Researchers have been closely watching the wellbeing of a longtail that took its first flight just ahead of Hurricane Melissa.

The bird, named Duchess, was hatched in a burrow on an island in Harrington Sound in August. Staff at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo had feared the oncoming storm might affect her first leap into the air.

Patrick Talbot and Barbara Outerbridge ventured out to the island on Monday for a routine check on the animal.

It was the eighth longtail chick set to leave from 12 monitored nests and the last known longtail in Harrington Sound expected to depart the island this year.

The bird was seen by Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester, during her visit to Bermuda this month and Mr Talbot, a curator at BAMZ, said Her Royal Highness felt lucky to encounter the seabird. It was given the name Duchess in her honour.

Mr Talbot said that it was unusual but not unheard of for longtails to still be on the island at this time in the year.

The bird’s weight and wingspan were recorded by the BAMZ team.

Mr Talbot said that by today, the bird’s shortest wing was expected to grow to 258 millimetres and the other wing to 260 millimetres.

As it turned out, the bird had already left the island when staff checked yesterday.

Ms Outerbridge, an animal registrar at BAMZ, said that the bird’s mother laid the egg on July 11 and it was hatched on August 19. She added that Duchess had been monitored regularly by the team ever since.

“The work that we have done shows that the adult birds commit to about five months of being here for breeding purposes,” Mr Talbot said.

He explained that the parents take about 19 weeks for the process from copulation to departure of the chick.

From BAMZ records, Ms Outerbridge said that the first observed adult longtail on the island in Harrington Sound this year was on February 13 and the first egg lay was logged on March 12.

The team was monitoring Hurricane Melissa and had intended to check on Duchess today and make a follow-up visit over the weekend to determine if she had departed or chose to wait.

He added: “The major storms tend to hit us in September and October so any birds that are here during that time, there is a good chance that they may fail because of the winds and surf.”

Two longtails known to BAMZ were affected by hurricanes Humberto and Imelda this season. Mr Talbot said one had died and the team had rescued the other from its burrow.

“One of them we have in rehab right now because Humberto and Imelda caused the disappearance of one parent,” he said.

The chick was regularly visited by the other parent for feeding after the two storms but a method used at the time of Tropical Storm Jerry suggested that the chick was left without a mother or father.

Mr Talbot explained: “What I do is I put a stick up in the entrance to signal whether an animal has gone into the burrow.

“For a parent to go through it must knock it down and the stick had not been knocked down leading us to believe that TS Jerry was responsible for the disappearance of the second adult.”

The decision was then made to remove the chick and admit it to care in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre at BAMZ.

The longtail chick is “recovering well” in rehab, Mr Talbot said and the stick, so far, remained undisturbed.