Cagarros

Cagarros (Cory's Shearwater Birds)

This is the time of the year when "Cagarros," (Cory Shearwater Birds)
marine Azorean/Atlantic birds of the Albatross family come inland to brood.
They spend most of their time out in the open sea, fishing at night all year
long. They live up to forty years of age. Every year from February to
November they return to the islands where they were born to nest in the many
cliffs and crags that first saw them or even in holes they make on the
ground. In May the female Shearwater lays her only egg. Both she and the
male sit alternately on it for about fifty days. When the fledgling is born
it is nurtured by both parents during the period of three months until it is
time to return to the ocean and there stay until is time for brooding again.
Nocturnal birds, they have been living around this area for about fifty
million years, almost as long as the Atlantic Ocean itself. If you are out
night and you hear a crying above you in the dark, it¹s them in their
flight. They are blinded and thrown off course by the presence of light, so
that if you make a bonfire by the beach, before you know it, they will be
flying above you one after another making a noise as if someone saying, "I
cannot, cannot, cannot!" Azoreans say that their sounds remind one of the
Portuguese word for water, "Água" repeated as if by someone desperate for
water.
"Cagarros" is also what Azoreans teasingly call the people of Santa Maria,
the first island of the Azores to be discovered. The reason is the singsong
intonation of the way they speak. It sounds like the sound those birds make
in the middle of the night, so they were named accordingly.
This time of the year, when the "Cagarros," become more noticeable at night,
when they come and go on their food getting trips to and from the ocean, is
also invade the harvest time in the Azores.
Indeed, the Azoreans were self-sufficient, they grew everything they needed.
Today, one sees mostly cattle and pasture, but at one time, all of the
Azores islands were rich in grains as well as a variety of other crops that
made them self sufficient.
It was this wealth that made the Azores a granary of the Age of Discovery
and Expansion. As the Portuguese set off to discover the new world, they
would invariably stop here to replenish with wheat and fresh water.
The area where the Lajes airfield and airport are located today, for
example, was called "Ramo Grande," and that area happened to be one of the
most fertile cereal regions of the island. The wheat grown here was
transported to Angra and kept in huge underground silos found where now is
the "Alto das Covas," at the top of the Main street in Angra. The reason
that the wheat was stored in these underground silos or "Covas," literally
pits or holes, was to protect it from pirates who often attacked the island
in search of food.

This time of the year, was also grape harvest time. Today you hear of
Biscoitos and Porto Martins as areas where grapes are grown, but at one time
everyone grew what they needed, so that most everyone kept a patch of land
by the seashore, the "Fajãs", or land on steep slopes by the seashore,
reserved for the family¹s vineyard.
At this time of the year, they would throng to the ocean side, where many
even kept small cottages and wine cellars provided with wine presses, wine
caskets and other wine making utensils. There they would spend a few days
until the harvest (vindima) was done; the grapes had been sorted and crushed
to make wine.
This was the time of the year, then, that the islanders bonded with the
ocean, prepared their wine and celebrated. Bonfire get-togethers were very
common. The more people came down to celebrate, the more would stay around
to help with the harvest.
People who owned a wine press or a wine cellar would allow others to use
them for their own pressing of the grapes and preparation of wine. Wine
pressing took on many forms. Those settlers, who came from Northern
Portugal where it was common to press the grapes by stepping on them,
continued that tradition to this day. Others, probably, the more moneyed,
had wine presses.
The most famous of the Azorean wines are definitely the Pico Island wines.
As with the Madeira wine, it found its way outside the archipelago to honor
the tables of the Russian Czars themselves. More widespread were red table
wines or home made wines, or "Vinho de Cheiro" .

Today, when we are surprised by how much people of Terceira celebrate, we
tend to forget that all these celebrations stem from the very humble rural
or agricultural traditions of this island. Grounded on a farming, rural,
unindustrialized existence, every celebration is a manifestation of
harvest time, a time to bind, to come together, to share the bounty of the
land, as any normal country folk do.

Silvério Gabriel de Melo
Juncal, Terceira