A feature length film based on the Cahow is not only a Bermudian story, but it is an international story which details its return from the brink of extinction.

In 1951 the Cahow, which was thought to be extinct since 1620, was rediscovered by Louis S. Mowbray, Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, and the young schoolboy David Wingate.

In the following years, former Government conservation officer and environmentalist Mr. Wingate dedicated his life to recreating the Cahow?s natural habitat on Nonsuch Island.

In later years some of the birds were transplanted to the Island and four years ago the current Government conservation officer, Jeremy Madeiros, began tagging the fledgelings and the first adult Cahows returned to breed two weeks ago, a year earlier than was initially thought. But Lucinda Spurling and the film team Afflare Films Ltd. spent the last year creating ?Rare Bird?, a film which details a year in the life of the Cahow.

It was the first time that the bird has ever been filmed, and it is also the first time that a feature length film has been produced on Bermuda?s environment.

?Rare Bird? was screened for the first time last Monday at Bermuda Biological Station for Research and the film also made the Bermuda International Film Festivals list.

In the coming months Ms Spurling plans to promote the film at several International Film Festivals and will show it locally to anyone who wants to see it. ?There is another whole year of stuff to do, because the life of a film really begins once it is finished,? she said, ?And it is important that it gets seen by the most people possible.

?So, I?d like to work with community groups and conservationists and anybody who wants to screen the film. ?I am fundraising for an outreach plan that includes a website, study guides and DVDs with special features. I already have some sponsors and Island Press is one of them for the printing.?

?But it doesn?t stop there because it is an international story with international importance. So we are entering it into film festivals and we have entered it into the Hot Dog(s) Film Festival, in Toronto, Seattle Film Festival and we will be entering it into film festivals in the UK.

?I have entered it into loads of film festivals and I won?t find out for another month whether it has been accepted or not. So, then I?ll be travelling with the film and also looking for a distributor to release it all over the world, which is an ideal situation, but it is very hard to nail down a distributor. But that of course is my goal and every filmmakers goal.

?Even though it is finished, the work is never finished ? the work is never done.?

The process of filming was sometimes difficult, she said.

?Because the bird is nocturnal it posed both budget problems as well as creative and feasibility problems,? said Miss Spurling. ?The big challenge with this film was the technology and we needed two different kinds of night vision for two different reasons.

?One, for in November when the birds were courting and flying around Nonsuch Island and then a better quality night vision for when they fledged in May and June.

?That was a challenge because we didn?t have any electricity out on Nonsuch, although there is a generator, it wasn?t sufficient enough to power our lights. So, we had battery powered infrared lights, which kept going out.

?In one case the bird was about to fledge and we were running out of power so, I wasn?t turning the light on until it started to flap it?s wings and then of course it didn?t flap its wings, it just took off.

?So, there is this really dark shot where the bird takes off and the second half of the frame my light goes off, so we were just gutted because we only had two birds that fledged the entire time.?

The story of the Cahow is what inspired Miss Spurling most of all and she wanted to structure the film in a way that was not only fact-based, but that a story was being told.

?It is an unbelievable story and we wanted to lead up to that,? she said. ?We didn?t just want to say that the bird was thought to be extinct for 300 years in the beginning. We don?t get to the rediscovery until 25 minutes into the film.

?So, we wanted to show the bird, but we didn?t want to show too much of the bird, so we had to think about how are we going to do this.

?We had did real close ups of the bird, the birds feet and eyes using night vision, but unfortunately there was something wrong with the tape so we couldn?t use those shots and also we weren?t sure if they would make sense when it came to the editing process.

?And so, my editor said I foresee a painting of the bird being made, and I was already using an animator for the title sequence and it was her idea to have animated scenes of the bird as if paintings. And that is what we did throughout the film before you get to the rediscovery.?

The animator?s skills added more to the film, when natural and manmade light proved insufficient. ?At the end of the film the bird fledged, but because it was dark and we were using infrared, we didn?t get the shot that we wanted to see, which is the bird flying out to sea.

?That is the shot that we really wanted in the end. So in the end, I thought that we could use the animation again and I asked the animator to draw the bird flying off the page and then flying out to sea and that is our concluding shot.

?So, it all sort of worked out organically in the end, but we definitely had to approach our problems from a creative standpoint in the end and I think a lot of filmmaking is about problem solving and teamwork.?

The team also used nine different cameras to capture the scenes in ?Rare Bird?.

?You wouldn?t necessarily pick that up when you watch it, but had two different types of night vision cameras, a lipstick camera, a tiny camera which was put in the burrows, and we used both Super Eight and 16mm film.

?The biggest portion of our budget went on film equipment. We also had a miniature crane, which was expensive and time consuming, but it adds to the production value and that is what we wanted in the long run.?

So, what was it like for Miss Spurling to see her first Cahow?

?It was great!? she said. ?I feel so privileged to be able to make this film and to have had all the support that I had.

?Jeremy once let me handle a chick and all I could feel was his stomach, because that?s all it is at that point. Then my heart just skipped a beat when we were on our first night shoot and Jeremy told me to film this one chick because he was probably going to fledge that night.

?But you never know when and we were out there for only ten minutes when this bird took off, on its first flight ever in its entire life, not to return for four years. ?It just flew over our heads and it was an instantaneous moment and we realised how privileged we were because that was the first time in 400 years that fledgelings are actually departing from their natural habitat ? a forested island.?

The crew were also able to film a little chick that was abandoned by his family.

?It was starving to death and they had to take it in to be rehabilitated with Jennifer Gray and we came in twice and filmed her feeding this chick.

?He fledged a month after all the rest of them and that was a really touching story because every single Cahow life matters and Jennifer, Jeremy and David will do everything they can to make sure that each one gets the best chance at life.

And fingers crossed they come back because only about a half to a third of the chicks survive, as many die in the first year or two. They have to learn to survive on the open sea and they don?t come back until four years later.?

?Rare Bird? and the television length film ?Bermuda?s Treasure Island? are the only two films with footage of flying Cahows that exist.

?Because out at sea they are so difficult to see and if you go out looking for them it is like looking for a needle in a haystack,? said Miss Spurling.

?In November just before sunset they congregate about three miles off the shore of Nonsuch Island and when we were filming we went out for about five days before we saw anything.

?You are out there for three hours waiting and scanning the horizon for them while smelling fumes and fish oil, which was used to bait them.

?When we finally did see them they were swooping down over the fish oil it was very difficult to film, but it made it somewhat more predictable. I think there were three days that we saw them and we got what we needed for the film.

?That was our last shot and we didn?t get that until last November and I was definitely scratching my head wondering what would we do if we didn?t get it.?

On the film she worked with some really good people, who she said without there would be no film. ?I?m really lucky and I think that any filmmaker would say this because no one person can make a film by themselves ? it is impossible and if you do than it is going to be bad,? she said. But with everyone that helped, it would not have been possible without sponsors.

?None of this would have been possible without the extreme generosity of my sponsors, especially my principal sponsors Bank of Bermuda HSBC and Royal Dutch Shell Ltd,? she said.

?There were also individual sponsors and every little bit counts. We are still slightly in debt, but I am hoping to pay that off one way or another. But that?s filmmaking and the total budget was $300,000.?

But the plight of the Cahow continues and at the last count there were 71 confirmed pairs.

They are plagued by rising sea levels, hurricanes and other disasters that slow the revival process of the bird that does not breed until it is four years old.

?I think that ?Rare Bird? in as much as it appeals to a Bermudian audience, it is an international story. David Wingate had a vision and the world took nearly 30 years to catch up.

?The vision of Nonsuch Island and preserving an endangered species of bird. What is great about that is that we can now look back in hindsight and realise how visionary that was. It is a great Bermuda story.?