Erika Gates is all about the birds.
She is a certified Bahamas birding guide on Grand Bahama Island and escorts a bird tour offered by Grand Bahama Nature Tours, one of five programs available to visitors.
She also promotes a bed & breakfast establishment for birders and nature lovers and has been involved for years in Garden of the Groves, a 12-acre botanical refuge with walking trails, plum and tamarind trees, a lagoon and many species of her fine-feathered friends.
I met Gates on Grand Bahama Island in late January. Our conversation centered on the annual Audubon bird count taken earlier that month and the first since Hurricane Dorian had ravaged much of the eastern and southern parts of the island in September.
The count took place in the west and central areas of the island from sunrise to sunset over a two-day period.
"We did not know what species and bird numbers we could expect after the habitat and environment had only had four months of recovery following Dorian," Gates said.
Grand Bahama has participated for the past 20 years in the count, which began 120 years ago in the U.S. and now includes all of Canada, the Caribbean, South America and several Pacific islands.
"The count data is becoming increasingly important in predicting the effects of climate change and decline in bird populations," she said.
But by the end of the second day, hopes had been restored that the catastrophic Dorian had failed to wipe out the island's feathered friends.
A stripe-headed tanager is a colorful Bahamian bird often spotted by visitors.
"Our resident and migratory species as well as their habitats had shown tremendous resilience," Gates said.
The birders reported a count of 93 species in the areas surveyed, coming close to previous years, when 95 to 110 species had been tallied.
In addition to her work with birds, Gates has been involved in the operation of the Garden of the Groves since 2004 following Hurricane Frances.
"At that time, local tour operators walked away from the site due to storm damage, and tours were no longer available," she said. "I was asked by the owner of the Garden if I was interested in taking it over. I was."
Between 2007 and 2008, the Gardens of the Groves was restored and a restaurant and a bar seating 150 were added. The facility also was restored following Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
"After Hurricane Dorian, the cruise lines said that they needed on-island tours [in order] to come back to the Grand Bahama. So the Garden of the Groves partially reopened in October, and we were fully operational by Dec. 1," Gates said.
The facility had been named a leading tour operator in the Bahamas by Carnival Cruise Line in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and it has a staff of 35 uniformed guides back in place in February.
"The island is coming along well. The visitors are returning, and so are the birds," Gates said.