed in ea
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eye on the sky A serene sunset over
Page 29 and 30: Forecasting is a tough business It
Page 31 and 32: giving back Opposite page: Thanks,
Page 33 and 34: DAVID M. STONE This TCRF volunteer
Page 35 and 36: Providenciales. Another major succe
Page 37 and 38: eautiful by nature Opposite page: A
Page 39 and 40: This year’s drought was especiall
Page 41 and 42: green pages newsletter of the depar
Page 57 and 58: PROVEN IN PROVO 435’ on Grace Bay
Page 59 and 60: feature The Rainbow Effect By Kelly
Page 61 and 62: Our environmental footprint As huma
Page 63 and 64: Rainbow after the storm The island
Page 65 and 66: The lovely curve of beach stretchin
Page 67 and 68: Building Your Vision, Delivering Ex
Page 69 and 70: Building Your Vision Creating Reali
Page 71 and 72: TWATIMES_Layout 1 2/16/17 7:49 AM P
Page 73 and 74: Modern living in the prestigious Le
Page 75 and 76: Top: This artist’s rendering show
Page 77 and 78: feature Opposite page and above: Fo
Page 79: e back underwater shooting again. M
Page 83 and 84: Camera to the rescue Story & Photos
Page 85 and 86: astrolabe newsletter of the Turks &
Page 97 and 98: STEPHANIE WALLWORK AQUA TCI was for
Page 99 and 100: about the Islands Map provided cour
Page 101 and 102: out the Islands and many resorts of
Page 103 and 104: ton dresses tied at the waist for w
Page 105 and 106: where to stay Times of the Islands
Page 107 and 108: dining Times of the Islands Summer
Page 109 and 110: SUSTAINABLE ENERGY You Can Count On
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