The camera set up to film Cahows on Nonsuch Island recently caught an unusual visitor, with a critically endangered Bermuda skink stopping by the burrow, wandering around and taking a rather close look at the camera.

“A Bermuda Skink was recently filmed visiting the CahowCam burrow as we wait for the female to return to lay her egg. Historically, they also have a long-standing, important relationship with the Cahows as they help keep the nests clean,” the Nonsuch Island website noted.

“The total island-wide [hence global] population was estimated to be 2300-3500 individuals,” the website notes. “Surveys conducted on Nonsuch over the past 50 years suggest the population is declining and those skinks that remain are only found in a few locations on the island.”

“The creation of the two cahow nesting sites is expected to benefit the skinks; as the cahow colony grows on Nonsuch, so too should the skink colony.”

Last year, seven skinks hatched at Chester Zoo, the first time conservationists have bred the critically endangered species outside their homeland of Bermuda.

A few years ago the Bermuda Government noted that the island’s skink population was “pushed to the edge of extinction,” becoming “one of the rarest lizards in the world,” so arranged for 12 skinks to ‘emigrate’ to the UK in order to start a captive breeding program at the Chester Zoo.