Wingate was fascinated by the rediscovery of the Cahow, and after completing his degree, he went on to save the species, creating a sanctuary for the birds on Nonsuch Island and working tirelessly to protect the cahows for five decades. One of the expedition members was a schoolboy named David Wingate. But in 1951, a scientific expedition went to the islets around Castle Harbor, where seven burrows were finally found. The birds were thought to have been extinct as a breeding species for 330 years (except for a handful of possible sightings). The rats that had jumped ship laid waste to more of the bird population. Since the birds evolved without any mammalian predators, they were remarkably easy to catch and kill. They also supplemented their pork diet with the remaining cahows while they built ships to sail on to Virginia. The desperate survivors were delighted to find that Bermuda had been stocked with pigs, since food was scarce in their temporary home. The vessel, damaged and leaking, was deliberately ran aground on the reefs off Bermuda. In 1609, the Sea Venture was en route to Jamestown when it sailed into a storm, possibly a hurricane. 9Bringing A Bird Back From The Brink Of Extinction The hogs were an ecological disaster, wiping out most of the birds. There was no sign of his missing heir, but he left behind some hogs to help sustain the victims of future shipwrecks. Unfortunately for the cahow, in 1563, Spaniard Don Pedro Menendez de Avila plucked up the courage to sail into Bermuda while looking for his son, who had been shipwrecked. They are thought to have once numbered over 500,000 birds. They return every year to form dense nesting colonies, and their eerie calls are a way of attracting other birds to breed. The howling infants were, in fact, cahows (aka Bermuda petrels), an endemic species of seabird. It didn’t take long for stories to proliferate about the demons, sea monsters, and witches that haunted Bermuda. It sounded like hundreds of babies screaming out in unison, and the superstitious sailors continued on their way to safer harbors. They didn’t fancy their chances against the treacherous reefs, but almost as frightening were the strange sounds that emanated from the islands as dusk fell. Bermuda was first discovered in 1505, but for years afterward, the Spanish and Portuguese sailors who passed the islands weren’t too keen to row ashore.
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