Nonsuch Island and the cahow

A bird that came back from 300 years dead. Spanish sailors took up to 4,000 Bermuda petrels a night for food from the 1500s and let hogs loose on the nesting ground; the English brought rats, cats and dogs. By the 1620s the cahow was considered extinct and stayed extinct for three centuries. On 28 January 1951 eighteen nesting pairs were found on rocky islets in Castle Harbour. A fifteen-year-old Bermudian named David Wingate was on that boat and gave the rest of his life to the bird: he became Bermuda’s first conservation officer in 1966, cleared the rats, fitted baffles on the burrows so tropicbirds could not take them, and planted almost 10,000 native and endemic plants of over 100 species on Nonsuch Island to rebuild the forest that used to be there. From 17 or 18 pairs in 1960 to 132 breeding pairs and 72 fledged chicks in 2019.