Eleven years ago the British Virgin Island Restoration Project began, with the aim of re-populating the islands with Flamingos, driven to extinction in the 1950s.

In 1992, 20 Caribbean flamingos bred in captivity were sent from Bermuda Zoo and settled on Anegada Island, but in 1993 and 1994, low-flying aircraft and people watching the birds forced them to abandon nesting sites.

However, earlier this week Mr. James Conyers, the project's director on secondment from Bermuda's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Parks, announced he had seen two chicks at a virtually inaccessible salt pond.

He caught them on camera, just 72 hours after they had been born and also saw three other eggs.

"Last March, four wild flamingos joined the flock and then in April we noticed that some of the birds had disappeared from their normal areas,'' said Mr. Conyers.

After a systematic search of the island's vast saltponds, he found ten missing birds and five nests. Later they saw the two chicks and the three eggs.

"Getting close was a nerve-racking and painstakingly slow process. It took us nearly 90 minutes to cover only 150 yards on the final approach and most of that involved crawling through a two feet deep salt pond,'' he said.