For 330 years, everyone thought the bird was gone. Then, in 1951, a 15-year-old boy watched scientists pull one alive from a crack in the rocks. He decided, right there, that saving it would be his life's work.
Seven decades later, the species still exists largely because he kept that promise.
The Bermuda petrel, known locally as the cahow, had been presumed extinct since the early 1600s, wiped out by introduced rats, hogs, and relentless hunting soon after Bermuda was settled.
For more than three centuries there was nothing. Then several fresh specimens turned up in the 1930s and 1940s, hinting that a few birds might still survive.
In January 1951, a team searching the rocky islets of Castle Harbour invited 15-year-old David Wingate along because he was already known around Bermuda for his knowledge of birds. During the expedition, a living cahow was drawn from a nesting crevice and someone exclaimed, "By gad, a Cahow!" Wingate later said that moment determined what he would do with his life.
After studying zoology at Cornell, he returned home and devoted decades to saving the species. He designed artificial burrows, restored Nonsuch Island with native plants, and devised ways to keep competing tropicbirds out of cahow nests, all at a time when conservation biology barely existed as a discipline.
When the recovery program began there were only about 18 breeding pairs. Today there are more than 150. The cahow remains endangered, but one of the world's most famous "extinct" birds is no longer disappearing.
Wingate turned 90 in October 2025. The species he saw rediscovered as a teenager now nests in burrows he designed and on an island he spent decades bringing back to life.
My top 5 unofficial Canadian Themes 🇨🇦🍁🍻
1: O Canada
2: Molson Canadian I Am anthem
3: Theme to the Littlest Hobo
4: Hockey Night In Canada
5: Theme to the Kids In The Hall
Honorable mention: Corner Gas - Not a Lot Going On by Craig Northey & The Hart Foundation entrance theme