A great story from Bermuda about the growing populations of an endemic bird that was once thought to be extinct, the Bermuda Petrel (Pterodroma cahow), also known as the Cahow:
Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island is now the chief battleground in the Cahow’s war against extinction — and for the first time in centuries, the critically endangered national bird appears to have gained the upper hand.
The re-discovery of Bermuda’s Cahow – a species thought to have been extinct for more than 300 years — is one of the great stories of survival in the annals of natural history.
Believed to have been wiped out within decades of Bermuda’s settlement, over the centuries there had been tantalising hints a small population of Cahows may have defied the odds and survived on the remote Castle Harbour islands.
In 1935 an unknown bird which crashed into St. David’s Lighthouse was tentatively identified as a Cahow by no less an authority than American naturalist and explorer William Beebe, then conducting his bathysphere dives from Nonsuch Island.
Led by Robert Cushman Murphy of the American Museum of Natural History and the Bermuda Aquarium & Zoo’s Louis Mowbray, a major expedition was finally launched in 1951 to try and locate a surviving Cahow colony. A Bermudian schoolboy with a flair for ornithology, teenager David Wingate, was a member of the team.
The expedition discovered a handful of living Cahows on their nests in burrows on the Castle Harbour islets. By 1962, a total of 18 nesting pairs had been documented by researchers.
These 36 birds were the only survivors of a species which once numbered in the millions.
…
After the bird’s re-discovery in the 1950s, a conservation programme was started for the Cahow in the 1960s. Dr. David Wingate — by this point Bermuda’s Chief Conservation Officer — helmed the programme until his retirement in 2000.
The Cahow Recovery Project continues today under the direction of Terrestrial Conservation Officer Jeremy Madeiros with the Department of Conservation Services at the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo.
To find out more, read the full article about the Cahow at bernews.com and/or watch the videos below.
More information about the Cahow and its conservation status is available from BirdLife International and ARKive.
[Photo: via bernews.com]
