‘The White-Tailed Tropicbird, or Longtail, is perhaps Bermuda’s most characteristic and beautiful seabird. It is really a more southern bird, Bermuda being its most northerly breeding location.’ - Martin L.H. Thomas, The Natural History of Bermuda, 2004‘The saddle on which the [Land] Front stands is about 93 feet above the level of the sea at its highest or central point, from whence the ground falls rapidly to the left, necessitating the guns being disposed in terraces, one below the other, one gun in each. It has a bold command over the country in its front, which is becoming gradually leveled by quarrying.’ - Bermuda Defence Report 1857Before any of you with some longevity in Bermuda, either as residents or visitors, fly off the ramparts on an erroneous assumption, one hastens to add this is a story about birds, not a certain type of person often referred to in the heady tourism days of the 1960s and 1970s as ‘longtails’. (A definition may be found in the dictionary Bermudjan Vurds, but unlikely to be listed on the Internet, perhaps for reasons of propriety.) Nay, this epistle is about the feathered variety that returns to the island each spring, as it has done almost from time immemorial, to lay but one egg in preparation for the next generation of its oceanic species. It is about the defence of the Bermuda Longtail and the work of the National Museum of Bermuda, in a recent action with the tremendous help of volunteers from the XL in the City of Hamilton, to enhance and preserve that aerial aspect of the natural heritage of the island. In the face of the over-building of the place with people-condos and other works (many not as beautiful as one would like to encourage our visitors to love the place and return again and again) the real “Longtails” (White-Tailed Tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus) are still minded to return to nest here, despite the continuing loss of their cliffside and other dwellings in this northern, once-upon-a-time, paradise.The military action took place in two areas on the high ramparts of the Land Front on the southern sector of the fortifications at the Bermuda Dockyard; to the east a team of archaeological commandos attacked a buried rifleman’s emplacement, while to the west an engineering squad laid out fifteen ‘condos’ for the returning Longtails, looking upon construction (to a Lilliputian) like giant gun cupolas of a Maginot Line, overlooking Bermuda’s high security prison, the Westgate Correctional Facility and the land towards Somerset Island.According to Colonel Sumner (Chip) Waters, officer commanding the assault (under GOC Dr Ed (Doc) Harris of the Museum):”Once again XL teams spent a day ‘working together to give together’ around the world on the sixth annual Global Day of Giving on 16 May 2011. In celebration of the Company’s 25th anniversary, 2,400 XL employees in 22 countries laboured on 151 projects. The tasks were varied and included working with children, the homeless, the elderly and animals. Here in Bermuda, one of the XL teams, led by Col. Sumner H. Waters, US Army (ret), and XL’s Director of Facilities, worked on two projects at the Casemate Barracks, now part of the National Museum of Bermuda at the old Royal Naval Dockyard.’“The 25 XL Volunteers consisted of one ten-person team that excavated old firing ports used in the mid-1800s by Royal Marine riflemen on the top of the Land Front fortification just south of the Casemate Barracks. The excavation uncovered previously unknown firing trenches used as part of those defences of the Dockyard. The other 15-person team, including Charles Cooper, president and chief underwriting officer of XL’s Bermuda-based reinsurance subsidiary XL Re Ltd, constructed “condos” for Bermuda Longtails. The ‘Longtail Condos’ are nesting shelters for those migratory birds that use a Bermuda home for rearing their young. The new “condos” will hopefully attract new generations of beautiful Longtails and their watchers to Bermuda each Spring.“This is the fourth year that XL Global Day of Giving volunteers have spent working at the National Museum of Bermuda and the third time XL has done projects for the Casemates restoration project. In 2007, XL teams completed demolition work inside the Barracks and removed walls and prison fittings put in place in the 1960s. In 2008, XL teams focused on excavation of the old tunnel used for the original entrance to the Dockyard in the early 1800s and in 2009, XL teams worked on the excavation of Bastion B gun emplacement and the removal invasive species of trees at the Dockyard Keep.”Throughout the day, as if in anticipation, Longtails wheeled about the XL team, giving the occasionally screech, as if in command that the new housing should be completed forthwith, which it was, thanks to the outstanding work of the volunteers. The construction project is also part of the “Longtail Residence Club”, a subsidiary of the Museum through which a good number of donors have “purchased” leases and fractional ownerships in order to provide funding for the building of condos for the nesting birds: Bermuda should be grateful to those donors who are supporting this aspect of our natural heritage in this way.Some are apparently hoping that the Bermuda Cahow, the national endemic seabird, may light upon the new Dockyard condos as more suitable homes (purpose-built and all mod-cons, spectacular high-level sea and prison views), as opposed to the ground level burrows being provided for them at Nonsuch Island down east. While visas will be required to cross Somerset Bridge, those birds are welcomed as guests at the new extension for the Longtail Residence Club at Dockyard.Once the real estate agents see these new dwellings on the Land Front ramparts, they will likely agree there are none such on the entire island and would doubtless also agree that we should spread the natural heritage of Bermuda (and commissions) from the east to the west, if only because the air is fresher in Sandys, being the uppermost of all the parishes of the island and is without a noisy airport.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480